In the run up to the B&T Awards, we take a look at the work and agencies in the running to snag one of our surprisingly heavy but remarkably tactile pieces of metal.
For this first instalment of what we’re calling the Runners & Riders series, we’re taking a look at one of the new categories: Best Consumer PR Campaign.
There are 12 finalists in this category from 11 different agencies. As part of each entry, we ask entrants to submit a 300-word condensed version of their entry. So here, in their own words and in alphabetical order only, are the finalists.
Bastion Agency, ‘Legend of The Tongs’, Bunnings
As a long-term partner of the AFL, Bunnings sought to deepen its emotional connection with footy audiences through a nationwide campaign. The goal was to generate earned media buzz, build advocacy among AFL fans, and strengthen Bunnings’ position within a crowded sponsor landscape.
Recognising the shared spirit of community that embodies both Bunnings and AFL, the campaign focused on honouring grassroots volunteers who are the heartbeat of their clubs. Research showed over 200,000 volunteers contribute weekly across Australia, yet 84% feel underappreciated despite being central to fostering social connection at games.
To address this, Bunnings launched “Legend of the Tongs”, a national campaign spotlighting unsung BBQ heroes. Across 18 weeks of the 2025 AFL season, clubs nominated their BBQ volunteers with 90 winners crowned by Bunnings as Legends of the Tongs and receiving prize packs for their clubs. Eight finalists will attend the AFL Grand Final, where one will be crowned the Golden Legend of the Tongs, securing $25,000 in Bunnings products for their club.
The campaign launched at Gather Round with AFL stars Matthew Richardson, Rory Sloane, and Ebony Marinoff, generating extensive media coverage. Community BBQ activations, TVC, social content, digital channels, and in-store activity amplified visibility, while an 18-week earned storytelling strategy spotlighting local heroes and giving them the much-needed recognition they deserve.
Results to date (as of August 29, 2025) include over 8.36M earned media reach, 180 media stories, and a 91% media quality impact score, with all coverage positive. The campaign secured more than 900 club entries, more than 10,000 microsite visits, and strong grassroots advocacy, with club posts reaching 2.6M organically. Sentiment has been universally positive and more than one in four local footy fans are aware of the campaign, reinforcing Bunnings’ role as a champion of community spirit and AFL culture.
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Clemenger BBDO, ‘Cat Conversion System’, Whiskas
Australia’s animal shelters are in crisis – overcrowded, underfunded, and forced to turn cats away. Traditional adoption campaigns targeted cat lovers, but this audience was already saturated. To make real impact, Whiskas needed to grow the market of potential adopters. The bold solution: turn cat haters into cat lovers.
The behavioural insight was simple: most people who claim to dislike cats have never lived with one. Their opinions are shaped by stereotypes – aloof, scratchy, disloyal – not by lived experience. But the joy of a cat’s affection is only understood first-hand. If we could get cat haters to foster, even briefly, we could convert sceptics into adopters.
The Cat Conversion System was born – a recruitment program designed to identify, challenge, and convert cat haters.
Identification: Instead of targeting animal lovers, we inverted digital targeting, flagging those who scrolled past cat content as potential recruits.
Recruitment: Provocative messaging – “Cat Haters Wanted” – ran across OOH and digital, daring people to prove their dislike by fostering. Influencers and localised placements in low-cat suburbs amplified reach.
Conversion: Foster participants received a Cat Conversion Toolkit, created with behaviourists, with tips on litter training, enrichment, and integration. A microsite connected them to shelters and offered Whiskas vouchers. Real stories of converted haters were shared across social and PR, fuelling credibility and momentum.
The results spoke volumes. The campaign generated national conversation, flipped stereotypes, and delivered thousands of shelter connections and toolkit downloads. Stories of “haters turned lovers” became the most shared and engaged content, proving that lived experience was the most persuasive tool of all.
By reframing the challenge, Whiskas didn’t just tell people to adopt – it created new cat lovers, opening homes and hearts to cats who needed them most.
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Dentsu Creative PR, ‘Geely. Here to Stay’, Geely
When global auto giant Geely entered Australia, it faced a crowded EV market dominated by legacy brands and scepticism towards Chinese entrants. Our challenge? Launch a brand and its first vehicle simultaneously and make Australians believe Geely wasn’t just another newcomer, but a premium player committed to the long haul.
