We are just two weeks from the big day, adland’s night of nights, the culmination of all this year’s hard work: the 2025 B&T Awards. In the run-up to this year’s awards, we’re taking a look at all of the finalists’ work.
If you’re still sans ticket, or fancy your chances even more after a strong showing at our in-person live judging extravaganza two weeks ago, there’s still time to grab your ticket!
This time out, we’re looking at the finalists for the Best Pro Bono Campaign. This is the work many will be proudest of, that which directly helps important causes here in Australia and around the world. If we’re honest, all are already winners in our eyes.
Last time, we looked at the finalists in the Best Out of Home Campaign category. You should also take a moment to check out the full list of Agency of the Year finalists and Campaign of the Year finalists.
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.
Apparent, ‘Change Direction’, Jilya Institute
Australia has a suicide crisis. In Aboriginal communities, the suicide rate is nearly triple the national average. Most non-Aboriginal Australians know there’s a problem – but how can we make them truly care?
Despite a lack of government support, the Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health offers an innovative solution to the crisis: providing scholarships to train Aboriginal psychologists to help Aboriginal people. They’ve proven that the path to healing comes through culture – a culture that’s been stripped away over generations, and is sorely lacking from government-funded programs.
Our pro-bono campaign, ‘Change Direction’, aimed to change the narrative on how Aboriginal people can heal. The short film, directed by Cannes Film Festival winner Warwick Thornton (Kaytetye), features a poem with two meanings when read forwards and backwards: a story of a young man in despair, then a story of him finding hope.
‘Change Direction’ had an enormous impact, reaching nearly a third of Australians through support from our pro-bono partners. It drove increase in people viewing the crisis as “extremely serious”. It featured on Qantas in-flight, major TV networks, national radio, digital, OOH, and social media, and during primetime AFL.
And beyond these metrics, Aboriginal leaders described it as a life-saving initiative. “I have never seen such a powerful presentation ever until this,” said one influential community figure. “This needs to be shown in schools throughout Australia. This was beautifully done.”
We’re deeply proud of ‘Change Direction’, and we believe its impact – as well as the urgency of this issue and its solution – make it a strong candidate for B&T’s 2025 Best Pro-Bono Campaign.
Avenue C, ‘Show We Care’, MNDA
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) affects around 800 Australians each year, with devastating impact and a short life expectancy of just 2–4 years. MND Australia faced the challenge of cutting through a crowded charity landscape, often overshadowed by the higher-profile Fight MND. Where Fight MND embodies the ‘hero’ fighting for a cure, MND Australia needed to carve out its own space—one grounded in compassion and immediate support for those living with the disease.
Research identified young, values-led Australians as the audience most likely to respond: people motivated by empathy, social justice, and belonging. The strategic pivot was clear—shift MND Australia from a clinical, fragmented identity to an emotionally resonant one: from ‘sage’ to ‘caregiver.’ The platform “Show We Care” reframed the narrative, focusing not on distant cures but on care today. Visually and tonally, this meant warmth, authenticity, and human connection—anchored in the line: “Until there’s a cure, there’s care.”
The creative execution celebrated real stories of carers and families, brought to life through a TVC, OOH, digital, social, and press. The emotional storytelling resonated strongly across media, with the industry rallying behind the cause, donating extraordinary media value.
The results were transformational. Donations rose year-on-year, website traffic increased and social engagement grew significantly, including 2.1M video views. More importantly, the campaign unified national and state MND bodies around a shared identity and message, unlocking new opportunities for collaboration and efficiency.
As CEO Clare Sullivan reflected: “This campaign has meant more to us than I can fully express. You didn’t just give us media support—you gave us momentum.”
Best Case Scenario, ‘How Best Case Scenario Evolved TechDiversity’s 10-Year Legacy from Awards to Action’, TechDiversity Foundation
Australia’s tech industry, valued at $146.85 billion in annual IT spending for 2025, faces a critical challenge: the government aims to fill 1.2 million technology-related jobs by 2030. Our campaign directly supports this national priority by making tech more inclusive and attractive to underrepresented groups.
When Best Case Scenario took over the TechDiversity Foundation in 2019, we transformed a successful awards ceremony into Australia’s most comprehensive diversity action campaign.
In our second year, we developed three strategic pillars – Education, Action, and Celebration – executing a complete rebrand featuring vibrant, inclusive imagery beyond typical tech stereotypes. We created distinct sub-brands: TechDiversity Academy, Enterprise Membership, Awards, and Tech Reflects research.
