They were the only Australian agency to score gongs at all four of the top international award shows – D&AD, One Show, Clio and Cannes in 2007. As well as topping the Australian tally at The Work and Bestads. Matt Eastwood, now into his second year as national creative director and vice chairman of DDB, finished it all up with some big name hires, including Steve Back (now creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi) and 2007 Cannes Grand Prix winner Jonas Peterson. DDB is Campaign Brief’s Agency of the Year.

Over the past year everything has certainly come together at DDB Sydney. Eastwood’s relentless determination to lift the standard of the creative work has paid off with the agency turning out world-class work across big brand name clients that has been recognised at almost every award show.

A far cry from two years back, when the agency went through a highly publicised leadership change with Marty O’Halloran coming across from DDB Auckland as chairman/ CEO of Australia and New Zealand – replacing Nick Cleaver, a 17 year veteran of DDB – and before that, Eastwood replacing Garry Horner – who had been ten years in the role.

For O’Halloran and Eastwood, the first year was about getting back in shape and bedding down existing clients but the last year has been about returning DDB Sydney to its former position as one of the top creative agencies in the country (on Horner’s watch, DDB Sydney was CB Agency of the Year in 1997 and 2002). But, despite the investment in talent, creativity hasn’t been at the expense of profitability with revenue and profit up on the back of new business wins in excess of $55million.

O’Halloran, who works closely with both Eastwood and New Zealand ECD Toby Talbot, couldn’t be happier with DDB’s double – winning CB Agency of the Year on both sides of the Tasman. Says O’Halloran: “While I have great managing directors in both Sydney with Chris Brown and Auckland with Sandy Moore, both Toby and Matt report directly to me. Creativity is one of my passions and this is a strong signal to the network that creative excellence is DDB’s number one focus. Too many CEOs focus on profit at the expense of the creative product – we deliberately focus on creative over and above profit. Maybe that’s why we’re so profitable.”

For Eastwood, the job saw him return home in early 2006 after working as chief creative officer of Y&R New York, and before that as ECD of M&C Saatchi in New York and London to re-join an agency he had worked at during the early 90s.

Working with Steve Back, over the past twelve moths the agency has launched campaigns for Wrigley’s, Hasbro, Volkswagen, McDonald’s and Clorox. DDB Sydney’s NAPCAN spot ‘Children See, Children do’ was the 17th most awarded TVC in the world in 2007 according to the Gunn Report. Highlighting how thoughtless, aggressive, self-centred and violent behaviour by adults is copied and continued by children, the 90-second spot won multiople awards including gold at the London International Awards, bronze at Cannes and One Show and was accepted in the D&AD book. In The Work 07, DDB Sydney was the highest ranked agency in Australia and week after week its work has appeared on www.bestadsontv.com making it equal third agency in the world at the end of 2007. Further, Eastwood was not only ranked Australia’s number one creative director by Bestads, he was the top ranked creative director on the planet (with BBDO New York’s David Lubars), ahead of Talbot at #3 and other heavyweights like Tony Grainger and Eric Silver.

Eastwood said he inherited an agency that was quite dysfunctional with a lot of in fighting at the top and a culture that he says was counter-productive; “It was a bit of a drinking/ lunching department. I wanted to focus on the work again, so it was about re-orienting everyone to say this is about the work and it’s no longer acceptable to be out lunching four days a week. Everyone bought into that goal and went hard. The agency was also a bit depressed, we were about to lose McDonald’s, which had been with DDB for thirty five years, and when it all but left, we had totally lost our confidence. I had to make everyone believe in themselves again,” he says.

With a new CEO and creative director joining within three weeks of each other the first task was convincing existing clients any changes implemented would be for the better. Eastwood explained his mission to be Australia’s leading creative agency to all clients, pointing out the flow-on benefits this would have on their brand. He says most clients got on board, happily approving work that has been much more adventurous than they were used to seeing.

“A lot of agencies have achieved creative success on small clients, not major international brands, but I really wanted to do it on clients such as McDonald’s, Wrigley’s, Hasbro and Unilever,” he says.

