Inside the five most eye-catching launch campaigns of 2017

“I loved the simplicity – everything that goes viral is simple”

Airtasker and Sydney Dogs & Cats Home

“A few people looked at me as if I was crazy,” jokes Alexandra Aguirre, the brand marketing manager at Airtasker. “But then I thought, ‘Who doesn’t love puppies?’”

In September, Sydney Dogs and Cats Home posted an advert on Airtasker, the Australian website that lets users bid to perform everyday tasks. “Five adorable 10-week-old kelpie X puppies arrived at our shelter after they were found abandoned in a bin,” read the posting. “With these little guys and a huge influx of other new animals, we’re in urgent need of some extra help! We’re looking for the ultimate animal lover to look after our furry friends for one day, helping out at the home in Carlton, Sydney. And, Airtasker are offering you $500 for the privilege!”

Responsibilities, it added, would include showering the dogs in love and affection, walking them in the park and taking their pictures. Of course, it didn’t take long before the ad was picked up by almost every major media outlet in the country, including news.com.au, the Daily Telegraph and The Huffington Post, as well as making appearances in countries as diverse as Germany, Holland, the UK and New Zealand. It also generated huge traffic for both Airtasker and Sydney Dogs and Cats Home. More than 31,000 visitors viewed the original posting, while a social media video reached 96,000 Sydneysiders.

The scheme was the brainchild of brand experience agency Banter and Airtasker, who approached the shelter with the idea and asked them to get in touch if a particularly good litter came along. “We treated the Airtasker platform as a marketing channel,” says Aguirre, “that we could use to create activations. We were keen to make everything as organic as possible so it was posted by the animal shelter itself, rather than us. It didn’t seem like a collaboration or partnership.”

The whole campaign cost virtually nothing.

“When I saw this it stopped me in my tracks,” says Five by Five’s managing director, Matt Lawton. “It showed a really intimate understanding of the mindset of someone using Airtasker. It also felt authentic, as readers can easily empathise with a smaller charity that doesn’t run large marketing campaigns. They tailored the campaign perfectly to the platform and while Airtasker isn’t new to market, it’s still in a launch phase and I think this campaign generated the kind of awareness that any start-up would dream of.”

The advert was inspired by the hugely successful 2009 Queensland campaign for the “best job in the world” that saw applicants vie to win a year looking after Hamilton Island. “I just loved the simplicity of it,” concludes Aguirre. “Everything that goes viral is simple. When I saw the job advert, I remember thinking it was the perfect combination and of course you would want to do that.”

“It could have been any ambitious car marque – but Subaru did it”

Subaru’s Impreza collaboration with DriveMyCar

“Both companies benefited and the consumer ended up with an improved experience,” says Lawton. “It was a perfectly constructed way to meet launch business objectives.”

In February, Subaru lent vehicle-sharing service DriveMyCar 101 brand new Impreza models. DriveMyCar, if you’ve not already heard of it, is a new Australian company that lets customers save money by renting other people’s vehicles. Renters get the benefit of knowing they are covered by insurance and breakdown cover, while owners have peace of mind because all customers are vetted beforehand. The collaboration resulted in 20,000 rides for Subaru, a figure that reached such a high number because the company leases its cars to Uber drivers, too.

“It was an incredible marketing opportunity that allowed us to get our car in front of a whole new audience,” Colin Christie, Subaru’s MD, tells Mumbrella. “DMC’s audience is young, too, and it let us talk to them in a way outside of traditional media. Plus, a lot of their customers are Uber drivers, which means they are picking up customers for rides who previously have never engaged with us.”

The process started late last year with a soft trial of Subaru’s five door estate, the Levorg. Then, seven were made available in Sydney and three in Brisbane. “Testing it out in 2016 meant we knew where the opportunities were and we got feedback from Uber,” explains DriveMyCar CEO Chris Noone. “It meant that when we started with the Impreza we had some context and knew where the low-hanging fruit was.”

