In the run up to the B&T Awards (28 November at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion), we’re taking a look at the excellent work of this year’s finalists.
This time out, we’re taking a look at the finalists in the Siren Award For Best Radio/Audio Campaign, presented by our friends at the CRA.
The Siren Award celebrates all the best radio and audio work and there are some absolute crackers for you to get your ears around.
Last time out on the B&T Awards Runners & Riders, we looked at the finalists in the Best CTV & Video 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.
ARN & Zenith Media, ‘One Less Thing To Worry About’, Battery World
This piece was created in response to a unique brief from Battery World: find an innovative way to link the experience of needing a new car battery with the world of podcast audio. We wanted to grab attention in a space where listeners are often multitasking and tuning out…so we flipped the script.
The spot opens like a standard podcast ad, casting everyday people playing the role of the podcasters. But there’s something off, the entire ad is panned only to the right audio channel. For headphone and car listeners, it’s jarring. Disruptive. And just like a flat car battery, it stops you in your tracks.
That’s when our voiceover breaks in: “While you worry about what happened to your left speaker, we’ll handle your car battery” they say. With a smooth transition and a quick fix, the audio clicks into full stereo and clarity returns. The music bed fades up, balanced and full. The problem is solved…and so is the metaphor.
From here, the script ties the moment directly to the product: just like fixing dodgy audio, replacing a dead car battery is easier than you think. Especially with Battery World. The voiceover walks the listener through the simplicity of booking a mobile replacement service no fuss, no stress, just power restored.
The result is a fun, clever, and highly relevant ad that engages podcast audiences by using the very medium they’re listening to as part of the storytelling. It’s a perfect blend of creative concept, strong sound design, and product alignment. Disruption that makes sense and sticks.
Droga5 ANZ, part of Accenture Song, ’52 Weekends’, Victoria Bitter
For over 150 years, VB has been the beer that rewards a hard-earned thirst. But you don’t just have to be a weekday tradie to enjoy one. In fact, a lot of hard work happens on the weekend, all 52 of them. To celebrate these tasks, and elevate the ‘Beer Occasion’, we created a number of VB radio spots, each featuring a different weekend task, to play throughout the year and act as a constant reminder to everyday Aussies that every weekend of the year is an opportunity to earn a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is Vic.
Droga5 ANZ, part of Accenture Song ‘Moments of Glory’, No Ugly
Most of us will never lift a World Cup trophy or break an Olympic record, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to win.
So when No Ugly released No Ugly Sport, a drink formulated to help you perform at your best, we focused on the moments of glory that are within reach of the everyday athlete.
These spots brought to life that inner monologue driving you towards victory, with the rousing emotion of a coach’s halftime speech in a Hollywood movie. Except you’re not in a Hollywood movie. You’re slogging it out on the social sports field, running for charity, or bowling to your kids in the backyard.
Eardrum/FCB Aotearoa, ‘It Takes Time’, Goodnites/Kimberly-Clark
Goodnites wanted to destigmatise bedwetting amongst older children and reassure parents that some kids just need more time. So, it was fitting that our ads also took longer than average to make their point.
Capturing a performance beyond the child’s years was integral to the idea. So, young actors were used to provide authentic vocal qualities, while adult comedians were recorded to provide nuanced comedic performances. AI technology was then used to blend the two, illustrating the perfect example of how using AI in service of the idea can truly elevate it.
Entropico, ‘triple j Sonic Rebrand’, ABC
As triple j approached its 50th year on the airwaves, Australia’s national youth broadcaster faced a challenge: how to evolve its sonic identity to honour five decades of cultural impact while cutting through an increasingly noisy media landscape. The goal was to create a future-proof sonic rebrand that would feel unmistakably triple j across FM, streaming, social media, and digital platforms.
Entropico’s sound team, led by composer Rowan Dix and brand strategist/music producer Raphael Dixon, anchored the new identity in a bold sonic logo rooted in triple j’s DNA of music, community, and the station’s iconic drum symbol. From there, they developed a modular, genre-agnostic system designed for long-term flexibility and relevance.
The rebrand included a library of more than 4,700 custom audio assets including sweepers, stings, presenter beds, and FX, all designed to be remixed by triple j’s in-house team. One of the project’s most innovative features was the creation of “integrated intros”: branded audio woven seamlessly into the intros of high-rotation songs across genres. This transformed passive listening into an immersive brand experience, embedding triple j directly into the cultural moments it helps create.
To ensure sustainability, Entropico delivered a detailed playbook, empowering the station’s team to continually adapt the soundscape in line with emerging music trends without losing brand consistency. The result is a sonic system built to endure, evolve, and inspire.
The new sonic identity strikes a balance between nostalgia and innovation by refreshing triple j’s voice while future-proofing it for the next 50 years. With its memorable sonic logo, scalable toolkit, and distinctive integrations, the rebrand ensures triple j remains at the heart of Australian youth culture, and resonates wherever and however the next generation connects with music.