Our insight was clear: no Chinese brand had signalled long-term investment. So, we built a PR-led narrative anchored in one powerful idea: Geely is here to stay. This wasn’t just a car launch; it was a credibility campaign.
We executed a multi-phase strategy to earn trust and spark excitement:
Presence: A dealer event and press announcement signalled serious local investment.
Proof: An exclusive China press trip immersed top-tier media in Geely’s innovation.
Momentum: Sneak peeks, milestone-driven storytelling, and a Sydney-to-Bowral media drive kept Geely front of mind.
Advocacy: A high-energy Luna Park launch and influencer partnerships brought lifestyle relevance.
The results? Beyond expectations. We delivered 523M earned impressions, 3,310 media hits (60% Tier 1), an industry-leading PR quality score of 10.7/14, and zero negative coverage—a rare feat in this category. Influencer content reached 200K+ consumers, while reviews positioned the EX5 as a serious EV contender. Most importantly, perception shifted: Geely became a brand with legacy, innovation, and commitment.
The business impact was undeniable: within months, the Geely EX5 became Australia’s 5th best-selling BEV, outselling Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Hyundai with just one model. Geely is now the 6th highest-selling BEV brand YTD, proving this campaign didn’t just make an entrance, it made history.
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HAVAS Red, ‘Odd Jobs’, Tourism Tasmania
Tasmania is a contradiction to how the world views Australia. It’s anti-ordinary, with a purpose to be the antidote to modern life. Boasting the freshest air on the planet, with a world-class culinary, art, and cultural scene and wildlife famous the world over, Tasmania’s economy is reliant on year-round visitors. Yet in the winter – known as the Off Season – Tasmanian tourism operators face softened demand as travellers flock to warmer hotspots. Add to this, the Off Season’s drawcard winter festival Dark Mofo went on hiatus in 2024.
Havas Red was briefed to develop a famous earned-led idea that could embed Tasmania’s Off Season in culture, needing to:
– Drive national awareness and consideration of Tasmania’s winter, staying true to their ‘Come Down for Air’ platform
– Increase visitation to the state in the winter months
– Highlight the breadth of uniquely Tasmanian winter experiences
– Hero the many tourism operators that power the Tasmanian economy and help boost qualified interest/leads
Our research, conducted in partnership with an Australian organisational psychologist, found that Aussies hit peak burnout in winter, taking more sick days than any other season.
Working hand-in-hand with local operators, we conceived the idea of uniquely Tasmanian “Odd Jobs”, turning Tasmania’s quirkiest winter offerings into 10 applicable jobs, and sent out the invite for Aussies to ‘swap their day job for an Odd Job.’
We recruited self-professed ‘slightly-odd’ comedian Josh Thomas to demonstrate the roles, serving as our inaugural Wombat Walker, Oyster Organiser and Wine Whisperer, creating rich video and photo content readymade for PR, owned, and social channels.
A global media sensation, Odd Jobs was the most successful PR campaign in Tasmania’s history. Surpassed all KPIs and drove more awareness for Tasmania’s Off Season than any PR campaign before it.
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Herd MSL, ‘Telstra Heritage Phones’, Telstra
In August 2021, Telstra made all standard national and mobile calls from public payphones free. Since then, usage has surged, with over 25 million calls made in the past year alone, including more than 300,000 to Triple Zero and crisis support lines. That’s nearly 3,000 calls every hour.
Despite global trends to remove public phones, Australia has preserved and evolved them as vital lifelines, especially for vulnerable communities. These iconic fixtures, present since the 1880s, remain as culturally significant as British post boxes or New York taxis.
To spotlight their enduring relevance, Telstra launched a bold initiative: nominating three public phones for inclusion on the National Trust of Australia’s Heritage Register. This register honours places and objects of historical, cultural, and social importance. By reframing public phones as symbols of connection, resilience and community, the campaign aimed to elevate them from overlooked utilities to national icons.
Telstra partnered with social historian Dr Naomi Parry Duncan, whose experience during the 2020 bushfires in Narooma underscored the importance of public phones. Lifeline also joined the campaign, reinforcing the phones’ role in crisis support.
Three phones were spotlighted for their unique community impact:
Disaster Responder – Narooma, NSW: Nearly 1,000 calls during the 2019 bushfires.
Regional Connector – Doomadgee, QLD: 1,400 calls in a remote town, almost one per resident.
Support Line – Brunswick West, VIC: Over 1,300 Lifeline calls since 2021.
