Dylan Taylor Awarded Caples Wunderman Prize

Dylan Taylor, creative director for direct, partner and board member at Sydney independent BMF, has won the Caples Irving Wunderman Award for Lifetime Creative Achievement.

The Caples Irving Wunderman Award recognizes an individual “who, for a decade or more, has combined the highest level of talent, imagination, curiosity and human insight into a unique body of work,” according to the award guidelines. Taylor is the first Caples Irving Wunderman Award winner from Australia.

Since joining BMF in April 2004, his agency has won 25 new accounts and new business totaling more than $250 million. In just over three years the creative department has gone from three to 18. BMF has won a first place Caples every year since Taylor joined.

Perhaps the biggest accolade was when, in 2007, The Commonwealth Bank handed Australia’s largest DM account (worth a reputed $50 million) to BMF without a pitch.

Before joining BMF, Taylor was with M&C Saatchi, where he was the national creative director – direct from 2001 to 2004. In 2003, M&C Saatchi picked up 46 worldwide awards for direct marketing, making it perhaps the most creatively awarded direct agency in the world. These awards included

• Three firsts, one second and five finalists at the Caples Awards;

• A Silver nomination at London’s D&AD;

• A Gold and a Silver Lion at Cannes in 2002;

• A Diamond Echo (for best of show), a Gold Echo and two Bronze Echos in 2003; and

• 10 assorted prizes and the Winged Messenger at ADMA.

As well as winning awards over the past two and a half years direct profitability increased by over 200%. The creative department grew from four to 16 individuals.

Before M&C Saatchi, Taylor worked for Clemenger Proximity (formerly Direct) from 1999 to 2001. He was part of the management team that returned the agency to profit for the first time in four years. Prior to that Taylor was briefly at Rapp Collins, where in his first year in Direct picked up a silver, a bronze and two finalists at the ADMA awards.

Before moving to Australia, Taylor worked at Fortune Promoseven in Bahrain for nearly three years. Additionally, during a two-and-a-half-year period in Dubai, Taylor worked at Publigraphics in Dubai, working on Johnson & Johnson, HSBC, Kodak, Hitachi, Mobil, Nestle, and Nintendo,

Taylor started his career in London working at Horner Collis Kirvan (now part of Euro) and Yellowhammer (now part of DDB).