Our integrated campaign delivered exceptional results. Our thought leadership strategy targeting senior leaders through “influence gap” content, combined with grassroots Take the Pledge activation, generated massive engagement. LinkedIn impressions increased more than 1,000% during Awards season through live coverage. Daily website visitors surged from hundreds to thousands. Our winner interview series achieved huge impressions with engagement increases up more than 300%.
We secured major enterprise partners – Westpac, Accenture, and AWS. Our Tech For Good category attracted half of 2025 nominations, proving appetite for purpose-driven technology. Forbes Australia now presents our awards.
Our 2024 “Tech Reflects” research revealed diversity professionals want tools to drive change themselves, not wait for senior leadership. This insight drove the TechDiversity Academy’s targeted modules for mid-level managers.
In 2026, we’ll launch Australia’s first AI Impact Assessment Training Programme, ensuring diverse workforce participation to minimize bias during AI development – saving organizations millions.
We transformed an awards ceremony into a comprehensive ecosystem expanding Australia’s tech talent pool while driving measurable diversity transformation nationwide.
Carat and Tag, ‘A Happier 10th Birthday’, Raise The Age NSW
In New South Wales, the moment a child blows out ten candles, the world should be opening up to them. Instead, for some, it slams shut. That’s because in NSW, the age of criminal responsibility is just 10-years-old. A child in primary school can be arrested, charged, strip-searched, hauled before a court – even locked in a prison cell.
Raise the Age NSW set us a brief with three parts:
1. Make the public see what’s happening.
2. Make them care enough to act.
3. Make it possible for politicians to do better.
The budget? Precisely zero dollars.
The challenge wasn’t just to create awareness – it was to start a conversation in a political environment that had at best avoided the evidence for decades, and at worst, relied on tough on crime responses with terrible outcomes for children, community safety and the budget.
The impact was unquestionable.
· Over $3 million in donated placements across TV, OOH, radio, and digital.
· Prompted awareness in NSW jumped 45%.
· Understanding of the issue doubled (+100%).
· Interaction with the cause increased by 50%.
· People contacting their local MPs tripled.
· Significant growth in individual and civil society supporters.
· Brand new collateral for raisetheagensw.org.au and partner campaigns.
· Engagement with existing supporters surged – open and click-through rates on calls-to-action hit record highs.
· Momentum and morale across the Raise the Age coalition soared — many partners had never seen such creative and media firepower behind their cause.
· Strong support from key crossbench MPs – the very people positioned to tip law reform over the line.
· The NSW Government refused to run our ad on public transport, labelling it “too political” – an unintentional endorsement of just how close we were getting to the bone.
Emotive, ‘Don’t Mine What’s Mine’, Deep Rising
An invasion is underway. An area the size of India has already been carved up for corporations to mine. Hidden on the deep seabed beneath the Pacific, its consequences are easy to ignore. Yet the ocean provides half the planet’s oxygen and, by international law, the seabed is the “common heritage of humankind.” The very body meant to protect it, the International Seabed Authority, is also granting licences to exploit it.
Award-winning documentary film maker, Matthieu Rytz, asked us to help make this invisible invasion visible and stop it before it began.
Our answer was Don’t Mine What’s Mine, a campaign to transform an abstract legal construct into something personal. On deeprising.com, the threatened zone was divided into 8.17 billion GPS coordinates, one for every human alive. Anyone could claim their own plot and receive an NFT Birthright Certificate recorded on a carbon positive blockchain. Not a petition, but ownership. A piece of ocean to defend.
The campaign unfolded in three waves. The Deep Rising documentary, released on Apple, Amazon, and Google, exposed the cracks in international law. A digital protest turned the seabed into a collective act of resistance. And a global voice, led by Jason Momoa and Pacific leaders, carried the message into media and political forums.
The impact was historic. Six nations shifted their stance, clearing the way for the first moratorium on deep-sea mining. Today, 38 nations support the ban, laying the foundation for legal action at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
By uniting film, law, digital activism, and political lobbying, this campaign reframed the seabed as a shared birthright and helped stop catastrophe before it began.
EssenceMediacom, ‘Go Blue to End Bullying’, Dolly’s Dream
Bullying impacts one in four Australian children and is linked to rising youth suicide rates. Dolly’s Dream, founded in memory of Dolly Everett, works tirelessly to combat bullying through education and support. For four years, we’ve partnered with Dolly’s Dream to drive fundraising and secure pro bono media, with ‘Do It For Dolly Day’ (DIFDD) as our flagship national campaign in May.