Australians were invited to share their own stories by dialling #STORY from any public phone or calling 1800 007 403. An eight-week integrated campaign across digital, print and public phones reimagined these devices as rescue phones, hope phones and regional connectors, symbols of modern relevance and national pride.
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It’s Friday, ‘Hey Drake, this yours?’, Sydney Water
Utility companies don’t go viral. trend or break the internet. Sydney Water did. Traditionally, utilities struggle with younger audiences. They’re seen as functional, authoritarian – even annoying. But with one sharp, culturally relevant response, Sydney Water flipped the script. They went from faceless institution to a brand that entertained, engaged, and owned a global moment. And it didn’t cost a cent.
THE MOMENT
Thursday, February 21. Global superstar Drake, posted a video of himself launching an orange slide from his penthouse overlooking Sydney Harbour. The internet erupted, but no one asked: What happened to the slide? Sydney Water did. That was the opportunity. Reacting in under 24 hours, Sydney Water called out Drake with a simple yet powerful video of a hand taking an orange slide out of Sydney Harbour.
The caption? “Hey Drake, this yours?? Hope you’re enjoying our beautiful city – but let’s keep it that way, yeah?” The post invited him to retrieve his slide from Sydney Water’s office, where he could also enjoy a complimentary ‘Warragamba Slammer’ (a bottle of Sydney tap water). And just like that, it took off. Major brands Uber, Aldi, Big W and more jumped in on the action with their own content.
STRATEGY
This wasn’t just a stunt, it was a real-time marketing masterclass. We executed with super speed, embracing the golden rule of viral moments: act fast or be forgotten. By hijacking a cultural moment in real time, we ensured Sydney Water captured global attention. In an instant, it shifted from a background operator to an internet sensation.
IMPACT
The post delivered unprecedented engagement;
150M+ views worldwide
633K+ engagements
809M+ reach, a 9,800% uplift
220,000% uplift in performance
72,800% increase in positive brand sentiment
and…..? Drake himself shared it with his 143M followers, catapulting Sydney Water onto the global stage.
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Poem, ‘It’s Common Sense’, Uber
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To raise awareness for Uber Green’s transition to a fully electric fleet, we wanted to show people that looking after the environment is the most ‘True Blue’ thing they can do. So we turned to the most iconic Aussies to bring this idea to life.
The Castle, the most-quotable cult-classic movie, came out almost three decades ago. We knew that reuniting the Kerrigans (because it had never been done since the movie’s launch) would earn attention from media, from fans and within mainstream culture.
Michael Caton, Stephen Curry, and Anthony Simcoe, were the perfect talent to remind Aussies that choosing an EV-ride, with zero emissions, for the same price as an UberX, just makes ‘bloody common sense’.
So we made a funny ad about not being able to make an ad. And because we were so confident it would get talked about, we put no media spend behind it.
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Special PR, ‘Last Flight Club’, Virgin Australia & Visit Victoria
This is the story of how we drove visitation to Melbourne while positioning Virgin Australia as the preferred airline to get there.
Australia is famously a daytime country – you’re way more likely to catch the sun by rising with it than being out late enough to experience it at the end of the night before. Everywhere except Melbourne– the country’s last bastion of late night revelry. And as a destination that’s every bit different from the rest of the country, Melbourne is the only place that can ensure passengers arriving at any time of day or night – even on VA’s last flight of the evening, a typically unloved travel slot – have the opportunity to enjoy a full night out.
Our strategy was simple: get people excited about the potential to enjoy a full night out – even if you’re arriving ‘late’ – something only possible in Melbourne. And so, Last Flight Club (LFC) was born. For one night only, when you flew on the last flight out of Sydney into Melbourne and came back on the first flight back the next day, you got to enjoy the best of Melbourne’s nightlife all in one night, only when you fly with Virgin Australia.
On August 7th, passengers on the last flight out of Sydney did just that. They enjoyed an in-flight comedy set, followed by a private DJ performance by Client Liaison in the Melbourne lounge, a midnight visit to the LEGO Star Wars exhibit, late night supper and drinks at the Melbourne Supper Club, and finished up under the lights at the MCG to kick a ball with AFL & AFLW legends.
After, we strategically dropped a sale to Melbourne to take advantage of buzz and keep the momentum going, driving significant business, brand, and PR outcomes.
