It's Time

It's Time was a successful political campaign run by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) under Gough Whitlam during the 1972 federal election in Australia. Campaigning on the perceived need for change after 23 years of conservative (Liberal-Country Party coalition) government, Labor put forward a raft of major policy proposals, accompanied by a television advertising campaign of prominent celebrities singing a jingle entitled It's Time. It was ultimately successful, as Labor picked up eight seats and won a majority. This was the first time Labor had been in government since it lost the 1949 federal election to the Liberal Party. Origins In the 1969 federal election, the endorsed ALP candidate for the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Ryan, John Conn, then a lecturer at the University of Queensland, had employed a highly successful door-to-door campaign. For this, he had devised a pamphlet headed: 'It's Time for a Change' followed by a dot-point list of reasons, including education, the war in Vietnam, urban renewal, etc. He managed a swing of 19 per cent, by far the biggest in Queensland, forcing the incumbent, Nigel Drury, to DLP preferences for the first time. Soon afterwards, at a post-election occasion in Brisbane, John Conn was approached and congratulated by Gough Whitlam and Mick Young together. They enquired about the likely reasons for the successful local campaign. Conn gave each of them a copy of his pamphlet. Young asked if Labor could expect to see a similar effort in 1972. He was told yes but that a shorter, snappier version, 'It's time ...', might be more effective for the next campaign. The originator of the idea heard no more about it until the revamped slogan re-emerged in 1972. John Conn ran again for Ryan in 1972, gaining a further swing but not quite enough to win. Campaign The slogan "It's Time", around which the three-stage campaign was built, was conceived by Paul Jones, at the time creative director at Sydney advertising agency Hansen-Rubensohn–McCann-Erickson which was handling the ALP's advertising account. The goal of the campaign's first stage was to popularise the phrase while the television commercial was the core element of the second stage. Conceived by Jones, copywriter Ade Casey (then known as Adrienne Dames) and art director Rob Dames, it was directed by Ric Kabriel and produced through Fontana Films, Sydney.