Three former senior executives from retail advertising agency, Ideaworks, have formed a new agency called Eleven Communications.

The new business, which launched this week, will be led by John McLachlan, former director of operations at Ideaworks, Ryan Fallowfield, former head of art, and Jonathan McCauley, former executive creative director.
The trio say Eleven is pitched primarily at retail-focused marketers, and has the stated aim of significantly dialling up the quality of thinking in this "often undervalued category."

McCauley, who will be responsible for creative strategy says this will be an agency focused on creativity and collaboration.

“Retail clients are getting smarter and smarter. They want to work with smart people, and they want to be included in the thinking process, not kept at arm’s length from it,” McCauley said.

For the last decade, the trio has delivered major campaigns for some of Australia’s biggest retail brands like Mitre 10, Supercheap Auto, Westfield, Big W and Hyundai.

“At Ideaworks, we proved that you can produce outstanding results for serious retailers by pushing creative harder and looking beyond traditional solutions,” he said.

“Over 10 years, we learnt how to drive sales by transforming how the brand was presented, how the ads looked, how the stores felt, and even how the staff behaved.

“Now we want to go one step further, by cutting out a lot of the complexity that frustrates clients and holds big agencies back,” he said.

Ryan Fallowfield, who will lead the art direction and design output of the agency, believes retail marketers are increasingly using creativity as a competitive advantage.

 
“Most creative people in this country don’t understand retail and don’t really want to,” Fallowfield said.
“But when you look around the world, people like Ikea, Target and Selfridges are producing some of the most innovative work in the business. “

“That’s the kind of work we are interested in doing in this market,” he said.

“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at what is happening in other markets and in emerging technologies. Of course there’s always a lot of hype around the new media stuff, but it’s amazing how simple it is when you strip everything away, and that’s what we want to do for our clients,” he said.

Meanwhile, one of the chief motivations for going out on their own thing was "to do some good". 

 
McCauley completed a Harvard endorsed social leadership course last year and plans to develop a community engagement practice aimed at not-for-profit organisations as part of the new agency.

“After so many years selling stuff for retailers, we all agreed it was time to start giving something back as well,” he said.