A consumer is where you find them. Where that is, of course, is the problem facing the modern marketer. With ever-widening fragmentation, the ability to communicate across a broad range of media is forever becoming a bigger challenge. This iteration of B&T Awards The Work showcases the amazing agencies and brands grasping this particularly thorny nettle.
We’d love to see you in the night. Why not come along and see who will be crowned the winners at the Hordern Pavilion on Friday 24 November 2023?
And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out the entire short lists for the 2023 B&T Awards here and here.
Catch up also on the B&T Awards shortlisted work here:
- B&T Award For Bravery
- B&T Award for Diversity
- Best Content Marketing Strategy
- Best CTV Campaign
- Best Data-Driven Marketing Campaign
- Best Digital Campaign, sponsored by Twitch
- Best Direct Response Campaign
- Best Integrated Campaign
- Best Media Campaign
- Best OOH Campaign
- Best PR Campaign
- Best TV Campaign
- Best Use of Sponsorship
Below are the finalists with each heading showing the name of the agency, the name of the campaign and then the client footing the bill. The words are as submitted by the entrant.
Entrants were briefed for this award as follows:
The jury will be looking for the best integrated ad campaign across multiple media channels: Demonstrate a strong creative insight developing into a story that was adapted across multiple channels. Demonstrate suitability of strategy, solution and execution against the original brief. Show your outcomes: Primarily, delivered effective business results (ROI, brand lift, sales revenue) and secondary, delivered audience engagement (reach, watch time & view duration, sentiment).
Akcelo, Mates Make It Maccas, McDonald’s
During a nationwide labour shortage and the toughest Australian employers’ market in over 50 years, McDonald’s Australia needed to recruit a record 14,000 new crew members in just four months AND overcome young Aussies’ negative preconceptions of what it means to be working at “Macca’s”.
Based on our insight that people make the workplace, we launched ‘Mates make it Macca’s’ – an unmistakably Australian concept powered by local crew insights from around the country. From their morning routines and inside jokes, to their lunchtime hacks and daily banter, we brought to life hundreds of real mateship moments across film, OOH, TikTok, Snap, meta & in-restaurant media, each execution bespoke for channel, all leading to a gamified application based on the legendary Burger Wrap Challenge, to fast track hires.
‘Mates make it Macca’s’ generated over 366 local and national broadcast news stories for a 21m earned reach. Over 352K Aussies played the mobile game. Applications were 250 per cent above target, with a 21 per cent increased conversion rate. All in all, the campaign helped Macca’s hire 26,311 new crew in the four-month window, smashing campaign targets and proving once and for all that burgers and fries don’t make it Macca’s. Mates do.
BMF, Overcooked Generosity, ALDI
After a year of financial restraint, ALDI Australia encouraged Aussies to go all-out, not just on the Christmas spread, but on the spirit of generosity itself. Everybody wants to enjoy a feast with family and friends without worrying about how many prawns they can afford, or having to choose between mince tarts and panettone. So don’t carve by halves. Pile those prawns. Double up on desserts. Don’t hold back this Christmas, because when you shop at ALDI there’s always enough.
CHEP Network, The Jewellers, Michael Hill
Michael Hill Jeweller is a household name – no doubt. But it was stuck. It had become a slave to the cadence of the retail calendar, its focus on price promotion and discounting was undermining margin and eroding brand perceptions. Its growth had flatlined.
The brand had become a fatigued, style-less, ‘mass retailer’.
The brand had lost its romance. Which is a problem when you sell engagement rings.
This is a true story based on a love story about how returning to a brand’s truth, married with real customer insight helped ignite a flame that had almost extinguished. Seducing a new customer segment to deliver net annual profit of $36 million including a 39 per cent increase in bridal sales and 82 per cent increase in global store visits.
HERO, Through Their Eyes, Maybelline
Maybelline New York wanted to engage with Gen Z, in particular the burgeoning gaming demographic, now with a total audience of 17 million in Australia. The brief was to connect with young female gamers in a meaningful and authentic way and enrich their gaming experiences.
The brand had a clear and long-established purpose; ‘give everyone the self-confidence to express their beauty, to play and to make change’. We knew of anecdotal evidence that female identifying gamers were facing constant abuse online resulting in many playing in silence, or not at all. It seemed the online gaming world was a place where many don’t feel free to express themselves.
To change the game, we commissioned an Australian research survey with over 600 gamers to garner deeper insights into the problem and the results were confronting. Over 83 per cent of female identifying gamers have experienced abusive behaviour online and as a result the majority turn off their microphones.
