Phillip Adams Read Online Free PDF

himself all the time. Now he says he despises advertising, which is a bit rough as he was in it for a long time.’ Perhaps Adams was being deliberately provocative when he used the word ‘despise’.
    A few days after my meeting with Brian Monahan, I got a phone call from Phillip Adams.
    â€˜I don’t think I should talk to you any more,’ he said abruptly.
    â€˜Why not?’ I said, unsure if he was joking.
    â€˜Brian Monahan says you asked him about me flirting with girls in the MDA office.’
    â€˜Come off it,’ I responded. ‘He only said you flirted. He didn’t say you had affairs.’
    There was something that sounded like a grumble on the other end of the phone. We talked for a little while longer and I convinced him to keep meeting me.
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    With Adams on board, MDA started to attract bigger clients such as Qantas, Westpac and Myer. It soon became Australia’s third biggest agency after George Patterson and John Clemenger. The partners moved the office to the Melbourne advertising heartland of St Kilda Road and increased their staff to twenty.
    Adams wrote copy for these large corporate clients but his real brilliance was as a creative strategist and salesman. He understood the psychology of products and markets. He could analyse problems and come up with strategies to solve them. He could talk about almost any product from cosmetics to tyres; his brain was already programmed with information that others would have to spend days researching. And he could sell anything.
    Lyle Dayman told me, ‘He was an idea-a-second man and he was good at selling his ideas to clients. His biggest role was to get big accounts for us and keep them happy. One of the reasons we did so well was because none of the three of us was a typical adman. We weren’t bull artists, and people believed us.’
    In the 1970s, Barry Humphries, as Edna Everage, did a television commercial created by Adams called ‘Guess Whose Mum’s Got a Whirlpool’, which was so memorable that it was revived for Mother’s Day in 2009, starring Bert Newton, Molly Meldrum and Dave Hughes, each portraying their own mothers and paying tribute to the original Edna Everage ad. Adams told me, ‘I originally came up with the slogan when driving from the Malley’s factory that made Whirlpool washing machines at Auburn in Sydney to Mascot airport. My inspiration was the “Guess Which Twin Has a Toni” slogan, which I had seen on trams as a child. Malley’s didn’t really like the ads and wondered whether Barry, in drag, advertising washing machines, was a good idea. But the campaign sold an awful lot of washing machines, and gave Barry, who was having major problems with alcoholism, a much-needed infusion of cash.’
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    In spite of Adams’ well-known left-wing views, he got on well with clients. Brian Monahan said, ‘We used to have arguments about politics and religion at the office, the only trouble being that he was better at quoting sources. I had a strong leaning to the Liberal Party, Phillip to the Labor Party and Lyle was in the middle of the spectrum. I was Catholic, Lyle had no strong religious views and Phillip was atheist. At one time we had to put a line down the centre of the office because Phillip and I were preparing opposing ­advertising campaigns.’
    Advertising agencies in those days were havens for interesting, creative people. Monahan Dayman Adams provided a wonderful environment for its staff. Even now, more than thirty years later, people tell Brian Monahan that their time at MDA was the happiest and best of their working lives. The agency’s engine room was the bar. You could help yourself to a drink at any time and there was no charge. You would find people there until early morning and they would still have their work ready by 9 am. Many of its staff went on to have tremendous careers in films and other creative industries. But Adams