Leonards Advertising is one of Australia’s oldest independent media agencies that has been consistently operated.
The independent agency’s history can be traced back to its original owner Frank Leonard who established the agency in 1926.
Geoff Holt took over from 1974 until 2015, when Kate and Richard Faithorn stepped in to take ownership.
The wife and husband team spoke to Mediaweek about its work with local government councils, how the agency bounced back in 2022, their recent award wins and how being part of the IMAA network has benefitted their work.
Kate – whose background is in PR, journalism, and advertising – shared that as the CEO, she deals with the campaign side of the business, collaborating with high-level clients, proposal writing, copywriting, strategy, and working with their studio team.
Her husband, Richard – an accountant by trade – deals with the business side of the agency and the development of their proprietary software, eziAd and eziJob.
Richard shared that his previous experience as CFO for other organisations and working with top business people in Australia has given him insight into making deals in several industries.
Now, working in the media and advertising space – a new industry for him – he is the commercial director for Leonards Advertising.
Richard shared: “I only saw marketing as an item in financials, and my main questions related to looking at financial performance and was it better to spend money on marketing or try to buyout the opposition. So now, directly working in advertising and media has been a great change, which I have thoroughly enjoyed.
Leonards Advertising on foundation and new clients
Kate said that Leonards Advertising is a local government-approved contractor in New South Wales and Victoria, handling approximately 95% of local government work in NSW.
Among their foundational clients are the City of Sydney, City of Parramatta, and the City of Penrith.
Over time, the agency has welcomed additional clients, including the City of Melbourne’s non-campaign work, the Northern Beaches Council, and the Central Coast Council.
The pair noted that it is an exciting time to work with councils ready to shine a light on their community, as recent years have been tough on councils.
Richard said: “It went from council amalgamations to bushfires, national climate tragedies, COVID, while managing huge digital disruption.”
The agency’s recent appointments include the Central Coast Council, which will see the Leonards Advertising team working on the council’s tourism marketing.
Kate also highlighted upcoming work with the Canterbury-Bankstown Council for Ramadan. She added: “It’s great to be able to do a whole variety of events and initiatives to help councils. We like that diversity. It’s terrific.”
Navigating Covid and the legislative changes
Kate noted that they lead a team of twenty who work from across New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, as well as France, where one of their team members is based.
Richard noted that Covid opened the opportunity for remote work for valuable employees from wherever they need to be.
Covid also forced the agency to undergo a “fairly monumental change” because of the amount of work in the local government space. Kate noted two things impacted the agency.
The first was the changes to legislation related to mandatory advertising with things like recruitment, events, and road closures, which were removed in 2020.
The second was the closure of over 100 of News Corp’s local publications across New South Wales and Victoria.
“We’ve had a fairly rocky time, but we feel we’ve come through and very strong. We’ve had to really rethink our operation,” Kate said.
“We’ve moved quite strongly from being primarily a non-campaign functional media agency to being a full service, and particularly specialising in campaigns for councils, schools, and tourism authorities,” she added, noting it was something the agency has always done but has now increased work in.
“We’ve held where we are since the end of Job Keeper. We haven’t had to lose anyone, and we’ve really just pivoted. Many of our staff have had to broaden their skills, and there have been flow-on effects,” she said.
“We’re feeling good going into 2023. We’ve ridden out COVID and some of those legislative changes. In the next six months, we’ve got quite a few new clients that have come on board.”
Leonards Advertising Recognition
The agency has another reason to feel good in the year ahead, having won some awards, including gold at the New South Wales Tourism Awards for Best Tourism and Marketing Campaign for their work with Barrington Coast.
Kate noted that the award recognises how strong the agency is in producing campaigns. “We’re probably better known for our non-campaign work, however we’ve achieved some remarkable results for our campaign clients in recent years,” she said.
“That word of mouth and confidence in what we can do has led to quite a few additional clients coming on board in the last few months who’ve seen those results and are keen to work with us, and that’s incredibly exciting,” she added.
Leonards Advertising’s trajectory in the year ahead
On the outlook for the year ahead, the agency will be partnering up with other agencies for work on strategy or digital such as The Destination Marketing Store and INC, as well as other IMAA member agencies.
Richard said: “On the horizontal, we’ve got first-class partnerships in place to deliver both the care, love and bespoke attention smaller agencies provide, while also having high-class tech delivery that you would expect from the bigger, multi-national agencies.”
Kate added: “The fact that we’ve been around so long gives a lot of confidence and that we’ve been through the vetting of local government, which is quite full on, I think that has helped, particularly during uncertain times, for clients to have competence.”
Richard also noted that Leonards Advertising is investing in their software, EziAd, a platform for advertising agencies to manage the collaboration between the agency and client throughout the production and placement process.
Richard said: “We’ve developed it so it can take orders, and you can manage any digital channel with the agency. Instead of going by email, you can now chat about every campaign within your ordering campaign.
Kate noted that the City of Sydney worked with the agency to help pioneer their software. “It’s a terrific relationship because they tell us what they need, and then we can adapt the software, accommodate those needs, and move with the changing times.”
“Being such a big, sophisticated client, it’s almost like working with a state. It builds that functionality into our media placement software because we’re keeping up with where everything is because they’re dealing at a certain level, and then the other clients benefit.”
Being part of the IMAA
Leonards Advertising was among the first to join the IMAA at the start of 2020. For the Faithorns, their membership with the agency body has been “one of the best things that’s happened to the agency.”
Kate said that finding this association that cares about independence. She said: “Some of the other groups are set up for large agencies, particularly overseas owned. So, it’s helped us a lot.”
Kate also said that the IMAA was helpful in Leonards Advertising and The Media Store’s joint application for the New South Wales government tender.
“They’ve been a strong voice lobbying to say, ‘hey, what about Australian agencies? Maybe you’ve got to keep in mind having some parts of state government service by local agencies.’ So that’s been fantastic,” she explained.
Additional highlights Kate noted Leonards Advertising benefitted included the networking opportunities and relationships they developed with other members through the IMAA and education.
“It’s great that we can tap into some of the courses, webinars and whatever so that some of our younger members can access that way. It would be very hard if we had to pay for all of that ourselves.
“There are lots of things that they’re doing well, and we’re very appreciative of what they’re doing,” Kate concluded.
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Top image: Kate and Richard Faithorn