Our strategy was not just to simply shine a light on an existing problem, but to amplify the silent voices on the subject matter, and create allies both male and female in the online gaming world.
We set out to show male gamers what it was like to play through a woman’s eyes. Two prominent Aussie male gamers had their real identities disguised with voice modification software and fake female profiles in an online first-person shooter game. They experienced first-hand the level of constant abuse and bullying experienced by the opposite sex.
Shared out by our four gamer influencers, the film quickly resonated with the online gaming community and beyond. Appreciating they’d been heard, female-identifying players shared their stories, many who had been hiding in silence, and most importantly millions of male gamers called for others to stand up and say something.
Howatson+Company, EXHIBIT A-i, Maurice Blackburn
For over ten years, thousands of people seeking asylum in Australia by boat have been stopped by the Australian Navy & sent to offshore detention centres in Nauru, Manus Island & Papua New Guinea.
They wait indefinitely to be processed, held in privately-owned prisons. Cameras & journalists are banned. Guards are all-powerful. Neither the public nor politicians know what occurs inside, leading to atrocities that have been hidden from view.?
Australia’s leading social justice law firm, Maurice Blackburn, had been running a class action lawsuit on behalf of survivors against the government, arguing that indefinite offshore detention should be unlawful. Unfortunately, in 2021, due to a change in the law, the case was dismissed. However, Maurice Blackburn still believed survivors’ stories deserved to be heard.
Their brief was to create widespread awareness of the atrocities survivors experienced to try to use these stories to provoke policy change discussions.
Our brief was to bring these stories to life in a way that did justice to the brave witnesses that shared their harrowing experiences and delivered emotional engagement to a largely complacent mass Australia.
At the heart of the campaign is a book of evidence submitted to members of the Australian Parliament and used in 1:1 meetings with key policy-makers. The book was also sent to leading journalists, garnering worldwide attention. To launch this campaign publicly, immersive exhibitions were held at Australia’s Parliament House and Immigration Museum – where the images and stories were printed and exhibited within barbed wire fencing. Additionally, we partnered with the editorial stock library, Shutterstock, to upload our visuals to their website so that they could sit alongside real photojournalism. The words and images were also displayed on a microsite, OOH and social.
Howatson+Company, 35+, Lord Nelson Brewery
How the hell do you reignite love for a 35-year-old beer operating in a category obsessed with the next best thing? You restrict its sales to only those who can appreciate it.
Established in 1841, The Lord Nelson is Australia’s oldest surviving craft brewery and pub hotel. For thirty-five years, its crown jewel has been the house favourite: a sessionable pale ale called Three Sheets. But with today’s proliferation of craft and evolution of taste, the beer was struggling to stand out and sales were waning.
Amidst the category’s obsession with trend-chasing and up-starts, Three Sheets had a clear task: make consistency cool. With a bugger-all budget, Lord Nelson boldly doubled-down on a strategy that would speak to someone, but not everyone, and concentrate its efforts where drinkers switched: at the point of purchase.
The result was 35+. Across pubs and bottle shops, we changed the recommended legal drinking age of Three Sheets from 18, to those as old as the recipe itself: 35. A disruptive, provocative tactic that elevated the craft in the beer, by making it unavailable to those who would not appreciate it.
The strategic idea has given Three Sheets a fighting chance against a category that it helped build. All while delivering an ROI of 3.66. Delicious.
It’s Friday, Burger Joint, Domino’s
It’s Friday turned everyday Aussie homes into ‘burger joints’ with its provocative integrated campaign for Domino’s. We all know Burgers don’t deliver that well. But when you get a Domino’s Burger Joint pizza delivered, that burger taste is so ‘hot and fresh’ it’s like it’s come straight out of a burger joint kitchen. A burger joint kitchen in your very own home.
M&C Saatchi Group, Safe, CommBank
In 2022, devious scammers traumatised 1 in 5 Australians, robbing them of savings earmarked for important life goals. Scam scenarios had shifted shape, from long lost royal relative sob stories, to deep fake technology that could fool the most astute of us. As Australia’s largest bank and caretaker of the nation’s hard-earned money, CommBank was compelled to act on behalf of all Australians. Eliminating scamming altogether is an impossible task, but CommBank could help the nation to reduce their risk by making customers aware of innovative security features and through an educational content program.
CommBank Safe led to 748,197 people taking action to protect themselves and potentially avoided a conservative calculation of $66,302,769 in losses by preventing inevitable scam exposure from becoming devastating.
Stepping up to fight an invisible enemy led to improvements in both trust and reputation. And most importantly continue today as an act of leadership and simply good citizenry as CommBank shares these innovations with large corporations, government and beyond.
