Ben Coulson

 Ben Coulson is the Executive Creative Director of the iconic Australian Advertising agency, George Patterson Y&R.

GPY&R has just been crowned 2010 Australian Agency of the Year by Adnews.

Under his stewardship the agency has won Gold Lions in 5 categories at the Cannes International Advertising Awards in the last four years, including Australasia's only coveted cinema lion in 2008 and Australia’s first media Gold Lion this year.

The agency has won 13 Gold, 22 silver & 71 Bronze awards at major international and regional shows during Ben’s 4 years as ECD.

GPY&R Melbourne was the only Australian Agency ranked inside the world’s top 50 in the Gunn report in 2009.

The agency was awarded ‘best of show’ at the Melbourne Art Directors club in 2009, and this year dominated the Melbourne Awards with a 28 medal haul, the most ever from a single agency.

GPY&R has been ranked Australia's most creative agency by Campaign Brief magazine and won Australian Agency of the Year at the Australasian Awards.

Ben’s career began back in the days at Mojo’s advertising when guitars and jingle writing ruled the creative department in Australia. In his time at Mojo, Ben launched successful campaigns for famous brands including Qantas, Telstra and Vegemite. He spent several years working in an expanded role in New Zealand before joining Y&R in 2001. As Group Creative Director, he oversaw campaigns for the Australian Defense Forces, Sony Ericsson, Cadbury, Chupa Chups (worldwide) and Nintendo.

In 2004, Ben joined the flagging Australian giant, GPY&R, where he set about making it a creative force again. The agency's revival began with a relaunch of Australia’s most well known brand, Victoria Bitter, and then extended to iconic campaigns for the Australian Football League, Cricket Australia, Yellow Pages, Carlton Draught and Cadbury Schweppes.

Individually Ben has won every major national and international award the industry has to offer, including D&AD, the One Show, the Clios, ANDY and Cannes.

Ben regularly judges International/national award shows and has served on the Cannes Jury.

While he is pleased with his effort so far, he considers it ‘a pretty good start’