Eastwood credits the support of O’Halloran who really got behind the mission of lifting creative standards at the agency; “I couldn’t have done it without Marty’s conviction. The two of us were like evangelists. We had this phenomenal twelve months and as we started to win more, people got a real taste for it and wanted to keep winning. It’s not just the creative department who are dedicated to it, we changed the agency performance reviews so that everyone is judged on their creative performance with their KPIs tied into being in the top three creatively for their category. It is now how they get measured and get bonuses,” says Eastwood.

“One of the things I said from the beginning was that everyone is responsible for the creative output. So I spent a lot of time helping everyone from production to finance understand their role. We organised creative excursions, from life drawing at the Whitely Gallery to being part of a circus act, anything that was about tapping into their creative spirit. It was a physical representation of ‘we are all about creativity’,” says Eastwood.

Winning back the lion’s share on McDonald’s from Leo Burnett in November 2007 was the best day of the last 18 months, says Eastwood. “No-one thought it would happen, they all assumed the whole account would eventually go to Leo Burnett, but the client turned up at the agency with bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne and said we want you to know you are the lead agency again. It was a big milestone that we were back on the right track and winning again,” says Eastwood. “Marty and I completely reinvented the McDonald’s team and we personally worked on the business. I was the copywriter and he was the account guy. For the first twelve months we went to every meeting. I think McDonald’s felt the new energy and sensed that we really were behind the brand again, the relationship could not be more different than when we first started, we now have one of the best working relationships I’ve ever had,” he says.

The $55m of new business came from new clients and incremental growth from existing clients as well as winning back clients that had become disillusioned with the previous management and left the agency. This includes AVJennings (direct marketing), Audi, NSW Police, Lipton, Glad, Schwarzkopf (digital) and George Weston Foods. DDB Sydney also led the global Wrigley’s pitch, which resulted in the DDB network winning the $100m Wrigley’s account. Overall, revenue was up 11% and profit before-tax by 19%.

With O’Halloran as CEO of both Australia and NZ, there’s plenty of integration between the agencies, which shares accounts across both markets including Wrigley’s, Unilever and McDonald’s.

“Toby and I do a lot together, but we also have a fun rivalry. We spur each other on and send notes about our successes. We also lend each other creatives, so he’s had Sydney creatives helping him out on projects and visa versa. I have that with DDB Melbourne too. Although I was at the agency before Toby joined, it was clear when we first spoke that we both wanted to be the best agency in our respective countries and so we went after that,” says Eastwood.

Talbot and Back were also in regular contact having worked together at Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland and Colenso together. Back was originally lured to New Zealand from London by Mike O’Sullivan, then ECD at Colenso Auckland, and followed him when he took up the ECD gig at Saatchi New Zealand.

Back, who started in November 2006, says hearing that DDB Sydney has won CB’s agency of the year is really exciting: “It just goes to show that the hard work paid off.” He says there are a couple of things that made it such a great year: “Firstly, I’m proud to say it was a team effort, it wasn’t just a case of one or two teams doing all the work. Everyone in the department really got stuck in. Also, we managed to really get the clients excited, which allowed us to produce some great work over a wide spread of brands. A lot of agencies like to talk about being creative but aren’t. I suppose the real difference last year was that we created an environment that really fostered and encouraged creativity,” he says.

Eastwood agrees it was a team effort: “Although Charlie Cook and Simon Johnson really did some heavy lifting. But everyone in the department really got stuck in.”

Eastwood is particularly keen to give a big slice of the credit to Back. Originally hired as head of art/ deputy creative director (soon promoted to Sydney creative director), Back’s appointment was about putting a focus back on world-class creative work as well as the craft – always the difference between great work getting metal and being merely a finalist. Eastwood set up a craft department staffed by designers, a retoucher and an illustrator whose entire focus was making sure all the work looked beautiful.

Eastwood says Back leaving hasn’t stopped the momentum, but Back’s spirit and sense of enthusiasm is missed around the agency, particularly by the young creatives who really looked up to him and were disappointed when he left.

