THE BRAND AND 303 BEEF UP CREATIVE OFFERING

Perth shops The Brand Agency and 303 have both gone outside of Australia to make senior appointments to their creative departments.

The Brand Agency has appointed Jamie McTavish as creative director as a replacement for Roy Phillips, who transferred to their Melbourne office about six months ago. McTavish has a long and awarded history in the eastern states, and most recently worked in Asia on the Mercedes Benz account as the ECD of Batey RedCell in Kuala Lumpur.

McTavish is West Australian by birth and began his career in 1986 working at Saatchi & Saatchi London under the direction of Charles Saatchi and Paul Arden. “After stints at Bozell and Arc International I took up role of Regional Creative Director for Publicis in charge of the Middle East and North Africa with the intention of coming back to Australia with a small fortune, instead I blew the lot having the time of my life and came back with nothing more than a good suntan.”

He worked at Saatchi & Saatchi and Clemenger BBDO in Sydney before heading up to Asia. With a young family to consider, McTavish jumped at the chance to join The Brand Agency when approached. He has won Silvers at the Campaign Press and Poster awards and has had work accepted at One show, D&AD, Creative Circle, and Clio.

Joining 303 is London creative team Mike Sequeira and Mark Fretton. The duo arrive from Publicis UK where they worked on Müller Yogurts, MFI kitchens, Renault cars, HP computers amongst others. 303 has been courting Fretton and Sequeira for over six months and they have been freelancing for 303 from London in the time taken for their immigration to come through.

Before moving to Publicis Fretton began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi London, where he created an ad for Club 18-30 that picked up D&AD Silver, Creative Circle bronze and a CIMTIG Gold. He also won a Best Advertisement Gold at the Regional Press Awards for Army Recruitment and convinced Playtex to shoot Helena Christensen in 3d for an interactive talking Adshel.

Sequeira started his advertising life at McCann-Erickson working on automotive brands. Eight years ago he moved to Publicis, London where he was paired up with Fretton as an experiment. It worked and they have been a team ever since. The thought of moving to Perth first came about around six months ago when they met up with Sequeira’s old McCann CEO Dean Lovett, who was very familiar with Perth.

“It was he who suggested working in Perth. I said Scotland seemed a bit far to go for a job! Dean told me all about 303 and it felt just like the sort of mean and lean agency that we wanted to work for. 303 set us the task of doing a launch campaign for Ikea, which we did in Mark’s spare bedroom via email. The campaign was well received and 303 kindly offered us jobs and sponsorship,” said Sequeira. “After a week at 303 it’s been refreshing to be in an environment where everybody just rolls up their sleeves and gets on with creating good advertising. It’s great to see our concepts being converted into ads and not disappearing into the ether of research and focus groups.”