Special

Tonight, I’ll Be Eating...

Since Special launched the Uber Eats “Tonight, I’ll Be Eating...” campaign in 2017, the food ordering platform has propelled itself into a category leadership position. 

The campaign has been adopted and localised around the globe, with other countries like Japan, Taiwan, the US and Canada replicating the Australian success story. 

With its advertising massively disrupted in 2020, Special had a lot of making up to do to regain share of voice for Uber Eats. 

To reaffirm Uber Eats’ position in Australian culture as number one, Special leveraged high-profile and unexpected combinations like Simon Cowell as the newest, grumpiest ‘Grey Wiggle’. Dr Chris Brown was brought together with Australia’s most loved puppet, Agro, and Mark Hammil (Star Wars) and Sir Patrick Stewart (Star Trek) were pitted against each other in an ad that broke the Twittersphere. 

Thinkerbell 

The Purple Hive Project

When Bega set its sights on entering the honey category, it decided the only way was to focus on the survival of one of the planet’s most important species: bees. 

So, in 2020, Bega worked with Thinkerbell to co-create ‘B honey’ from the ground up. Wanting to be known in the category as a force of positive action, the Purple Hive Project was developed. The project is an initiative to create a network of solar powered beehives that use artificial intelligence to monitor and detect Varroa destructor (a mite threatening global bee numbers) in real time. 

B honey has played an important role in educating consumers, the media and supermarkets themselves about Varroa destructor and its calamitous implications. The Purple Hive Project has helped B honey reach a global audience of 52 million people. 

Special

Meddle in the New Zealand Election

Close to one million New Zealanders live overseas and are eligible to vote in the national election. The trouble is, they’re not – only about 10 per cent of overseas Kiwis voted in the last New Zealand election. 

Special was challenged to increase overseas Kiwis voting by waking them up to their ability and the ease of voting online in the 2020 election. Media objectives were to create maximum reach, cut-through and social currency, drive voter engagement and turnout, and ultimately, increase voter impact. 

With a micro-budget, Special infiltrated the news and social networks with a Russian spokesperson, proactively inciting overseas Kiwis to “Meddle in the New Zealand Election”. 

The campaign saw a 42 per cent increase in overseas voting, and resulted in the highest voter turnout on record. 

Kargo

Launched in late 2016, Kargo has experienced sustained commercial success. The company’s proprietary technology and differentiated inventory solutions drive incremental revenue for publishers while enhancing the end-to-end user experience for advertisers. 

While mobile advertising has developed into a must-buy, it has its share of challenges. From privacy concerns leading to the erosion of cookie-based targeting, to publishers fighting big tech, over-the-top media and connected TV for their share of the digital advertising pie, the mobile advertising industry is fraught with heavy regulation and intense competition, yet Kargo has achieved record growth. 

The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimated that digital advertising grew 25.8 per cent year on year (YOY) in the first quarter of 2021, with mobile display growing 34 per cent. Kargo Australia massively outperformed the market, growing 87 per cent YOY in Q1 2021, with accelerated growth into Q2, averaging 111 per cent growth for the first half of the year.

Havas Media Melbourne

“Switch it for Salmon”, Tassal 

Tassal, the Australian category leader in salmon, was facing stagnant penetration and a decline in frequency of purchase. 

Havas Media Melbourne was tasked with finding a way for Tassal to stand out on the supermarket shelf. 

The agency decided it needed to disrupt Aussies’ default behaviour of eating chicken, beef or pork by repositioning Tassal salmon as a versatile, valuable and more fun protein choice. 

Havas Media Melbourne developed “Switch it for Salmon”, a new platform designed to reposition Tassal salmon in people’s minds. The platform allowed Havas to assert Tassal’s category leadership through bold media placements and a playful tone of voice, and be contextual to mealtimes, to drive switching and frequency of purchase. 

Switch it for Salmon delivered a 27 per cent increase in retail packaged sales for Tassal, which exceeded the category growth rate of 12.6 per cent during the same period. 

The Monkeys

Make Lamb, Not Walls

Over recent years, lamb’s value and role of uniting Australians has faded. 

The Monkeys was challenged to renew Australia’s love for lamb as the meat to share over summer. 

The “Make Lamb, Not Walls” summer campaign leveraged the insight that one of the main things currently dividing Australians are the hair-triggered closures turning once invisible and almost intangible borders into hard walls. 

As part of the campaign, The Monkeys launched a series of mobile out-of-home posters on state borders satirically depicting the feuding Australian state premiers uniting over a lamb cutlet. The illustrations were inspired by the iconic Fraternal Kiss mural immortalised on the Berlin wall. 

The mobile poster campaign toured the nation for one week leading up to the nation’s biggest holiday, Australia Day on 26 January. 

The Monkeys

Make Lamb, Not Walls

Over recent years, Australia’s love for lamb has been challenged by record-high retail prices, just as wage growth had plummeted to a record low. Combined with a perceived lack of everyday convenience, lamb’s value and role of uniting Australians had faded. 

The Monkeys was challenged to renew Australia’s love for lamb as the meat to share over summer. 

The “Make Lamb, Not Walls” summer campaign drew upon the insight that one of the main things dividing Australians are the hair-triggered closures turning once invisible and almost intangible borders into hard walls. 

The PR strategy was to drive as many Aussies to watch and engage with the campaign to capture the nation's attention, hearts and mouths. The success of the summer lamb campaign is driven by fame, talkability and delivering widespread media coverage. 

