The Victorian Transport Accident Commission (TAC) appointed DDB Melbourne as its creative agency after a competitive tender process that started in October 2024 and attracted a high number of expresions of interest from agencies on the state government Marketing Services Register.
The TAC wanted a full-service advertising agency to deliver strategy, creative development and production of road safety campaigns. The successful agency had to be based in Victoria.
TAC’s media and corporate affairs manager, Nicholas McGay, told AdNews the tender process followed two stages, an open market Expression of Interest (EOI) and a Request for Tender (RFT).
“The open market Expression of Interest (EOI) stage identified market interest and helped shortlist agencies ahead of the Request for Tender (RFT) stage, with both stages including mandatory criteria and requirements to support the evaluation process,” McGay said.
The shortlist consisted of TBWA\Melbourne, DDB Melbourne and Clemenger BBDO, who had held the account since 2014.
The EOI stage commenced in October 2024 and concluded in October 2025.
During the process, the TAC continued to engage with agencies to create campaigns, including Thinkerbell's 'Australia's Deadliest Predator' to address road safety, alt/shift's 'The Hardest Share' and more.
McGay said the RFT stage included strategic workshops and demonstration of the respective Tenderers strategic and creative behaviour change marketing capability against a relevant topic set by the TAC.
“This was a TAC led procurement process with the support of specialist external advisory across probity, procurement, and the marketing industry," he said.
McGay said the procurement for the lead creatives services contract is an independent process, and as such, tenderers were evaluated on their response to the tender requirements.
“No external factors or existing relationships are considered to ensure fairness and equity in the process and strict adherence to the evaluation criteria was applied in line with the Victorian Government Purchasing Board requirements," he said.
“Detailed evaluation plans were prepared for each stage of the process and included tailored evaluation criteria, considerate of the TAC’s requirements for the core delivery elements of the contract.”
The final step of the evaluation prior to recommendation of contract award, is a Value for Money assessment, in line with Victorian Government Purchasing Board requirements.
“The Value for Money assessment includes evaluation criteria scoring and risk assessment of the respective commercial submissions,” McGay said.
“As per tender guidelines, specific details of the evaluation outcome cannot be publicly shared.
“De-briefs are offered to all participating tenders to provide individual feedback and for TAC to receive feedback from industry on their process.”
TAC has moved to a single-agency model for creative leadership, with the option to continue engaging additional agencies as needed.
The contract is non-exclusive and allows the TAC to engage additional agencies if required.
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