How our Sunshine Coast Advertising Agency Started
So I started ADFX back in 2004, from my home in Brisbane. It started originally as Advertising FX and Consultants just from one of the spare rooms within our house there. A couple of years into business we, unfortunately, had a house fire which started in the office. Thankfully, our hard drive survived the fire so we managed to retain most of our data and continue trading from there.
As any negative that happens in life, there’s always a positive. The positive out of the fire was that we relocated back to the Sunshine Coast which is where we wanted to be. We moved back to the Sunny Coast 11 years ago now and over that period, in the last 7 years have grown the business considerably to where we have an office located in the beautiful heart of Mooloolaba.
The advertising industry has changed considerably in the last 14 years. When I first started the agency, I don’t even think there were digital TV stations as far as 7two, 7mate, Gem or Go back in those days, it was literally just your three networks. Newspapers certainly weren’t in the digital space like they are today, it was strictly print media only. The same with magazines. Digital, obviously as we know, has really evolved over the last five years whereas today alot of the ad revenue has shifted away from mainstream media to tap into that digital and social space. So it continues to evolve every year and that’s what’s so fabulous about the advertising industry is that it’s always moving and growing, there’s always something new to learn and its great to be evolving part of that.
ADFX didn’t start originally as a full-service ad agency, that has just naturally evolved over the years. Initially, I started Advertising FX and Consultants as a consultancy based media placement agency, giving people advice on media placement strategies, how to split their media spends across TV, press and radio back in those days.
Obviously, as the print media evolved with press and magazines came the need to engage graphic designers to create assets from there. Initially, it was more outsourcing creative services with freelances and partnership agreements over the years, to the point where it became so big to imply our own in-house team now across the creative and production services.
-Kelly Thomas, ADFX Founder and Managing Director