Suncorp Group (AAMI)

AAMI Rest Towns

The year 2020 was one of uncertainty and anxiety for many Australians. Stress-inducing factors pummelled the Australian psyche, disrupting existing habits and brand behaviours. 

Rural and tourist towns were some of the hardest hit and, put simply, their businesses needed visitors. Suncorp Group (AAMI) decided to act and turn rural towns into AAMI Rest Stops – the perfect place to rest and recharge. 

Working with the tech team at Spotify, AAMI developed a personalised two-hour playlist generator. Targeted audio was combined with generic Spotify and radio ads to drive reach and relevance, and support driver awareness within a two-hour window, encouraging drivers to focus and reminding them when to stop. 

The playlist featured an embedded ‘Get Directions’ execution which featured Rest Town locations and suggested stops en-route through Waze. 

Suncorp Group (AAMI)

AAMI Rest Towns

Rural and tourist towns were some of the hardest hit by 2020, and their businesses needed visitors. Suncorp Group (AAMI) decided to act and turn rural towns into AAMI Rest Stops – the perfect place to rest and recharge. 

Beyond a simple safety message, AAMI gave road trippers a reason to stop. The plan was simple: get tired road trippers to stop by promoting the unique and wonderful attractions each town had to offer. 

Utilising insights from AAMI crash claims data and social listening, along with government fatigue guidelines, the insurer pinpointed the most popular and trending road trip destinations of 2020. 

Working with Spotify, AAMI developed a personalised two-hour playlist generator. Targeted audio was combined with generic Spotify and radio ads to drive reach and relevance, and support driver awareness within the two-hour window.  

Special

The Grey Wiggle

Since Special launched Uber Eats’ "Tonight, I’ll Be Eating..."(TIBE) campaign in 2017, the online food delivery category has matured and competition has grown more fierce. 

The business is increasingly reliant on finding new sources of growth from its existing base. After identifying the key opportunity of growing the ‘basket size’ of orders, Special decided to evolve their TIBE platform beyond just a selection message to one that encouraged sharing. 

Enter Simon Cowell as 'The Grey Wiggle' – the newest, grumpiest addition to The Wiggles’ household, who needs to learn how to share. 

Across a series of TV ads, out-of-home and online video content, we saw Cowell’s cynicism clash with The Wiggles’ boundless enthusiasm. All the while, The Wiggles explain to him (often through song) that everything – including food – is better together. 

Unbnd

Unbnd, SomeOne and VCCP –
“Start Your Adventure”, Billy Blue College of Design 

When it came to launching the 2020/21 Course Guide at Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia, Unbnd, SomeOne and VCCP came together to do things differently. 

This was a campaign and project of many ‘firsts’ for Billy Blue – AR course guides, trackable out-of -home and paid TikTok campaigns. 

The creative strategy centred around students choosing their path and “Start Your Adventure” into creative technology and design. As the college was now teaching these new immersive technology courses, it made sense to showcase the technology itself as part of the advertising to show students what could be achieved and inspire them. 

Unbnd gamified the experience to encourage exploration, resulting in one of only a few webAR experiences to date that features this level of interactivity that would usually require a native AR app download. 

Special

Meddle in the New Zealand Election

Special was challenged to increase overseas Kiwis voting by waking them up to their ability and the ease of voting online in the 2020 New Zealand election. 

The agency found the critical barrier at the core of the issue was that overseas Kiwis don’t believe their vote matters, and they don’t feel they have permission to vote back home. 

In order to incite overseas Kiwis to get involved in the New Zealand election, Special turned to the experts in online election influencing: the Russians. The spokesperson, Viktor, ‘infiltrated’ social networks as voting opened with a social-led campaign on Facebook and Instagram urging overseas Kiwis to “Meddle in the New Zealand Election”. 

Every day for 18 days, until election day, Viktor’s social videos and posts were promoted, targeting Kiwi expats in Australia and repat influencers in New Zealand. 

Special

Tonight, I’ll be Eating for Love

In 2021, Special set out to utilise Uber Eats’ ongoing partnership with the Australian Open and find a way to meaningfully insert the brand platform "Tonight, I’ll be Eating..." into the action. 

The agency created a way for Uber Eats to own a moment in every game without a logo in sight by introducing an integrated second screen activation, based on the live Australian Open score. 

The idea was simple: when the score was love, Aussies could eat for the price of love on Uber Eats. 

Thanks to a full media ecosystem that drove audiences to Uber Eats’ Instagram channel, multiple live simulations and highly trained community managers, the brand was able to instantly post a code for free food in Uber Eats’ Instagram stories every time there was love on the scoreboard. And when love disappeared, the codes did too. 

M&C Saatchi

BIG W Rap Books

BIG W introduced the “Every day’s a big day” brand platform in 2019 as the cornerstone of its purpose to ‘Make a real difference for families’. 

In 2020, M&C Saatchi sought to develop a unique and memorable way to make an impact in daily life with a mobile-first initiative for BIG W, which was lagging when it came to customer perceptions of brand purpose. 

It’s a little-known fact that BIG W is the nation’s largest bookseller. And the insight was simple: if it rhymes, it raps. 

BIG W partnered with Scholastic to collaborate with the authors of iconic Australian kids’ rhyming books, and put them in the hands of Australian singer Jessica Mauboy and beatboxer Tom Thum. The campaign gave parents a way to shake up storytime with unique, fun and memorable rap versions of iconic Aussie kids’ books.