Patricia Johnson, Cleo, June 1975, pp. 57-59.
Other advertising people dislike him for damaging the “Australian image.” But is he now going to impress his Ocker philosophy on our brand new political party? An interview by Patricia Johnson.
A bright Sunday morning on a summer long weekend would seem hardly an appropriate time to launch a new Australian political party. But at the initial Press conference of the Workers’ Party, at the end of January this year, a surprisingly large number of journalists turned up to be told of the tenets of the new party which had gone, officially, into action the night before at the Sydney Opera House.
One of those there to spread the world about the new party — the platform for which includes such points as the eventual abolition of taxation, less government and goodbye to welfare schemes such as the old age pension — was John Singleton.
John Singleton is an advertising man whose fame (or is it notoriety?) has had a lot to do with politics. He was responsible for the controversial television commercials which were aired throughout Australia just before the last elections. On camera himself, he has voiced the opinion that “a socialist is a bum.”
The emotive and violently anti Labor Party commercials earned him the wrath of his fellow advertising men. More than 60 of them got together and took out a full page advertisement in a national paper of Advertising People in Defence Of Advertising. Under the list of names was the copy: “We wouldn’t have made these commercials.” Singleton’s reply to the gesture — quoted in newspapers throughout the country — was short and cynical. “That,” he said, “is why they are broke and I am rich.”
He has been called, in banner news headlines, John Simpleton. His advertisements for clients such as discount stores, car retailers and tyre services — all exaggerated Ocker with no frills whatsoever — have been accused of setting back the Australian image by at least 10 years.
John Singleton is only just 33 and is reputed to have achieved millionaire status some time ago (“I’ve never claimed to be a millionaire; let’s just say I’m not broke”). He was the first ad man in this country — possibly in the world — to persuade a minister of God to advertise a less-than-Godly commercial product.
The offices of advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, of which John Singleton is managing director, are in an area of Sydney which once comprised slums and brothels. Now, though, the narrow shouldered terrace houses are revamped and trendy. Mr Singleton’s office in one of these terraces, upstairs, is hardly grand.
He is wearing a smart suit and a patterned shirt. Hair very blond, he’s cast a little in the Paul Hogan mould. He is very Australian looking, just the sort you would recognise overseas. Singleton crosses his legs — an ankle on to a knee — leans back in his swivel chair and wonder what anyone could possibly want to know about him.
“No, criticism worries me for everybody else’s sake but never for my own — I just don’t care. Most of the advertising in this country is boring, bland and forgettable; most advertising here has been a rip-off for the past 25 years. Ours is effective and therefore it’s talked about and it’s criticised. All you are is a reflection of what you do in the media, so if you’re well-known that means your work, your advertising, is doing what it is supposed to be doing.”
Is he the best known advertising man in Australia? He shrugs.
“If I am, I see it as an indictment of everyone else in this business, who has been around for a lot longer.”
Singleton started off as a despatch boy with one agency (“I would have liked to have been a journalist but cadetships then were hard to come by”) and later became a copywriter. When he was 20 he took a job as copy director at another agency and after five years, and “without a bean between us,” he and art director friend Duncan McAllan began their own agency. Later Singleton sold out to accept the managing directorship with Doyle Dane Bernbach, an American agency new to this country. In 1973, its first year, the turnover was $6 million. Last year it was $12 million, which makes it one of the top 10 agencies in the country in spite of its small size.
“Australian advertising agencies work on a ratio of about 10 people for every million dollars worth of business,” said Singleton. “We have a ratio of 3.5 people for every million.”
That 3.5 works hard and plays not at all — at least, not during business hours. Under Singleton’s directorship, nobody stops for lunch, nobody is allowed to drink during work hours — not even a glass of wine midday. Work starts about nine and finishes, breakless, at between five and six. Singleton, like everyone else, eats a sandwich at his desk. The question as to whether Doyle Dane Bernbach is the only Australian advertising agency which works this way brings the swift, sharp retort — “it’s the only agency that works, period.”
The brace of telephones which shrill every couple of minutes are really the only outward sign that this is the work of a man whose life philosophy is “to set yourself an unattainable goal and then attain it.” The Singleton phone conversations are short and pithy. “No, mate, the Brisbane channels say we can’t specifically name our Jap competitors.” “Not on, sorry, not a Sunday breakfast meeting; weekends I don’t work.” He dictates briefly into a mini machine, smiles, says: “Sorry, I have to do this or else, the system collapses.” And there are a couple of telephone calls, too, about the new political party.
In Australia, over the past few years, politics as party fodder has become something of the norm, on the same neck-and-neck par with the public loosening of tongues on sexual topics. Once you would no more ask anyone his or her political sway (very few people had one, anyway) than you would ask them their particular preferences in sexual intercourse. But John Singleton wears his politics like a banner. He is chairman, and one of the four governing directors, of the Workers’ Party.
“Sure, I’m involved financially in it. If you support something it costs you time and money and my big goal at the moment is to help educate the majority of Australians as to what is happening in the country, make them understand what freedom and individual rights are all about.”
There are those who would say that what the Workers’ Party is about is not freedom and individual rights, certainly not for everybody, but John Singleton is convinced that the party is going to succeed — eventually.
“Our philosophy is in terms of 50 years hence,” he said. “100 years on. Our platform is bound to be unpopular in lots of ways but it’s not constructed to be popular or even to win; it’s constructed so that people are educated to know what is really happening under a socialistic government. Even the Liberals are already into gradual socialism and also they’re tied up with social acceptance and respectability and other things that lead to decay.”
John Singleton is chairman of the new party. Would he ever consider becoming president? (The first and present president is a South Australian doctor, John Whiting). “There are far better suited people, far more intellectual, who could offer that job far more than I could.” And what about power? “I don’t think I have it and I find the thought of wielding power most unappealing.”
What does appeal, though, is a challenge — any kind — and what he sees as a lack of challenge for him in advertising now is responsible for a few maverick thoughts about his future in the profession.
“I’m still in advertising because I enjoy it at the moment. This particular agency is a great place; the clients are good, too. And I also take a lot of pleasure out of helping people make profits. But if I’m on any ego trip it’s that I know I’m the most effective advertising person in Australia and therefore there’s no challenge left for me and that’s something I have to have.”
Money, he reckons, is reasonably unimportant, “but the thing that would make me angry is if I was forced into poverty be people stealing money from me, the government taking my money from me to give to someone else who doesn’t want to work.”
John Singleton maintains that his personal life is strictly his own and that’s that. But he is married with a three-year-old son, Jack Patrick, whom he adores (colour pictures tacked up on his cork notice board) and there is also a close relationship with Maggi Eckardt, personality/model. But none of that information (except the bit about Jack Patrick) will come from John Singleton’s own lips, though he seems to accept — without rancour — that he is talked about and written about in intimate, sometimes scurrilous, terms by people he’s never met.
But people go on writing about John Singleton because he is good copy. He is good copy because he is young and rich and controversial and very much his own man in a society where not too many people are any more. His idea of the greatest living Australian is, not too surprisingly, self made millionaire mining magnate, Lang Hancock.
“The thing I’m most frightened about is death. Yes, I do think about it a lot because I don’t believe you have any more than one chance at life and what it boils down to is that we’ve only got about five minutes. I think it’s important to think about death and the world would be a better place if more people did. People would make decisions more realistically, they would see that most of those decisions are really unimportant. That realisation could save a lot of time and energy and emotion.”
