Morris' first job was as a copywriter in Canada while travelling. On his return to Australia he joined Rodgers Holland and Everingham and then Mullins Clarke and Ralph, where he was creative director and had a shareholding. In the mid-1970s he took to freelancing and at one point was teamed with writer Allan Johnston at Hertz Walpole in Sydney. Together they had immediate success as a team working on campaigns for Hertz Walpole's clients
Meadow Lea margarine ("You oughta be congratulated") and
Tooheys beer ("How do you feel?"). In 1975 started their own consultancy and continuing to work on such accounts as they grew their business. In 1979 their creative consultancy became the full-service ad agency
Mojo and Meadow Lea and later the
Australian Tourism Commission's spot with
Paul Hogan's instruction to put another "
Shrimp on the barbie. The Mojo approach to TV advertisements used a colloquial and irreverent style, often with a catchy jingle to simple accompaniment. Contrasting against the clipped and British-imitating style of voice presenters on Australian TV up till that point, Mojo ads highlighted
Australian idiom and its laconic accent. Ads such as "I’m as Australian as
Ampol”, "Hit 'em with the Old Pea Beu" (insectide), "Everybody loves
Speedo”, "I Can Feel a
Fourex Coming on", "Every Amco tells a Story" (for Amco jeans) all came out of the Mojo agency in the 1980s. The use of
Peter Allen's
I Still Call Australia Home to promote
Qantas was developed at Mojo in the late 1980s and until 2011 this campaign concept was still used by Qantas and its ad agencies. In August 1987 Mojo was acquired by the Melbourne-based publicly listed agency Monaghan Dayman
Adams Limited and became MojoMDA. The resultant merged business maintained its listed status until 1989. The Mojo MDA Group had offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore and affiliates throughout Asia. In 1988
Advertising Age named it as International Agency of the Year. In later international dealings which saw
FCB acquired by the
Interpublic Group, the Australian Mojo offices were sold to
Publicis. Morris had a successful stint at Singleton
Ogilvy & Mather from the mid to late '90s. In 1999 he teamed up again with Johnston back at Hertz Walpole when Jim Walpole offered them both a shareholding and that agency was at that point renamed "Morris Johnston Walpole". The re-unification failed to set the advertising world on-fire and in 2002 the veterans accepted an offer for sale from the Japanese multinational communications group
Hakuhodo. In 2006 he started an agency named "Yabber" with his brother Don and with TV personality
Jamie Durie. A year later Morris lost his ongoing battle with cancer. ==Personal life==