303LOWE wins Audi account
Audi’s appointment of 303LOWE to its creative account has been hailed by the agency as a vindication of its east-coast expansion strategy.
Group managing director Alan Taylor told M&M this week 303 — which has been operating in WA for 25 years — expanded into Sydney seven years ago in part to give WA talent more opportunities to work on big national and international brands in a wider range of categories.
“Certainly, as is the case with most of the clients across the group, when it comes to large-scale briefs they are shared across both offices,” he said.
“It is one of the reasons we did the whole Sydney thing in the first place — to expose our Perth team to brands they would not normally be able to connect with in Perth — like a car brand.”
The Audi account is one of the agency’s most significant wins, beating incumbent Rapp, owned by DDB, and HOST — the agency which until recently held the Tourism WA account.
“We knew that it would take time to establish ourselves and the 303 brand (in the east),” Mr Taylor said.
“We pitched on Audi about two years ago and impressed them, but perhaps weren’t quite in the place we needed to be for them.
“In the last 12 to 18 months it has really started to come together.
“To win Audi is… pretty special for a WA born and bred business.”
Lowe and Partners, a global advertising company, bought 51 per cent of the business in 2011.
Mr Taylor said the Audi win cemented 303LOWE as a national agency.
“As a WA agency, we’ve successfully built a serious offering on the east coast — not a branch that is servicing one or two national clients on the ground — but a bona-fide business with a really decent, desirable and impressive collection of brands and some amazing people,” he said.
Mr Taylor said 303’s work for Audi would start to flow through into the market in the second half of this year.