In 2025, Dolly’s Dream faced its toughest year yet: stagnant awareness, reduced donations due to economic pressures, and the Federal Election potentially drowning out charity messages at this time. With a media budget of $0, the challenge was clear—how could we reach the nation and inspire action?
Our breakthrough insight: simplicity scales.
By making Dolly’s favourite colour—blue—the rallying symbol, we created “Go Blue to End Bullying.” This unifying call was easy for Australians and media partners to embrace, transforming participation into a movement.
The results were extraordinary. Through a single face-to-face briefing, 130 media industry partners pledged support, generating $15 million in donated pro bono media—outperforming the spend of Australia’s biggest advertisers, all with zero budget. A dedicated team coordinated a multi-channel blitz turning the media blue: TV, OOH, print, digital, radio, cinema, and grassroots “Blue Days” nationwide.
In just one month, 43 media partners helped us reach 94.7% of Australians. The campaign unlocked $1.84M in earned media, raised $1.9M, and drove tens of thousands of Australians to engage with Dolly’s Dream’s anti-bullying resources.
By turning the nation blue, we proved the power of a simple idea to unite Australia behind a kinder, safer future for young people—no budget required.
Howatson+Company, ‘Appeal Appeal’, UNICEF
Turning Every Wicket Appeal into an Appeal for Gender Equality
In 2025, UNICEF and Cricket Australia formed a long-term partnership to combat gender inequality so they could raise funds to help millions of girls still denied access to education, healthcare, nutrition, protection from violence — and the right to play sport.
The Ashes Test at the MCG, the biggest women’s cricket match in history, provided the perfect cultural moment to launch. Our brief was to create a bold, disruptive idea that could drive donations, engage fans in stadium and at home, and do so on a charity budget without overshadowing the game itself.
Our creative insight was simple. In cricket, the loud wicket appeal – the familiar “HOWZAT” – is the most recognisable and repeated moment, with over 40 per match. Each appeal creates a natural pause, commanding mass attention. So, what if these moments asked for something bigger than cricket?
The Big Idea: The Appeal Appeal. Every time players appealed for a wicket, an unmissable appeal for gender equality followed. The stadium lit up with donation prompts, including QR codes so fans could contribute instantly. Using a ripple media approach, over 60 appeals were extended nationwide through live broadcast integrations, digital billboards, radio, and social, amplifying the moment in real time.
The Appeal Appeal became UNICEF Australia’s most successful sports-partnership fundraiser to date. In one match, it reached 6.8 million people before the final ball was bowled, drove a +921% increase in one-off donations, +207% rise in revenue, and +16% engagement. Crucially, funds went directly to programs providing girls worldwide with the basic rights and opportunities they deserve.
By transforming cricket’s most iconic action into a call for equality, UNICEF captured the attention of sports fans and turned passion for the game into meaningful change.
INNOCEAN, ‘How We Used the Imagination of Children to Enshrine Legal Protections for Australia’s Most Endangered Sharks & Rays’, Australian Marine Conservation Society
Sharks and rays play a critical role in maintaining our ocean ecosystems. However, horror films and sensationalist media have made Australians see them as foes, not friends. As a result, they’re culled and fished to the brink of extinction, with nobody to protect them.
As Australia’s leading ocean conservation organisation, the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) wanted to turn the tide for Australia’s most endangered sharks and rays. But there was an issue: these creatures were so rare, that very few images were known to science.
We were tasked with helping AMCS generate a movement behind these endangered sharks and rays—to get Aussies engaging with the cause and push for greater legal protections. To do that, we had to answer one central question: how do you get Aussies to care for a species they’ve been taught to fear, when you can’t even show them what they look like?
Our answer was a rebrand: from ferocious…to fantastical. We ran a national art competition, calling on children to reimagine these sharks and rays from nothing more than their scientific descriptions. These artworks were then given to prominent Australian artists to inspire their own work. Both works were then exhibited at Australia’s largest cultural institution—the Australian Museum, showing Aussies that these creatures aren’t so scary after all.
Our exhibition became a catalyst for national change. Over 28 million earned media impressions and 110,000 visitors later, we had gotten our cause on Australia’s cultural agenda. Over 10,500 Australian’s signed AMCS’s petition and sent letters to Parliament urging for increased protections. As a result, three of the ten species we exhibited were made illegal to fish, and cameras were mandated on fishing vessels to monitor damaging commercial activity. Goes to show, sometimes all it takes to affect change is a little childlike imagination.
