What you need to know: 

• Powered by Nine creative director, Mike Thomas, has wrapped up a jam-packed 45 years in the advertising industry. His biggest achievement, he says, is still loving the work. He's also got two sons making a name for themselves in the industry, which he's pretty happy about too. 
• Nicknamed "the light bulb with legs", by friends and colleagues, Thomas worked at some of Australia's best known creative agencies during their prime (Clemenger BBDO, Singleton, Ogilvy & Mather, and Lintas, to name a few), and has lent his mind to more than his fair share of culture-defining ads.
• Before all of that, the UK-native cut his teeth designing biscuits packets for Sainsbury's under the watch of "packaging guru" Peter Dixon. Two years in, he managed to land a junior art director gig at McCann Erickson London, and was soon shipped off to the agency's Sydney office, marking the start of his lengthy Antipodean adland career, where he says people and relationships have been at the heart of everything good.
• “There's always someone that's helped you", and for Thomas, Faye Davis (Lintas), Peter Clemenger (Clemenger BBDO), Robert Morgan (Clemenger BBDO) and John Singleton (Singleton, Ogilvy & Mather) have all had big parts to play. 
• Having spent the last decade spent the last decade of his career working within media at Fairfax and Nine, he says the same applies: “You can have a good idea and a bad relationship, and it’s not going to go anywhere."
• There's also a few big campaigns that he looks back on fondly, Pizza Hut's 'Dougie the pizza boy' being one of them. 
• He leaves the industry in a completely different place to where it was went he first set foot into an agency, and while he's reluctant to say the grass was greener, he's observed that the proliferation of digital channels has inevitably impacted quality. 
• But it's not all bad. Thomas says there's still opportunities to do good work, you just have to "go about it in a slightly different way”.

There are few creatives who have managed to stay close to their craft for as long as Mike Thomas, who 45 years after first setting foot in an advertising agency, has hung up his creative director hat for the last time.

Dubbed “the light bulb with legs” by those who worked with him, Thomas has lent his mind to more than his fair share of iconic ads. He’s spent time at some of the best of Australia’s advertising agencies during their prime, worked on two Olympic bids, and spent the last decade of his career helming creative for one of Australia’s biggest media companies.

A few weeks into his retirement, Thomas sits at a Paddington café to debrief his near half century in the advertising industry. “This is not something that I normally do,” he chuckles nervously.  

He first got talking to Nine about his plans to retire last year, and by now he’s had plenty of time to recount his (many) achievements. But it’s the people he’s worked with that come up time and time again.

“I feel very lucky to have been in the business this long, and worked with the people I've worked with, who've helped me all the way along the way. There's always someone that's helped you, and I'm just thankful that I've had that opportunity.”

For Thomas, good advertising is inseparable from good relationships. “You can have a good idea and a bad relationship, and it’s not going to go anywhere.”

He’s learned that to be particularly true during his last ten years he’s spent in the media business, first as creative director for Fairfax Media, then Powered by Nine post-merger.

Media and advertising: all about relationships

Whether creating an “integration”, “an ad”, or just “brainstorming with clients”, Thomas time in the media industry underscored what he’d learnt in more than three decades agency-side.

“You've got to have that ability to talk to a client across the table and they've got to trust and respect you and your opinion,” he says. “They're not always going to agree with it. But they've at least got to give you the time to explain what's going on.”

While there is ongoing debate about the dynamic between in-house agencies and standalone creative shops, Thomas says that “these days”, there’s not a great deal of difference between the “vibe” at Powered versus any typical agency.

“You’re still looking for the same buzz, you're still looking for the same banter on the floor, between other people,” he offers. “I think that's an important factor that everybody needs. You need to be able to bounce off other people and get input to your ideas.”

He adds that getting the talent and capability balance in the creative department at Powered has been just as important as “in any creative agency”.

“You can't have a team of 12 Georgie Bests [the legendary footballer of the 60s and 70s] - they're all gonna fall over each other. You've got to have a balance… You don't want to hire the nasty genius, because it upsets everybody. But that said, you don't want to hire a bunch of nice idiots.”

