DDB Melbourne launches first work for Belong
Belong has launched a new “weird and wacky” campaign highlighting its mobile data offering, via DDB Melbourne.
Marking the agency’s first piece of work for the telecomms company, the campaign shows Australians how they can get ‘data rich’ with Belong’s unlimited data banking and gifting plans.
It was directed by Hooves’ LA-based Jonny Look, and features UK rapper Taz. The heroes of the campaign are ’emoji bling’ who sing out their “love” for banking obscene amounts of unused data.
Giles Watson, executive creative director at DDB Melbourne, told Mumbrella the agency wanted to turn Belong’s data offering into something culturally powerful.
“In a market saturated with tech specs and telco jargon, we wanted to dramatise what these features actually feel like,” he said. “And today, where financial wealth is as desired as ever, where millionaires and billionaires are dominating news and TV shows, this campaign reimagines mobile data as the new status symbol in a fun and silly way that everyone can enjoy.”
Creatively, the world DDB Melbourne has made for Belong exists “deep in the world of the wonderful internet”, Watson said.
“A place where you’ll find weird and unexpected remixes and where emojis are king. So, bizarrely, it makes absolute sense to remix the two musical icons of different wealth cultures — hip-hop and opera, new money and old money — together.”
The choice to use opera and rap was a highly strategic one, according to Watson, as they are “genres synonymous with excess”.
“Opera is built on emotional excess…big gestures, soaring arias, and indulgent storytelling. It’s theatrical, it’s lavish, and it’s unapologetically dramatic. Rap, especially in the hip-hop tradition, is all about bravado and showing off what you’ve earned. From cars to chains, it’s lyrical flexing,” he said.
“By mashing them together, we’re exaggerating the feeling of having more than enough, which is exactly what Belong customers get with data banking and gifting. These genres helped us express the absurd joy of being so data-rich you practically need to sing about it.”
Watson described the campaign as “weird and wacky”, arguing that’s exactly how it will cut through the noise in a saturated telecomms industry.
“The category often leans hard into tech specs, family plans, or network maps. This leans all the way into spectacle. It’s loud, funny, genre-bending and visually wild. You don’t scroll past a diamond-encrusted emoji chain singing opera,” he told Mumbrella.
Head of marketing and retail at Belong, Joshua Bailey, said the campaign brings Belong’s belief that the internet is for everyone, to life.
“It’s just another way we’re helping Aussies feel more connected and in control,” he said in a media release on Thursday.
The campaign is rolling out across traditional media channels, with highly targeted digital, social, radio, and OOH placements across Australia.
Credits:
Creative agency: DDB Group, Melbourne
Media agency: OMD
Client: Belong
Chief Marketing Officer: Peita Golden
Head of Marketing and Retail at Belong: Joshua Bailey
Creative Studio Manager: Kate Lightfoot
Marketing Manager: Peter Anastassi
Senior Marketing Specialist: Adelaide L’Estrange
Production Company: Hooves
Director: Jonny Look
Producer: Renae Begent
Executive Producer: John Pace
Animation and Design: T&DA (Technology & Design Artists)
Creative Director: Simon Robson
Executive Producer: Eyvonne Carfora
Sound: Rumble
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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topics
Belong
Campaign
DDB
DDB Group
DDB Group Melbourne
DDB Melbourne
Giles Watson
Hooves
Jonny Look
Joshua Bailey
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