GSL Media, ‘Teeth Have Feelings’, Dentistry First
The brief from Dentistry First was create a branding commercial that stood out and put their brand into the minds of consumers, therefore taking their place in the buying cycle.
The aim with this execution was to therefore get into the subconscious of the listener – for the brand to be liked and remembered.
Personifying teeth felt like a great place to start. Coupling this personification with humour made it likeable and fun… and it has since become impossible to forget.
From an on air, in-market perspective, the commercial campaign has become wildly popular; often referred to as a commercial other businesses would like their campaigns to be similar to. As demonstrated in the supporting letter provided by Dentistry First, the business itself has seen an increase of awareness and overall improvement of brand recognition as a result of this creative execution.
Keep Left, ‘How Ya Travellin’?’, Healthy Heads Trucks & Sheds
Truckies are the backbone of Australia’s economy, but also among its most vulnerable workers. The transport sector ranks last out of 19 industries for mental health, with long hours, isolation and relentless pressure taking their toll.
Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds (HHTS) briefed Keep Left to find a way to reach drivers directly with preventative mental health support. Our research showed audio was the natural solution: drivers spend their shifts in the cab with radio and podcasts as their constant companions, and they trust authentic voices over corporates.
The result was How Ya Travellin’? – a campaign wired for sound, fronted by comedian and licensed truckie Shane Jacobson. The campaign took over radio ad breaks on Australia’s loneliest highways, with 24 geo-targeted radio segments delivering wellbeing tips and truckie stories tailored to the time of day. Scale was achieved through a powerful buy across 10 metro stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, plus 100+ regional stations nationwide. Eight podcast episodes extended the storytelling, blending lived experience with expert advice, while outdoor, social and PR pointed audiences back to the audio.
The results exceeded all objectives. How Ya Travellin’? reached over 12 million Australians, achieved 7,000 podcast downloads in five months (ranking in the top 10% globally), and generated hundreds of personal responses from drivers thanking Shane for recognising their struggles. Most importantly, drivers reported taking action in real time, with one saying the podcast “stopped me from going over the edge.”
Brand tracking confirmed seven in ten drivers attributed the campaign to HHTS, and perceptions of the organisation as “just for corporates” dropped from 67% to 44%.
How Ya Travellin’? proves the power of audio to cut through isolation, deliver support when and where it’s needed most, and reposition a brand as a leader in its field.
Special, ‘Export Ultra Cold Call Back Service’, DB Breweries
Summer in New Zealand is a cultural moment, sun, surf, and that first cold beer. But heading into summer 2024/25, Export Ultra was struggling to cut through. With beer in decline, low-carb competitors everywhere, and RTDs dominating the fridge, the brand needed a fresh way to reclaim summer.
Looking at how beer fits into real-life moments, we uncovered something bigger than refreshment. This was a nationwide crisis hiding in plain sight: over 55% of Kiwis had accidentally frozen a beer in the past year.
The insight? Few things are as crushing, frustrating and demoralising as accidentally freezing your beer in the freezer.
The brief was set: Create a service or utility to help New Zealanders save their beer from the freezer this summer.
The result was The Export Cold Call Back Service, a beer-saving branded audio utility fronted by 90s icon Vanilla Ice.
Kiwis could text the service when they put a beer in the freezer, and exactly 34 minutes later, Vanilla Ice would call them back to save their beer at the perfect chill point. Each call was unique. Rapped, whispered, or delivered with classic Ice humour, making every reminder an entertaining audio surprise.
With no paid media, it became Export Ultra’s most successful campaign ever. It reached 2.24 million people, earned $2.8M in PR value, and achieved 70% campaign recall. There were 234,000+ direct interactions, and 78% of those who engaged remembered the brand as the “saviour of summer beers.”
And it drove results where it mattered: December sales rose 43% year-on-year, and the full campaign period delivered 38% growth against a declining category.
By blending branded audio, celebrity, and cultural insight, Export Ultra didn’t just make radio relevant again, it made it useful. A cold call never sounded so good.
TBWA NZ/Eardrum, ‘Phone Lullabies’, 2degrees
We know we shouldn’t get lost in phone use before we go to sleep, but we do. So, to promote healthier phone habits, 2degrees’ created an audio campaign that turned notifications into lullabies and played them late.
This fun reminder to put your phone to bed, reimagines three well-known bedtime tunes: Rock-a-bye Baby, Brahms’ Lullaby and Hush Little Baby, using nothing but mobile sounds. To add to the challenge, the most recognised sounds are trademarked so had to be avoided. So specially composed dings, swipes, buzzes and alerts were worked into calming familiar soundscapes that signal it’s time to put the phone (and yourself) to bed.
The campaign capitalised on the spike in audiences to audio channels such as radio and Spotify between 10.30pm -12.00am, encouraging listeners to disconnect and relax.
