It's Time (Australian campaign)

It's Time was a successful political campaign run by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) under Gough Whitlam at the 1972 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 election to the Liberal Party.

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. John Conn gave each of them a copy of his pamphlet. Mick 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.

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 ad agency Hansen-Rubensohn–McCann-Erickson which was handling ALP's advertising account. The goal of the campaign's first stage was to popularise the phrase while the television commercial served as 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. The song was written by Jones and advertising jingle writer Mike Shirley, it was arranged as well as produced by Pat Aulton. Lead singer Alison McCallum laid down the foundation track at ATA Studios, Sydney. The chorus comprising a "Who's Who" of Australian entertainment and sport personalities, including Barry Crocker, Bert Newton, Bobby Limb, Dawn Lake, Chuck Faulkner, Col Joye, Graham Kennedy, Jack Thompson, Jacki Weaver, Jimmy Hannan, Judy Stone, Kevin Sanders, Little Pattie, Lynette Curran, Terry Norris, Ade and Rob Dames, among others, was recorded one day in early spring at either the Hordern Pavilion or Supreme Sound in Sydney's Paddington with Joye conducting. The TV spot mainly shows McCallum and the other singers performing the song, intercut are pictures from Whitlam's private photo collection. As well as reaching its target demographic—loosely speaking, women and young people—, "the ad reached a far wider and probably quite unexpected segment of the electorate."

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