“Are you guys available to work on a big new Qantas brand campaign?”
When we got the call, we were both intrigued and stoked to be asked. Little did we anticipate the depth of concern and the commercial big stakes at play when we started pulling together ‘Feels like home.’
Both incumbent agencies by this time had made several failed attempts to crack it and the client was feeling the pincher-like pressure from aggressive competitors and worryingly low staff morale.
For the next 9 months, we worked under the radar to pull together several epic true story, ‘home coming’ TV commercials and a completely integrated, multi-platform campaign.
The results were spectacular. Eight million hits on YouTube within the first couple of weeks of going to air. An overwhelming flood of public support which translated into 9%+ share price gain and having touched a sentimental nerve with staff, morale soared to an all-time high.
Filmed in London, Santiago, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, the Pilbara and Sydney.
Grand Prix winner from the Outdoor Media Association’s (OMA) Creative Collections competition. Cannes, Clio, LIA, Adfest, AWARD.
When Chris Raine (CEO HSM) told us the story of why he created the movement for a better drinking culture, we were moved. His goal was to encourage people to think beyond getting blotto on Saturday night and instead, wake up with a clear head on a Sunday morning to enjoy the day.
To get the message through the haze of so many alcohol-pickled party people, we first had to put ourselves in their shoes and determine what would be the worst thing ever for a thumping hangover on a Sunday morning?
The answer - drums.
We got in touch with Australia’s best drummer, Kram from Spiderbait, who agreed to write a song and bash the hell out of his drum kit in the name of peace and quiet.
After the Australian runaway success of our ‘Don’t let the day get away’ campaign, Hello Sunday Morning is now rolling out in many other international markets - UK, Ireland, US and Canada. Here’s to that.
“Hey guys, what do you know about Asia?”
Having spent 10 years working there, the answer was, “What do you need to know?”
When the largest PR company in the world, called us in to create the international launch campaign for a new ‘Asian-centric’ business publication, we knew it would be quite a challenge.
Asia from the outside, can seem impenetrable with its mind-field of entwined relationships, loyalties and customs. However, Asia from the inside is moving so quickly FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a real issue. Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.
The Nikkei Asian Review offered more local reporters across the region, so that’s what we based our creative idea on; If you are on the inside, you can peel away the layers of business in Asia, like the skin of an onion, to reveal opportunities that others don’t see.
We traveled through Asia to produce the dramatic, and incredibly successful multi-platform campaign with the tag: Asia, Insight out.
Footnote: We thoroughly recommend the seafood dumplings at Lost Heaven, Shanghai.
Some people see ingredient messaging as a chore, we see it as an opportunity to make an impact. With new alternative milk competitors springing up almost daily, we were asked to position Barista Blend as the low sugar alternative to other cafe almond milks.
Thinking laterally, we wondered if given the choice, would hip café scene aficionados be sweeter on Puppies or Kittens? To find out, we wrangled three of the cutest kittens and puppies we could find and shoved them into a coffee cup.
They looked sweet alright, unlike Barista Blend. Woof.
As what usually happens in marketing, when you’re onto a good thing, change will inevitably happen when a new marketing director takes charge. In this case, the change was necessary.
Having launched Almond Breeze and gained initial trial, other competitors with bigger budgets started to appear. However, even with more marketing dollars, their generic messaging had low cut through giving us the opportunity to take the category high ground.
We thought we were geniuses when we came up with the health focused, branding idea ‘Breeze the day’ but believe it or not, the people in Seattle didn’t understand it. What does ‘Breeze the Day’ mean? You crazy Aussies. And what if the girl falls off that swing?
Happily, she didn’t and sales increased over 200% in one year alone. Almond Breeze became the No2 brand in the category and largest by volume, sold.
Coffee in Australia is a truly serious business. Around 95% of all cafes here are independently owned and operated. But with so many people getting into the café scene, we thought it strange that there was no community platform to provide them help and support with all things, coffee.
As a business initiative, we pitched BaristasforBaristas, the world’s first barista-centric support platform with multiple touch points to assist Australia’s thriving coffee scene.
BaristasForBaristas is now the industry’s one stop shop for jobs, support, music, business, products, rising stars and anybody who is passionate about coffee. Aren’t we all?
After an international pitch-fest, Blue Diamond Growers awarded us the project to launch a new ‘almond milk’ here in Australia. At the time, nobody had heard of almond milk. How do you milk an almond?
Intrigued, we instigated research and developed several interesting ideas to go to market, most of which, we felt wouldn’t achieve the impact they needed for the limited budget we were given.
Now, here’s a secret - we love cows. They look so cool and content. Maybe too content. We decided to challenge milk credentials.
