The Australian Government has issued a tender that will overhaul and reorganise its communications and agency support.
This will effectively replace the 20-strong panel of advertising and communications agencies with a ‘village model’ that appoints specific agencies to handle ‘building our community’, ‘economy’, ‘Government programs and services’, ‘health and wellbeing’, ‘infrastructure and innovation’, and ‘security’.
This means that agencies appointed to each village have greater security that they will pick up campaign work rather than having to bid for each campaign.
Currently, there is a roster of around 20 agencies that work with the government and usually have to tender for every departmental campaign. This includes Droga5, VML, Ogilvy, BMF, Clemenger BBDO and TBWA.
In FY24, agencies that won the most of the work include BMF with eight government campaigns, Clemenger BBDO with five and Ogilvy with four.
This tender does not include the Master Media Service contract that was retained by UM last year.
In the request for tender, the Government is looking to change that model, known as the Government Communications Campaign Panel, with a new model called the Communications Campaign Arrangement (GCCA).
The GCCA mandates that each village will appoint one agency to each of its five service categories: market research services, creative advertising services, public relations services, multicultural communications services and First Nations communications services.
Agencies are able to work across multiple villages, but not more than one service area within each village.
An industry source told B&T that this will likely result in greater security for agencies, but some of the villages will be much busier than others.
In FY24, the Australian Government spent $76.2 million on government creative and communications work (see below), with the an education campaign around The Voice referendum producing the largest campaign expenditure.
The tender period will close on 11 August and the new contracts are expected to kick off in July 2026 and run until 203o.
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