The First Post
 

From eight 'til late (early this morning), the upstairs area of the Prince of Wales Hotel at St Kilda was crammed.
	It was weird to see a queue in a club full of adults well over 21 instead of malnourished teenyboppers teetering on stilettos.  But hey, we're all young at heart - carrying drinks over our heads, weaving our way through tightly packed groups of friends and colleagues yelling at each other to be heard over everyone else.  The bar staff worked fast and furious all night, and finally, when we'd had enough to drink, the dance floor filled.  The bands played well, the crowd partied hard and the sweet smell of something herbal wafted past the mirror balls on the balcony.
The atmosphere was great and everyone was smiling. Who said it's been a crap year for business?  The general vibe was so what - 2003 will be great. Congratulations to the studios who put it all together: Complete Post, Digital Post, Good Audio Sense, Iloura, Mrppp, Metropolis, Risk, Rowlands, Tide & Unreal Pictures.

Freedom for Frodi's Mill 

Frodi's Mill Creative Director Paul Avery says the decision to move out of the 2UE building in Greenwich was prompted partly by the expiry of their contract and partly because their direct client base has grown considerably over the past few years.

"We actually do more work outside the 2UE environment than we do for 2UE and we basically decided we wanted to concentrate on our direct clients."  

Paul says they found their renovated heritage building in Balmain within a week, once they got serious about looking.

"We wanted something that had a nice creative feel to it so we've bought an office suite in an old heritage building that has been renovated and we're doing our own bits there as well.

                                                              ...On the move January 18th...

"We wanted something in the inner west because the studios we use, SMA are in Pyrmont and we spend a great deal of time there so we needed something that was going to be close to them and something fairly central and we decided Balmain was the best choice - it's also nice and close to home so that makes a difference too," Paul says.

Client access though, wasn't a major consideration for the location.

"A lot of our clients are based in Melbourne anyway, so we work mostly on the phones, e-mail, that sort of thing, so it wasn't so much client access it was more about having he right creative space, where we felt we could concentrate and do the sort of work we want to do."

The painters and decorators will be hard at work over the festive season so the team can move in mid-January.

"I guess we have also been lucky in the fact that something like AudioNET® has come along which has allowed us to very quickly move things straight out either to radio stations or to clients for review, and we're able to do it either from the studio, as we did last night with TV spots, or get them sent back to the office and then forward them on to clients.so that technology aspect has allowed us to be outside of the 2UE environment where we've relied on their technology," Paul added.

                                                              ..."we believe in radio 100%".

Paul says the team at Frodi's Mill is very optimistic about the outlook for radio advertising.

"This move is about freeing up time so we can spend more time with our current clients who are heavy radio users and great believers in radio and also go out and pitch to new clients about how effective radio can be and obviously we believe in radio 100% otherwise we wouldn't be doing what we're doing.

"We're very excited about 2003 and it's a case of roll on January, because we do want to be in our own environment and we do want to be heading out there, talking to people and talking to clients about radio and how they can effectively  use good solid creative to get the results they want. We have lots of ideas of clients that we've not really been able to go after  - because of political reasons with our involvement with 2UE it would not have been the right thing to do -  whereas now we can approach clients with ideas feeling that we are free agents and able to approach whoever we choose.

"We see more and more national clients looking for radio solutions and traditionally agencies have not been particularly interested or put a great deal off effort into radio. Some do but generally they prefer TV and press, whereas we adore radio - it's what we do and it's what we do best and we believe we do it better than anybody else in the country."

Radio Spot Wins Best of Show at PADC Awards

The Medallion for Best of Show at the PADC Awards went to a spot called 'unpacking' for Chess Wilson Removals.  The writer was David Govier from ADLink JLS and Marty Braine was the sound engineer.

The same spot picked up a silver award in the Radio Non-Retail category.

Marty picked up two bronze awards in his own right - in the Radio Non-Retail category for a spot for the ECU and in the Radio Social Marketing and Charity Category for an anti-smoking spot.

In the Radio-Retail category, Marketforce's Lotteries commercials were awarded best of category, with sound engineered by Braine Storm's Julian Douglas-Smith. In the Radio-Campaign category, Street Remley and Les Francis produced the sound for another Marketforce spot, this time for the SGIO.