OMD and Seven, The Grand Clanger Rescue, AAMI
Australia’s ‘Superbowl’ moment.
OMD, AAMI and Seven combined to pull off an audacious stunt that’s already etched into AFL Grand Final folklore.
An epic 90-second movie – filmed across four states and territories over 18 months.
It was designed to fool millions of viewers into thinking the sherrin (match-ball) for Australia’s biggest sporting event had gone missing!
Live pictures seamlessly cut to a parachutist delivering the ball, who was suddenly snared by the wing of a passing jet!
Then, 19 footy legends and the iconic AAMI women did what AAMI Does for all its customers – race to the rescue and save the day.
The Grand Clanger Rescue was an unforgettable spectacle, hailed by thousands on social media as the best AFL ad of all time, and perfectly reaffirming AAMI’s brand mission.
Running the sponsorship literally seconds before kick-off ensured all 2.43 million viewers were glued to their screens.
But there was so much more to it:
- Pre-game Twitter teaser led thousands to subscribe
- TikTok stars Shepmates engaged to promote this epic stunt, gaining 6.2m impressions and 47,700 likes.
- National Triple M coverage alignment.
- The AAMI logo and colours lit up the MCG as the 85,000 in stadium roared
The figures speak for themselves:
- 64 per cent of all sponsor mentions – a record 121x the year prior!
- AAMI social mentions were 7x the naming rights sponsor!
- 64 per cent Brand recognition for a single stunt – equivalent to 12 weeks of TV!
- Outperformed every other AFL asset against every metric.
- Achieved an unheard of 67 per cent positive recall, with 29 per cent neutral.
- 68 per cent recalled AAMI, +13 per cent norm.
- 405,000 YouTube views.
The 90-second integration alone delivered a record 766 per cent ROI!
Who comes to the rescue for the biggest ‘clangers’ of all? AAMI Does!
Resolution Digital, Contiki Relaunch, Contiki
As the world began to open after +2 years of global lockdowns and border closures, all eyes were on the travel industry, arguably one of the most impacted sectors throughout the pandemic. Eighty-two travel agents and tour operators folded in 2021 alone.
With +350 tours to promote, an unpredictable travel landscape and an audience with almost zero brand awareness, Contiki’s re-entry was fraught with risk.
Resolution tackled the challenge head on with a laser sharp focus on our new audience – the allusive Gen Z. By recruiting some awesome travel buddies like Pinterest, TikTok and even Tinder (who doesn’t love a holiday fling!) and using very unconventional creative, Contiki was able to stage a killer comeback.
The campaign reached 87 per cent of the target audience and achieved 33x ROAS.
The campaign was shortlisted in the Google Premier Partner Awards and scored a Pinterest-commissioned case study.
Special, Get Almost Almost* Anything, Uber Eats
Uber Eats is in a period of business growth, continuing to expand their delivery offering beyond takeaway food, to groceries, alcohol, convenience products and beyond. So despite several years of successful ‘Tonight. I’ll be eating ..’ campaigns that had skyrocketed the brand from fourth to the market front runner, the business needed the brand marketing to pivot to reflect this new ambition. This case is the story of how the brand’s new positioning ‘Get Almost, Almost Anything’ launched, and the success the self-deprecating brand admission has had after mere months in market.
Tourism WA, Walking On A Dream, Western Australia
After 697 days of continuing border closures, Tourism WA needed to put Western Australia back on the consideration map.
With WA travel sentiment at an all-time low, and competitors having already started their marketing campaigns (with bigger budgets), Tourism WA needed to be bold in the revitalisation of the new brand, outsmart rather than outspend and create impact to demonstrate that Western Australia was open for business.
The objective was to meet and exceed pre-COVID figures on key performance indicators: desire, consideration and conversion and to increase annual visitor spend by bringing back interstate and international visitors.
In 2022, Tourism WA launched the new global brand campaign ‘Walking On A Dream’ to position Western Australia as a wondrous, otherworldly and dreamlike destination to visit.
Tourism WA wanted to show how every part of the natural world can be interconnected, taking inspiration from Aboriginal culture. The people, the animals, the plants and even the landforms can be seen as interconnected bodies in constant conversation with each other. When visualised through this lens, Western Australia truly is a dreamlike place to explore.
Tourism WA turned dreams into reality and delivered strong economic results for the State.
Visitor spend in 2022 significantly exceeded the pre-Covid record. The total annual visitor expenditure in Western Australia in 2022 was the highest ever at $14 billion – almost $500 million more than the previous record set in 2019, pre-COVID.
A big thank you to all our sponsors.