Special with TikTok & PHD Australia, ‘Shift 20 Casting Call’, Shift 20 Initiative
In 2023, in partnership with the Dylan Alcott Foundation, we launched the Shift 20 Initiative to increase disability inclusion in advertising—because while more than 20% of Australians live with disability, less than 1% were represented on screen.
As demand for talent with disability increased, we faced a systemic barriers which largely excluded people with disability, as a result of unrealistic casting briefs, fast-paced timelines, let alone the fact that people with disability didn’t see acting as a realistic career option.
So, we rewired the system—by turning TikTok into the world’s first open-source casting platform for talent with disability. Talent could upload personality tapes; posts became casting submissions; ad placements became ‘book now’ buttons. Brands, agencies, and casting directors could instantly view and cast talent. The platform also offered ‘how-to’ guides, demystifying the casting process and providing support to talent throughout the casting process.
The platform launched with targeted TikTok videos and social posts encouraging submissions, and used LinkedIn and industry testimonials to reach CMOs, directors, and agents. Dylan Alcott issued a national call-to-action on The Project, inviting talent and industry to get involved.
Outcomes
– Increased representation: Over 70 people submitted casting tapes, growing Australia’s available disability talent pool by approximately 70%, if we look at the already existing pool.
– Immediate success: The first talent was cast within 24 hours. The platform has since been used by top Australian brands, as well as a talent scouting platform for film and TV pilots.
– Talent exposure: Videos on the platform average 130,000 views
– True inclusion: As talent Kat, cast in The Iconic campaign, shared:
“Due to my disability, I never thought I could do anything like this… Now I’m a part of it. It’s surreal and I’m honoured.”
The Engine Group & Wavemaker, ‘Grooming Hides Behind Harmless’, Bravehearts
More than 1 in 4 Australians have experienced child sexual abuse. And in 79% of cases, the abuser wasn’t a stranger, it was someone the child knew. A neighbour. Relative. Friend. And in up to 99% of cases, that abuse was enabled by grooming. But grooming doesn’t look threatening. It looks kind. Helpful. Harmless. Because humans are wired to trust. It’s that instinct – our willingness to see the good in others – that offenders exploit. That was the insight that reframed everything: if we can’t recognise grooming, we can’t stop abuse.
Working with Bravehearts, Australia’s national child protection charity, we set out to expose grooming for what it is. But we didn’t do it by warning or explaining. We embraced the very psychology offenders rely on: building trust, lowering defences, and then breaking it. We mirrored grooming’s manipulative sequence. The campaign, “Grooming Hides Behind Harmless”, was built on a behavioural technique called Experiential Mirroring. The centrepiece: a seemingly innocent friendship between two children, revealed in the final moment to be the grooming of a child by an adult. A twist not designed to shock but to make the truth unforgettable.
Supporting executions across outdoor, radio and social followed the same arc: scenarios that felt safe, until they didn’t.
The response? Immediate and monumental.
Website visits more than doubled.
Views of “What is grooming?” page rose by 671%, directing Australians to a full list of red flag behaviours.
Parent Guide downloads quadrupled.
Media coverage reached 147.6 million people.
The campaign is now under review by the Five Country Ministerial for global adaptation.
This wasn’t a public service announcement, it was an emotional interruption.
And now, with Bravehearts’ support, Australians are better equipped than ever to recognise grooming early and stop abuse before it starts.
Zenith Media, ‘Stadium of Hope’, Act for Kids
Every year, the number of confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Australia could fill an entire stadium.
Act for Kids is one of Australia’s leading child protection charities providing professional therapy and support services for children and their families affected by abuse or neglect.
With close to 50,000 children in Australia confirmed to experience some form of abuse or neglect, Act for Kids wanted to find a way to show the scale of this serious problem that connected with people and drew donation support but didn’t have the platform or resources to do it.
We needed something familiar and something big – something that would resonate with the majority of Australians to grab the attention of lapsed and non-donors.
What about a stadium? A 50,000 seat stadium?
Stadium of Hope set a goal to virtually fill Suncorp Stadium’s 50,000 seats by encouraging Australians to purchase a virtual seat for $10.
With the support of Rugby League legend Darren Lockyer and 19 media partners, we spread the question “I’ve got my seat, have you got yours?” around the country.
The bold, large-scale campaign campaign was a huge success in sparking national conversation and bringing the mission of Act for Kids to the masses, raising $169,840.
Act for Kids now has a key brand asset that will continue to build, and we will to continue to sell seats until the entire stadium is at capacity and every child who has experienced abuse, is recognised.
