John Singleton (Australian Entrepreneur) - Advertising Career

Advertising Career

He commenced a career in advertising in 1958 as a mail boy in the Sydney office of J. Walter Thompson and after five years took a creative role at Berry Currie Advertising. Five years hence he was the Creative Director at that agency. In 1968 together with his Art Director partner Dunc McAllan, he started his own agency in Sydney and the pair soon teamed-up with Rob Palmer and Mike Strauss who had an existing small Melbourne shop with media buying accreditation to start Singleton, Palmer and Strauss, McAllan. SPASM opened with offices in Sydney and Melbourne.

SPASM (and Singleton in particular) are notable in the history of Australian advertising for embracing an ocker voice in their communications at a time when multi-national agency groups were making their presence felt with the advent of strategic planning and British or American-imitating tones of voice. SPASM's clients were largely local Sydney retailers and rather than using polished voices, Singleton's ads embraced the tone of working-class man. A successful campaign was created for the wholesalers David Holdings. The voice-over screamed the retailer's prices before the irritating catchphrase "Where do you get it?". Similar "low-brow" approaches were taken for Jax Tyres "Jax the Ripper Tyremen with the deals" and for Hudsons Timber and Hardware using a toothless old handyman spruiking "'udsons with an aitch". Critics derided this style as ocker advertising but it would pave the way for the later success of the laconic and self-deprecating style of local Australian advertising such as that created by the Mojo agency in the 1980s.

In 1973 Singleton and his partners sold SPASM to the US Doyle Dane Bernbach and Singleton for a time was Managing Director of DDB's Australian operations. Working for a large multi-national with overseas owners was a challenge for Singleton and he left the business in 1977 triggering a long non-compete provision in his contract. In 1985 Singleton started up again on his own with "John Singleton Advertising". Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin bought a silent-holding in the agency during its development in the 1980s. Singleton developed close ties with the Australian Labor Party and created the advertising for Bob Hawke's successful 1983 election campaign. John Singleton Advertising listed publicly, became the Singleton Group Ltd in 1996, then grew to become the STW Communications Group Ltd in 2002 which now owns over 50 Australian marketing and advertising businesses including the Singleton Ogilvy & Mather ad agency and holds an interest in J. Walter Thompson's Australian operations. Along the way Singleton acquired personal stakes in ventures including the 1990 buy-out of the Ten Group TV network from receivership and an acquisition in 2000 of Indonesia's No 3 network SCTV. These personal holdings in addition to the success and growth STW Group interests enabled Singleton to amass a massive personal fortune.

Singleton was the initial Executive Creative Director on the Qantas commercials featuring a children's choir singing I Still Call Australia Home all over the globe. That campaign had been concepted by the Mojo agency in the 1980s but Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon famously called Singleton on Christmas Day 1997 to propose the children's choir performance having seen them on Carols by Candlelight the night before.