Andrew Tinning is Campaign Brief WA’s top creative of the past decade

An earlier version of this story published here on December 23 and in the December issue of Campaign Brief WA credited 303Lowe’s Richard Berney as the #1 creative in WA over the last decade, 2005-2014.

This year is the 30th year of Campaign Brief in Western Australia. Over the 30 years the annual Creative Rankings tables have been one of the mainstays of the magazine. Across our first decade, Mike Edmonds was the best performed creative in Western Australia. In our second decade, Adam Barker topped the list. Now, in our third decade, it’s Andrew Tinning who leads the way.

SHEDcsc partner and creative director Andrew Tinning is Campaign Brief’s top creative of the past decade, based on his creative rankings over that time.

With different award shows being added and points allocations refined across the years, our decade Creative Rankings are compiled by allocating points in reverse order to positions in each year’s Top Ten rankings. So a #1 ranking receives 10 points; a #2 ranking receives 9 points; #3 8 points and so on, down to 1 point for a #10 ranking (A change in the timing for our annual Rankings meant 2007 points were included in 2008).

Tinning has been the most consistent performer over the decade, with 7 Top Ten appearances. His #1 Ranking in 2006 was his second (he was also #1 in 2004) and came principally from his press and poster work for Office of Road Safety and Crimestoppers. However his output over the years has been prodigious with award-winning work created for many different clients firstly at Marketforce and now at SHEDcsc.

303Lowe’s Richard Berney hit a purple patch across 2008, 2009 and 2010 when he went #2, #1 and #1 to be ranked second overall. Berney’s run began in 2008, when the ‘Five Kids’ radio spot for Royal Life Saving – co-created with Dav Tabeshfar – picked up some significant awards (Tabeshfar himself was actually ranked #1 that year). In 2009 his IKEA ‘Sliding Wardrobe’ press ad and Christmas campaign saw him go to #1, which he repeated in 2010, principally with the award-winning ‘Want’, Space’ and ‘Support’ television campaign for IKEA and ‘Dancer’ for Royal Life Saving. He then had a couple of quiet years before bouncing back in a big way in 2012 with the Office of Road Safety ‘Enjoy The Ride’ campaign.

Meerkats’ Kurt Beaudoin started to make an impact soon after he arrived in Perth from Canada in June 2007. As our table shows, he was consistently in the Top Ten for five years between 2009 and 2013. He was #2 in 2009 thanks largely to the Perth Zoo ‘Find Your Animal’ radio campaign created when he was at The Brand Agency. In 2011 he went to the top with the dual Silver Lion winning ‘Your Health Is All That Matters’ campaign for HBF created at Meerkats. Beaudoin has recently announced that he is leaving the agency and Perth to return to Canada.

Marketforce writer Guy Howlett has been a strong  performer over the last half of the decade and is at number 4.

Current JWT Creative Director Dav Tabeshfar is 5th. He enjoyed some very successful years at 303 when he partnered Berney on some of that agency’s best work, including ‘Five Kids’ which helped him top the rankings in 2008 and ‘Enjoy The Ride’ in 2012.

Julia Elton Bott is the only female on the list and comes in at #7. She had a very successful 4 years in our annual rankings from 2008 to 2011. She left Marketforce at the end of 2010 to join Whybin/TBWA in Sydney and hence been absent from the Rankings for the last 3 years.

Ben Green and new Trilogy co-CD Des Hameister are equal 7th.Green’s performance is strong given he spent six years working in the eastern states before returning to Perth at the beginning of 2011. The consistent Hameister has made appearances in our Rankings over many years and was equal 12th in our second decade (1995-2004) rankings.

At #9 is Murray Laird, who ranked as high as #2 in 2006 with some award-winning work across print and television for Lotterywest whilst he was at Marketforce.

Rounding out the Top Ten of the decade is former Brand Agency writer James Wills, who made his move in the last two years with #3 and #2 rankings thanks in large part to his work on the Perth Zoo ‘Who Am I’ radio campaign, as well as work for RAC. A quiet achiever, Wills resigned from the agency earlier this year to join George Patterson Y&R Melbourne.

This Top Ten list also shows a significant generational shift in Perth’s creative fraternity.

Half of the Top Ten creatives in our first decade were also Top Ten in our second decade. Adam Barker, Lori Canalini, Steve Browning, Mike Edmonds and Peter Nelson all figured on both lists.

However, none of this third decade’s Top Ten were on those previous lists. It looks like the baton of creative leadership has been passed.

After the Top Ten, the next best performed creatives are Meerkats’ Dan Bradley at #11 and Marketforce art director Neil Martin at #12. Former Marketforce art director Andrew Chu and freelance writer Mitch Mitchell are equal 13th. Five creatives share the 15 ranking: Paul Coghlan, Bryan Dennis, Josh Edge, Helen King and Levi Slavin.

King made history earlier this year by being the first female creative to be ranked #1 in our annual Rankings, thanks to the ‘Valentine’s Day’ press ad she created with Alex Bolderoff at 303Lowe. The duo has since moved to Sydney agency BMF.

Slavin left Perth at the end of 2003. He is currently creative director at Anomaly in New York, having also had very successful stints at Clemenger BBDO Sydney, Saatchi & Saatchi London and Colenso BBDO New Zealand.

Former Meerkats art direcor Rodrigo Cassini is equal 20th courtesy of his work on HBF in the middle of the decade. Cassini returned to his homeland Brazil in mid-2011.

And former Brand Agency creative director Garry Horner – one of the most highly regarded creatives in Australia – joins Cassini at 20th with a couple of good performances in his all-too-brief sojourn in Perth.

Some notable names outside the Top 20 list include Jon Jungwirth (Rare), Drew Ridley (SHEDcsc) and Tom Wilson (Kiosk) at 21; Adam Barker (Gatecrasher), Joe Hawkins (303Lowe) and Pat Lennox (Marketforce) at 30; Mike Sequeira (Trilogy) at 36; Craig Buchanan (The Brand Agency) at 39; and David Donald (Brand), Megan Riley (Marketforce) and Brett Wheeler (Rare) at 42.