ABSTRACT
The computer’s arrival generates particular tension among the agency’s creatives, whose breakroom was given over to the beaming new machine. The impact of the computer affected different parts of the advertising agencies in different ways. Although Australia’s media landscape had changed little over the course of the 1960s, the fear of losing their competitive edge led many agencies to invest in a computer. The impact of the first generation of computers had been largely restricted to the finance and media departments. The ripple effect of the changes to the production department meant that the work of creatives was slowly but surely beginning to be affected by the computer. During the 1960s and 1970s, the growing size and scale of the work being conducted by agencies led them to make significant investments in computers in order to assist their media and accounting departments.