Thomas’ approach has clearly left a good impression with those he’s left behind – Nine’s chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson, gets a little bit gushy reflecting on their time together.

“Over the last five years I've had the pleasure of working with an industry legend, the creative genius behind so many of Australia's most memorable campaigns, brilliant at his craft – but most importantly a true gentleman,” reflects Stephenson. “I have loved seeing Mike mix with the most senior business leaders in Australia in the morning and then brainstorm with the newest member of our team in the afternoon.”

Thomas’ stint on the media side could be seen as the icing on the proverbial cake that is his career. Or perhaps, the icing on biscuit.

From Sainsbury’s packaging to Olympic bids

Thomas first cut his teeth as a junior designer working on packets of biscuits for Sainbury’s under the watch of in-house packaging “guru” Peter Dixon.  

Based in London at the time, and eager to make the big leap into the world of advertising (though admittedly not understanding what advertising entailed), Thomas says he began writing to agencies in search of his next role. He eventually heard back from McCann.

During the job interview, he was told “we've got to go to a meeting now, can you do a layout like that, incorporating these things, and take it to this numbered room downstairs when you're finished?”

Thomas did what he was told, and the next day received a call asking him to come back the next day. And then he just kept coming back.

“So, I just kept doing that for a while and I suddenly found myself in an advertising agency, not really knowing what they did. I was just in the middle of it all.”

In 1980 came the big move to Australia. Thomas had been given an opportunity to join McCann’s Sydney office as an art director, and he decided to stick around.

Two years later, he met what he describes as the “turning point” of his career when he came to work with Faye Davis at Lintas.

“She somehow focused what I was doing and made me understand what I should be doing and could do, and gave me the confidence to do that.”

Thomas’ next job would be at Clemenger BBDO (Clems), where he would eventually become a creative director, and later deputy chairman, sticking around for “13 or 14” years in total.

“You go from ‘Hall of Fame’ Peter Clemenger to ‘Hall of Fame’ Robert Morgan. If you’re not learning and having a good time in those places with those people, there’s sort of something wrong with you.”

Along with creating some standout work, Thomas' time at Clems was also a testament to his people skills. 

"He was an art director by trade, but he was a fantastic creative leader," recalls Clemenger Group executive chairman, and then-Clemenger BBDO managing director, Robert Morgan."Clients loved him because he was very, very passionate about the work and the clients. Genuine and also a really fantastic bloke too."

Thomas went on to executive creative director roles at Singleton Ogilvy & Mather (Singo’s), McCann Erickson, and Dentsu, amongst others, before exiting agency world to become creative director for Fairfax Media in 2015.

Highlights reel

Over the past few decades, Thomas has been a part of a fair few “famous” campaigns – the kind culture-defining work that every creative hopes to have their names on.

While that list is too long to name here, Thomas thankfully has picked out some stand outs.

Pizza Hut's Dougie the Pizza Boy is one that he recalls fondly, though Thomas admits had no idea just how much of a success it would be.

“I thought it was fun, and I thought it was relevant,” he said. “You realise very quickly after it's gone, when people start talking… but not on the day, no I didn’t know [it was going to be a hit].

“We made him very real for his age. I mean, he did make mistakes… I think there was a ring of truth about him. He wasn't a winner. He wasn't overly cool. And when he did walk into deliver pizzas to girls he knew, he sort of stumbled a bit.”Created during his time at Clems in the early 1990s, the work proved relevant decades later, with Dougie making his return to screens in a new Pizza Hut commercial in 2019. “They keep bringing him back, because every time they do, it spikes.”

Next on Thomas’ list is the work he got to create for Qantas under “I still call Australia home” while at Singo’s in the early 2000s.

More than a decade after the original campaign had launched, the platform was already firmly imprinted in the Australian psyche.

“I think there was a big realisation for me when we came back from one leg [of filming], and as we were coming in to land in Sydney the pilot said to everybody: ‘just to let you know, the Australian Boys and Girls Club is on board, they’ve been shooting I still call Australia home'.