Like all good collaborations, there were perks for both businesses. Subaru were handed free access to a huge number of potential new customers who got to drive models, or, in the case of Uber, experience being a passenger. More importantly, the 60-year-old Japanese marque also learnt first-hand about how the market will develop in the future. DriveMyCar, meanwhile, got the obvious advantage of having brand new spacious cars that would reassure their customers that their services offer quality models and not clapped out bangers.

“Subaru inserted their brand into a situation where they are helping to create value by solving a problem,” says Lawton. “That’s unusual in automotive. It’s the social media mindset – creating value through utility. Not many brands have cracked that and automotive brands rarely want to share the limelight. Remember, it could have been any ambitious car marque – but Subaru did it and that helps them convey their brand as relevant to a desirable, trend-setting audience.”

Interestingly, Subaru took the decision not to try to overtly measure its success, instead framing this as an awareness exercise. “We didn’t want to put metrics on it,” adds Christie. “But we saw discussion on social media and it received a huge amount of press coverage. We’re now doing a similar initiative with our XV model and working out ways to let customers engage more.”

“We’re more than just a graduate factory”

University of Sydney’s Unlearn campaign

Johanna Lowe, the deputy director of marketing and communications at the University of Sydney, is remarkably candid about the issues unis face in advertising themselves to potential students. “A lot of higher education marketing is about shining faces and people graduating,” she says, “and so it’s difficult to distinguish yourselves as things get more competitive.”

Her solution, then, was to focus their campaign around “unlearn”. The idea being that a good course should make you think and challenge perceptions, as well as leading to a job at the end. “The teaching component is just one side of the story,” she continues. “And we have to be more than just a graduate factory. We asked, ‘What is the outcome for a graduate beyond a piece of paper?’ There is skills and experience and we wanted to communicate that. We give you skills that include being able to think critically, work in teams, solve problems and make friends during a critical period in your life.”

The university’s campaign, however, was designed to be more than just a slogan. Course syllabus were redesigned to put an emphasis on encouraging students to be more inquisitive, subjects were made available to be taught remotely, while one department worked on a computer program designed to analyse speeches, articles and tweets to see if they were being deceptive.

“The out-of-home campaign was arresting,” says Lawton. “It borrows from contemporary language, a meme-like term expressed with simplicity and very powerful. All successful launches have what we call a ‘golden thread’ that takes the core proposition and ensures it is reflected not just in the communication but in the experience, too. Sydney Uni has treated this re-positioning campaign as a launch and committed to differentiation, knowing their competition is not just other universities but the whole concept of tertiary education.”

The challenge was that not only do universities have far smaller budgets than most equivalent sized organisations, but that there is far more scrutiny involved when public money is at stake. Not only that, but that same pressure meant that adverts had to speak to not just potential new recruits but alumni and staff. “We had to be mindful of being too provocative because we are quite a broad church and we have to serve all of our audiences. Plus, we don’t have the dollars other commercial agencies do and our public money equals responsibility.”

The advantage they had, however, was that the university was continually generating content that could be used to activate the campaign. As well as the paid-for posters and print adverts, videos and information were posted on the university’s website. “People have a fixed view of us because we were the first university in Australia. We have a traditional perception so we wanted people to think differently.”

“There’s not a lot of good news in Europe now – and we pivoted off that”

Tourism Australia and Buzzfeed’s Aussie News Today

In the ever-changing world of social media, it’s seemingly impossible to judge which bits of content will take off and which won’t, something Emily Perrett, Clemenger BBDO Sydney’s MD, discovered when launching her agency’s campaign for Tourism Australia. “Our first monster hit was a video about Patissez in Canberra, a cafe that mixes these mental milkshakes called Freak Shakes,” she explains. “It’s had 6m views, reached more than 25m people and had 12,500 shares. It’s one of those unpredictable moments.”