“Steve was a great mate, and still is. I’ve known him for over 15 years, since the Perth days. When he left I had a meeting with the department and talked it through. It was about making them understand that it was actually them that had had all the great ideas and worked hard. They would continue on. I wanted them to have confidence in themselves and their own abilities,: says Eastwood.

The creative team is a tight-knit group that was gradually restructured after Eastwood arrived with about 70% of the department new hires in the past two years. The latest big name hire was Jonas Peterson, who co-created the 2006 Cannes Radio Grand Prix-winning Snickers ‘Hoedown’ spot while at Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne.

Rather than bring in superstars from the international market, Eastwood has made a concerted effort to nurture and mentor young local talent, throwing his support behind DDB’s LaunchPad program, a three-month paid internship for young creatives in association with FBI Recruitment – which was started by Horner in the late90s. Eastwood has since extended LaunchPad to the Melbourne and New Zealand offices.

DDB is also a global sponsor of Portfolio Night where senior creatives review portfolios on a one-to-one basis with junior creatives and students to provide insight and constructive feedback. Seeing the younger creatives at the agency go on to win major awards in 2007 has been particularly gratifying, says Eastwood.

Four DDB Sydney creatives were the Australian winners of the Fairfax Cannes Young Creative Competition – Tim Cairns, Thorsten Hayer, Iggy Rodriguez and Justin Carew – who went up against the world’s best young creative stars at the Cannes Young Creative Competition. Rodriguez and Carew came home with silver, the best performance by a young Australian team in the history of the competition. Also, Tim Green was one of only 12 creatives worldwide chosen to compete in the Clio Awards Future Gold competition in Miami where he came second. At the 2007 Young Guns Awards, DDB Sydney was Australia’s leading agency with Green and Cairns the sixth ranked creative team in the world. Furthermore, Rodriguez won the Bob Isherwood Encouragement Award for 2007, which recognises the brightest new talent in the Australian industry.

Eastwood says there’s also a lot of healthy rivalry between the teams as they vie for the top spot each week on www.bestadsontv.com.

Campaigns recognised on the worldwide site include the Brother Printers’ ‘Nightmare’ commercial, the tale of a dysfunctional staffer with an obsession with paper jams, Cycling Australia’s ‘Vegetables’, which uses a cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage to illustrate the dangers of cycling without a helmet; and Tonka’s ‘Sandpit’ print campaign which was also awarded at the Caxtons. Then there’s multiple campaigns for Wrigley’s including Hubba Bubba’s ‘Long live the bubble’ spot showing the extreme lengths a child might go to in keeping his bubble alive and Eclipse ‘Stash’ where a guy appears to be hiding drugs around his apartment complex, but he’s really hiding packets of gum in case he gets lucky with the ladies.

The latest work coming through includes Hubba Bubba’s ‘Gum by Numbers’, a series of interactive ‘paint by numbers’-style posters that use different flavours of chewing gum as the colour palette, encouraging people to become artists rather than litterbugs and Superglue’s print campaign ‘Soldier’, ‘Wrestler’ and ‘Skater’ based on the premise that kids break their toys soon after Christmas – the print ads show the broken toys screaming out for help in the form of Loctite Super Glue.

Looking forward, Eastwood’s mission is to break down the title difference between mainstream and interactive. He believes the biggest challenge around that will be finding the talent and training the existing staff to be multidisciplinary. Paula Keamy from Rapp Collins, who sat on the jury for the direct Lions at Cannes last year, will step in as creative director of direct and digital. Keamy will work closely with the person who is appointed as deputy creative director (Back’s replacement) to ensure there is integration of ideas across digital and direct. In the meantime, Eastwood will continue to build the momentum of DDB ’07 throughout the coming years.

Says Eastwood: “I’m almost giddily excited to be at DDB. I drive to work very fast, because I have so much to do. I love this job and the environment is one of the best I’ve worked at, you have to be talented but also nice, there are no arseholes here, we don’t go for that talented but rude type. It’s an amazing place to work.”