“Totally unprompted [the kids] all stood up to start singing. And there were people sobbing. And they bought the phones are out, their hands are shaking, and they're all talking, and you suddenly go: ‘this is super powerful’. You know it is. But when you see it like that, those people wouldn't have flown another airline if you paid them. This was their Qantas; it was their kids.”

Then there was time Thomas swapped the creative teams on a couple of pieces of work at Singletons, one a Rugby World Cup campaign for Qantas, the other a feminine hygiene campaign for Kimberly-Clark.

“I swapped it around and put two women on rugby and the guys on feminine hygiene.”

The women did an “amazing job” on the Rugby World Cup work, he says. “They treated the players like models, gods… they were statuettes.”

And the men, who wouldn’t have usually been put on a feminine hygiene client, “came at it with a completely open mind”. They ended up coining the brand name for U by Kotex.

Thomas credits both clients for their trust, recalling walking into Kimberly-Clark with two male creatives. “This will either be a stroke genius putting the guys on it, or you're going to say I told you so,” he laughs.

But perhaps one of the biggest privileges to date has been that Thomas has had the chance to work on (successful) Olympic bids on two occasions.

He was part of the team at Clemenger BBDO that put together the ‘Share the Spirit’ campaign that played at the 101^st International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Monte Carlo 1993, and ultimately won Sydney the 2000 Olympics Games.

Decades later, he was brought in on Nine’s winning bid for the Olympic broadcast rights – a multi-game deal that will see the network cover Paris 2024 through to Brisbane 2032.

“I was certainly a lucky lad,” says Thomas.

Keeping creative standards high in the digital age

Asked what he thinks of where the advertising industry is at today – whether the transformation that it has undergone is for better or for worse – Thomas says, “it’s difficult”.

“I think it's hard to justify where the money goes… if you're watching an ad on the phone, and it's [two inches square], it's very hard to justify spending three days in a grading studio, getting that right.”

That, he says, has in some cases meant a drop in standards – with greater volume can come lower quality.

“You just need to remember the value of the client’s brand that you're working with. Millions and billions of dollars. Why cheapen it by just bunging something together?” he says.

“You've got to look at every ad as an opportunity to push out… Remember, from a client's point of view, this is his or her brand that you are playing with, they are giving you enormous trust.”

But that’s not to say he thinks it’s all bad – “I think it's very easy for people to look back and say the grass was greener”.

Thomas thinks there’s still opportunities to do good work, but you “have to go about it in a slightly different way”.

“I think it’s a good thing because that makes people adaptable. You can’t just keep plodding along, same old stuff, churning it out, because otherwise, anyone could do it,” he says. “And it's not something anyone can do. It's not a science, but you've got to have an understanding of people, what they’re looking for and how to talk to them.”

Why now?

Asked about his decision to hang up his boots, Thomas draws on the sentiments of the sporting elite.

“You read about sports people saying, you know, [how they knew] when to retire. And Ricky Ponting says, ‘you just know’,” he laughs. “Well he probably knew because the ball is going past his nose at 200 miles an hour and he went,’ I didn't see that’.”

Likewise Thomas says just he knew it was time – “nothing more, nothing less”.

“My kids are grown up now, but I’ve got a granddaughter and a wife that’s backed me for the last 35 years, so it’s nice to maybe take a breath. Have a coffee when I want to have a coffee, not because it’s between two meetings.”

He won’t be totally disappearing from the industry, he’s planning to put his experience to use on a consulting basis.

He’ll also be leaving behind something of a living legacy. The two “grown up” kids he mentioned both appear to have taken cues from their father’s career – Ben Thomas is a senior business manager for oOh!media, and Nick Thomas is Amazon’s ANZ national sales head (and formally EssenceMediacom’s chief investment officer).

Speaking of what he’s most proud of (besides having two kids in the ad industry), Thomas becomes a little shyer. “I suppose still being there after 45 years and still talking to clients and doing some good stuff,” he considers. “There's always people that win more awards and score more goals, and that's not what it is.”

He reiterates that it’s the people he’s worked with that have made his career what it has been, as well as a genuine enjoyment of his craft.

“I still have a love for the business after 45 years, and if you can still enjoy the job you went into 45 years earlier, I think you’ve done pretty well in life.”