In October, Tourism Australia launched a six-month campaign to encourage young people to visit on a working holiday visa. This included Aussie News Today, a lighthearted video series showcasing the best bits of the country, and a partnership with Buzzfeed that saw eight young Europeans go on a three month road trip where they shared their experiences on the site. By the time it’s all done, there will be 800 pieces of content and highlights so far include kangaroos fighting in the suburbs, close encounters with crocodiles and, of course, those extravagant desserts.

“If you’re living in Europe, the political and economical environment is a bit tense,” says Perrett. “There’s not a lot of good news floating about so we pivoted off that. We wanted to show people what life Down Under would look like if they just packed up and took off.”

The campaign was important because young travellers generate huge amounts of money for the Australian economy. Despite representing only 25% of international arrivals, they’re responsible for 46% of visitor spend. However, working holiday visas, the primary method of allowing 18-30 year olds to be employed, have seen a slight decline in applications in recent years. In order to stem the tide, Clemenger BBDO focussed all their efforts on social media and made sure its content was as shareable as possible. “It’s where our audience is spending their time. It was a very deliberate decision to stay out of mainstream media.”

The other advantage of using social media was being able to target different types of content to different audiences. “Germans tend to be a bit more interested in the Red Centre and the Northern Territory while Italians like the wildlife more than most,” she says. “But because we’ve got so much content, we can balance the messaging with what we’re showing people about the country. We’ve got something that appeals to everyone.”

So far, the Aussie News Today social channel has reached 19 million 18-30 year olds while its videos have been viewed 8.2m times and had 700,000 pieces of engagement. Via earned PR, the entire campaign has reached 201 million people globally, which equates to an ad spend of $2.6m.

“The premise is exciting,” says Lawton. “It’s a chance to take brand Australia beyond the mainstream paid campaigns we all know. It shows they’ve understood the customer, the role this content plays in their decision making and that if the content is good enough, the audience will drive the earned media dollars. This is an initiative that launched with relatively modest support and grew its audience over time through sustained effort. You have to admire the commitment to tackling the insight. It’s in my top five for that reason.”

“Planning even simple stunts can unravel levels of complexity”

Village Roadshow and IT the movie

“You’re not doing stunts for the audience who see them live,” explains Lawton. “You are doing it for the subsequent shares.”

All of which means experiential agency Mr Glasses can break out the popcorn after tieing hundreds of red balloons to drains around Sydney to promote Stephen King’s horror movie IT, which tells the story of killer clown Pennywise. It wasn’t so much its huge coverage nationally – with big mentions in The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and Daily Mail Australia – but appearances in worldwide media. A quick search reveals spots in music mag NME, Lad Bible and even British newspaper The Sun. It’s an impressive feat considering the whole campaign cost less than $10,000.

“The balloons are accessible yet also iconic,” Mr Glasses MD Chris Campbell told Mumbrella earlier this year. “It’s something that allows people to automatically put two and two together.”

Five by Five’s managing director, Matt Lawton.

And foreseeing a potential backlash about the mess that could be left behind, the agency even had a detailed clean-up program devised from the start. “We spoke with an environmentalist to make sure the balloons were recovered a couple of hours after they were placed and all the strings as well,” added Campbell. “We then recycled them afterwards so there was no backlash and reported back to the client on everything that we did.”

It’s a challenge Lawton can sympathise with. “Planning even simple stunts can unravel levels of complexity that surprise you,” he says. “We once sent a curry and lager into space to help launch a new TV show. We did a lot of research on what was likely to happen. We wanted to know where the kit was likely to land so as it could be safely recovered. That bit took almost as long to plan for as the stunt itself! The team at Village Roadshow and Mr Glasses again proved that even with a small budget launch, you can do something evocative without foregoing our wider responsibilities as marketers.”

SPONSORED BY Five by Five

Five by Five Global is an independent global communications agency that specialises in launch marketing and has offices in Australia, UK and US.

topics Airtasker buzzfeed Five by Five Launch marketing Matt Lawton Subaru Sydney Dogs and Cats Home Tourism Australia Uber University of Sydney

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