Our ‘Is it better than milk? campaign cut through quickly and memorably, now the cows are paranoid.
Sydney IVF wanted to change their name to Genea.
The idea virtually wrote itself - Sydney IVF is now reborn as GENEA. However, as you can imagine, delivering the message with a real birth, (a world first in advertising history) had its complications.
Babies are never born on cue so there was much waiting, waiting, waiting. It was half time during the Bledisloe Cup when we got the call. The rest is history, a beautiful bouncing baby, delighted client and a whole new chapter of life, for all. (Except the Wallabies)
Sometimes the answer to complex problems is staring you right in the face.
When we spoke to Avery, they were looking for a simple campaign idea that would cut through and support their premium label positioning as the only brand you can trust to deliver the best results.
The question was – what idea?
True story, on the back of Avery packaging there is a graphic that shows the different size formats their labels come in. When you turned the pack 90 degrees, the graphic resembles a human character. That was it. Averyman was born and today, he can tell why you should stick with Avery.
Sales have skyrocketed and the response back from the US head office is all thumbs up.
We love a good print campaign. Particularly when you have an opportunity to appeal to the intelligence of your audience.
We were asked to come up with an adaptable idea that the NAR could use to promote various segments and story content. With each article delivering a gold nugget of insight, we came up with ‘See what others don’t’ as the benefit of the magazine. Hence if you look closely you’ll discover the ruby, gold leaf, pearl and blue sky.
When Peter Schreyer moved to Kia, having blitzed the motoring world with his Audi TT design, we knew Kia was going places. At the time the local Korean client predicted they would rival BMW in years to come.
So, when we got a crack at launching Pete’s first car off the Kia production line, we knew all eyes would be focused on the result. Hence the Jason Bourne thriller approach. Great performances made the idea work. The idea was then ripped off by Kia in US and was one of the stand outs at the Superbowl.
We’ve always believed in the power of advertising to invoke an emotional connection to a product or brand. But strangely, many people struggle to grasp the subtleties of thinking and execution that are required to make that connection.
To associate the healthy, light taste of Almond Breeze with the healthy, unhurried ‘just breezing the day’ vibe, we created ‘The girl on the swing’ which has now become an easily recognisable mnemonic for Almond Breeze.
Having the foresight to support a long running brand idea takes courage and experience and as you can see, when you stick with a winning idea, the results deliver astonishing results.
Vodafone approached us directly, after several agencies had failed to crack a suitable launch platform for a new, ingenious data sharing app they had developed in conjunction with the Gavan Institute.
Essentially, they wanted to appeal to people’s altruistic selves to donate unused mobile data overnight through the app to meet the massive data crunching capabilities that cancer research requires.
We found the best way to get the message across was to demonstrate how simple it can be to help save someone’s life. You can do it in your sleep.
The low budget, campaign using people who had someone close to support, was an overnight success gathering positive press coverage around the world and signed up thousands of selfless sleepers.
With so many people sticking things in their ears these days, you’d think appealing to people with hearing problems (one in five of us) would be relatively straight forward.
For some reason, Hearing Aid Providers tend to stereotype pensioners as the only people who need hearing aids. So, it’s no wonder wearing hearing aids falls on many deaf ears.
But hearing is more subtle than eyesight, and it provides details to people’s lives they often aren’t aware of. We decided to take a contemporary approach and appeal to a wider audience who may not even know they need some hearing help.
There was only one thing we could say about Ssangyong-diesel. But the more we looked into it the more we could say. This was a fun campaign to work on because even though the budget was small, the client had big ambitions to get noticed.
It’s amazing how three dots on a ball can be so expressive. With a shoe string budget, we developed this campaign to appeal to a young audience looking for an alternative to the usual boring stuff they did on their school holidays.
The multi, touch-point campaign made AMF Bowling cool again with a 20%+ increase in games played over the school holidays the campaign ran. We even thought about creating a cartoon series around them – hmmm, should’ve!
If there is one time when you don’t want your car to break down, you can be sure that’s when it does. Car problems can be embarrassing as well as a hassle, so our job with a little help from The Proclaimers, was to remind people that the NRMA provides the quickest way from motoring misery to driving happiness. You’re on your way with NRMA. Uh Huh.
'Q'
We launched the new Oticon Opn™, the world’s first internet-connected hearing aid and it makes anything you see in a Spy movie seem dull by comparison. After launching locally, the commercial ran in France. Oui oui.
‘Tone deaf’
Millions of Australians have a hearing problem and they don’t even know it. We created a simple, effective and relevant demonstration. Try it.