Telstra withdrew its State of Origin decider ad spots and on-field sponsorship following yesterday’s network outage, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Korean automaker Kia filled the void left by the telco. Omnicom media agency OMD manages Telstra’s media buying and was left to manage the withdrawal, pulling the placements at short notice.
The decision followed a major outage that hit the telco’s network, leaving customers across Australia without reliable mobile coverage.
The disruption to Telstra’s network, which began in the early hours of the morning, affected calls, texts and mobile data for thousands of users nationwide.
The outage had further impacts to transport services and in some cases triple-zero access. In wake of that, Telstra made the call to stand down its Origin decider ad inventory rather than run brand messaging on the same night its own network was under fire.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said some Triple Zero (000) calls made on Telstra’s network did not connect. Telstra said it had conducted more than 330 welfare checks where the call had failed in some way.
Six people told Telstra they needed emergency assistance and more than 79 customers did not pick up and were referred to police.
Kia moved to take the spots vacated by Telstra. The swap meant the car brand had a heightened presence throughout the broadcast.
Telstra’s advertising in recent years has focused largely on the strength and reliability of its network.
Former CMO Brent Smart told B&T as part of our 2025 CMO Power List:
“Our network gets massive global acclaim. We’re one of the best networks in the world. We’ve had something like 60 world firsts on the Telstra network. I feel like the advertising is now living up to the network in many ways,” he said.
“Take ‘Better On A Better Network’ [Telstra’s sumptuous 26-part stop-motion TVC campaign]. We’ve invested $40 billion in our network over the last decade, it’s constantly getting better. I feel like we’ve just made a campaign worthy of our great network.”
Kia took the opportunity to reveal new advertising creative, highlighting its hybrid vehicles. Kia’s creative is handled by Innocean, the agency backed by its parent company Hyundai. Its media buying is handled by indie agency Advertising Associates.
Kia CMO Dean Norbiato is also a regular face on B&T’s CMO Power List.
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The State of Origin series is one of the biggest occasions in Australian television, let alone sport.
Game 3 deciders are among some of the biggest live audience moments on the Australian sporting calendar, making the ad slots some of the most valuable in the country.
Last night’s coverage on Nine had a national reach of 6,032,000 and an average audience of 4,290,000. Its BVOD average audience stood at 1,685,000.
“Today our focus was on restoring all services as quickly as possible and supporting our customers,” a Telstra spokesperson told B&T ahead of last night’s game.
“We know how much our customers rely on our network and understand just how much of a disruption this has been. For that we’re very sorry. We hope everyone enjoys a great game.”
“We fully appreciated the strategic decision made by the telco on Wednesday. We subsequently worked with the NRL yesterday evening to turn around a solution for the opportunity,” a Kia spokesperson told B&T.
OMD declined to comment.
