NRMA - Sleeper 2020
Ahead of the holiday season last year, NRMA Insurance released a timely and impactful ad to promote road safety during the Christmas holidays. The video portrays a family taking a night roadtrip to visit their grandmother for the holidays. However, during the drive, the family, including the driver, falls asleep. The twist here is that the story is set in a city with self-driving cars. The family car safely navigates through the roads and highways before arriving at the home of their grandmother.
This campaign gained praise and recognition for effectively driving a strong message that until we live in a world with self-driving cars, it is important to maintain road safety and get sufficient rest before hitting the road.
The campaign successfully tells a story that the audience can relate to. At the end of the year, many people would be travelling to visit their loved ones for the holidays, and would experience fatigue as they travel long distances. This makes the campaign highly relatable to the mass Australian audience as they prepare for the holidays.
Telstra - Time for a chat
“Time for a chat” was launched by Telstra in 2019 as part of its “You don’t need the best network...until you do” campaign. In this heartwarming video, we see a man anxiously making a phone call to his parents to inform them of his engagement to his partner. As his phone does not have sufficient mobile coverage, he uses his partner’s phone to make the call. With a slight surprising twist at the end of the video, this campaign was successful in driving across the message that Telstra’s network is dependable, and will be there for their customers when they need to connect with their loved ones during important moments. Although short and simple, the campaign effectively portrays a range of emotions and tugs at the heartstrings of viewers.
Vegemite - Vegeknife
Classic Australian brand, Vegemite, recently launched its latest campaign to tackle an issue that many Vegemite customers face - butter in their Vegemite jars. A study found that many Vegemite consumers do not like having their Vegemite “contaminated” with butter, which is something that is likely to happen when they use the same knife for their butter and Vegemite.In Vegemite’s latest campaign with Thinkerbell, Vegemite released the Vegeknife - which is essentially a knife with 2 ends - 1 for butter and 1 for Vegemite.
This campaign highlights the importance of understanding consumer sentiment, what they are saying, and the issues they typically face, before coming up with a solution that directly addresses their needs and solves their problems. The brand also ran a competition on social media to pick winners of the Vegeknife, and in the process, managed to generate significant social media buzz and engagement.
UberEats - Tonight I’ll be Eating
The “Tonight I’ll be Eating” campaign by UberEats consists of a series of videos that feature various Australian celebrities. In the 3rd installment of the campaign, we see iconic Australian character, Sharon Strzelecki come together with global icon, Kim Kardashian. In the video, Sharon and Kim are seen deciding on what meal to order on UberEats, while Sharon attempts to correct Kim’s English by teaching her the Australian accent.
This campaign effectively builds off the success of the earlier installments of the campaign, but takes it a notch higher by bringing together an unlikely duo in a rather comical setting. Although the ad features a non-Australian celebrity, it cleverly infuses a strong local Australian flavor into it and also teaches the international audience a thing or two about the Australian accent.
Unsurprisingly, the campaign gained widespread publicity and won various awards. It also generated 50 million media impressions, 20+ million organic views online, 90,000 shares on social media, had a 98% positive sentiment, and increased brand preference by 18%.
Movember Foundation - Bring Back the Moustache
Not many are aware that the annual no-shave Movember event originated in Melbourne, Australia. The annual movement encourages men to grow a moustache in November to raise funds and awareness regarding men’s health issues. It was started by the Movember Foundation in 2003, and has evolved into a global annual event that generated 1.2 million social media mentions in 2014.
On top of championing a meaningful cause, the campaign’s success can also be attributed to how it engages people on a variety of channels - from social media, digital ads, personalized emails, user-generated content, and even an e-commerce platform. By doing so, the Movember Foundation ensures that the hype does not completely fizzle away once November comes to an end, and that people are still regularly reminded of the main message behind the campaign.
Coles - Little Shop 2 AR App
The Little Shop collectibles can be said to be one of the most successful campaigns by leading Australian supermarket chain, Coles. The campaign consists of a set of mini figurines of iconic food items which customers can purchase in Coles. In the 2019 edition of the campaign, Coles further expanded on its success by launching an AR dancing platform in addition to the collectibles. Customers can then scan their mini collectibles with their phones to activate their digital character on the app. This campaign was highly successful, as it became the number 2 family game on iOS and the top trending app on Google Play.
The campaign encourages user-generated content, as users can share their music clips from the game, which serve as ads for Coles. It also provides a unique digital-angle to the campaign, and presents the Coles brand as one that is relevant and innovative.
From the examples of the best Australian marketing campaigns that have been highlighted above, there are some key takeaways that can be applied to your next campaign.
- The importance of understanding your audience - who they are, what they are saying, as well as their current concerns, which can be achieved via social listening and conversational intelligence
- The effectiveness of storytelling - the campaign is more likely to appeal to the audience when it tells a story and appeals to the audience emotionally
- It is important to remain top-of-mind even after the campaign and this can be done by regularly putting out relevant content
- Consider leveraging more than 1 channel when engaging your audience - on top of digital ads, consider engaging your audience on social media via user-generated content, out-of-home advertisements and through video ads