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Supermassive, ’36 Months’, 36 Months
36 Months: Giving kids time to get to know themselves before the rest of the world does.
The digital world has accelerated childhood, exposing young people to addictive algorithms, harmful content, and the relentless pursuit of online validation. Rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide have risen in lockstep with social media use. Against this backdrop, 36 Months was born—founded by concerned parents Michael “Wippa” Wipfli and filmmaker Rob Galluzzo—to give kids something invaluable: time to get to know themselves before the rest of the world does.
Supermassive was engaged to transform this vision into a cultural and political movement. Launching in May 2024, we tapped into a moment of heightened global debate on digital safety and domestic political urgency. We built a powerful coalition of parents, educators, doctors, celebrities, and policy leaders, unified by one clear, actionable demand: raise the social media age from 13 to 16.
The nation rallied. A YouGov poll confirmed overwhelming support—77% of Australians backed the change, including 91% of Gen Z calling for stronger regulation. Emotional testimonies from bereaved families and expert advocacy fuelled unmissable media coverage, cutting through political noise.
Within months, history was made: Australia became the first country in the world to legislate a higher social media age. The Prime Minister personally called 36 Months to thank the movement, later writing to acknowledge its impact—and in 2025, he invited the founders to join him at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to meet with other world leaders seeking similar reform.
36 Months demonstrates the power of earned-first, advocacy-led creativity. From parental concern to world-first law to the global stage, it is proof that strategic, culture-led campaigning can change not just minds, but systems, and safeguard an entire generation’s right to grow up on their own terms.
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Thinkerbell, ‘Rexona Whole Body Deodorant’, Unilever
Rexona launched Whole Body Deodorant, a category first product designed to be used beyond just the underarms.
For 137 years, people have only been deodorising their armpits, even though they account for just 1% of total body sweat. That means the other 99% of sweat, and the odour it creates across the rest of the body, has remained a cultural taboo: rarely spoken about and never normalised.
Our challenge was to educate people on whole-body deodorant and break the silence around a subject most avoid.
Our idea was then to use the most trusted authority on everyday instruction, Martha Stewart, to flip the familiar how-to into a bold new lesson. Martha showed Australians how to use Whole Body Deodorant on thighs, feet, breasts and even down under. Bringing her own degree of seductiveness and sexiness, she transformed an unspoken subject into something approachable, sexy and shareable.
Execution began with intrigue. A leaked clip of Martha with a mystery man sparked gossip, before the reveal of the cheeky how-to film captured international attention. To embed the product in culture, we extended the idea through a curated group of beauty and lifestyle influencers who reimagined the hero film. They gave the product authenticity, scale and relevance, turning a single film into a talkable movement. Whole Body Deodorant shifted from a curiosity to a credible part of daily hygiene, reframing freshness and introducing a new product for all Aussies.
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We Are Different, ‘The Life-Changing Loo Roll’, Kimberly-Clark Australia
Australia has the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world, but 99% of cases can be treated successfully if detected early. Until a cure is found, awareness of early-onset symptoms remains the best line of defence.
We convinced Kleenex to use its loo rolls for the greater good – transforming unused core and pack real estate into a bowel cancer awareness game changer.
In partnership with Bowel Cancer Australia, millions of Kleenex rolls were transformed into a personal poo check device. In the privacy of the bathroom, Aussies were reminded exactly what to look for – and what to do – if they spotted an irregularity.
Launched during Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, the activation started in packaging and retail, but quickly became a national conversation. PR, social, and influencers helped break the taboo and get Aussies talking about their poo.
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We Are Different, DO. Agency & Hello Social, ‘Eat Your Heart Out’, Paramount+
In a cost-of-living crisis, the average Aussie is down to just two streaming service providers. There are currently 24 providers in market.
A key driver of brand preference is popular titles. The key driver of title popularity is positive word-of-mouth and cultural buzz.
To drive buzz for Paramount+’s hit survivalist show Yellowjackets Season three, we gave content-hungry fans a taste of what’s next – a degustation to die for.
Developed in partnership with the boundary-pushing Chef Nelly Robinson, we created a cannibal feast inspired by the soon-to-be-released season three of the show.
But it wasn’t just a meal – every bite was its own carefully curated fan theory, designed to spark viral conversations across Reddit, TikTok and more.
As buzz built, consumer interest skyrocketed. Tables to the week-long event sold out in minutes. Media and influencers ate up the content with national headlines across entertainment, news and and lifestyle verticals.
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