MLA goes West Side Story with musical satire on Australia’s Culture Wars
The wars between Australia’s left and right have been turned into a Broadway-style musical in Meat & Livestock Australia’s annual Summer Lamb campaign.
The singing and dancing “Lamb Side Story” includes a version running to nearly three minutes. The pastiche on the 1961 musical West Side Story is set up for viewers by a suburban mother cooking lamb for her kids on a barbecue before urging them:
“Quick kids – go inside. It’s the extreme left and right wing commentators represented as Broadway musical style street gangs – a satirical commentary on our current divided political climate.”
The campaign has once again been created by The Monkeys and directed by Paul Middleditch – who said last year that making the previous MLA summer campaign based on controversy around the date of Australia Day was one of the proudest moments of his life.
The ad features the right wingers dressed in blue – singing “If you are right, your are right about every single issue” – while the left, dressed in pink, hit back on equal rights and climate change.
“Stop with with your political correctness, now we can’t even celebrate Christmas,” the right wingers then counter.
The ad once again features a cameo from Sam Kekovich, who kicked off the MLA’s summer campaign – then centred on Australia Day – more than a decade ago.
“Well I’m to scared to cause offence, that’s why I’m sitting on the fence,” a man sitting on a white picket fence responds before Kekovich squirts him with a hose and tells him to get off his fence.
Kekovich’s cameo continues his long association with the MLA summer campaign
The ad ends with both groups agreeing to enjoy a barbecue together.
Scott Nowell, co-founder and chief creative officer at The Monkeys, said in a press release: “There’s nothing like lamb and dancing to bring people with various levels of outrage together.”
MLA chief marketing officer Lisa Sharp said: “Lamb as a brand stands for unity and this latest campaign shines a light on what unites us rather than divides us. We are celebrating our nation’s ability to put aside our differences and join together over our love of lamb, the meat that brings everyone to the table.”
The new ‘Lamb Side Story’ ad is the first campaign to be released following the departure of MLA’s previous lead marketer, Andrew Howie, who left in October last year to join Westpac as its head of advertising.
The campaign is set to run across digital, social, television and cinema.
The Nova Network and The Beetoota Advocate will support the campaign by encouraging Australians to embrace ‘Lambnesty’ and put aside their differences.
The new campaign is a continuation of MLA’s ‘You Never Lamb Alone’ brand positioning which includes last year’s Australia Day Lamb campaign and its controversial Spring Lamb campaign which featured religious figures and aliens all sharing lamb in a non-religious woman’s backyard. The campaign was eventually banned by the Advertising Standards Board because of the offence it caused to Hindus by showing the vegetarian Lord Ganesha eating meat.
West End Story:
The ad is not the first time MLA has taken a musical approach. Last July, MLA promoted beef with a troupe of singing butchers.
https://youtu.be/6fAZrk_7mVc
Credits:
MLA – Chief Marketing Office – Lisa Sharp
MLA – Brand Manager – Anna Sharp
MLA – Acting Brand Manager- Rebecca Tearle
MLA – Assistant Brand Manager – Jasmin Koch
Creative Agency – The Monkeys
Executive Creative Director / Partner – Scott Nowell
Creative Director – Scott Dettrick
Art Director – Scott Zuliani
Copywriter – Tim Pashen
Head of Planning – Michael Hogg
Planner – Charlotte Marshall
Head of Production – Thea Carone
Senior Producer – Jade Rodriguez
Group Content Director – Humphrey Taylor
Senior Content Director – Katie Wong-Hee
Content Manager – Victoria Zourkas
Content Executive – Will Davies
Production Company – Plaza Films
Director – Paul Middleditch
Executive Producer – Peter Masterton
Producer – Alex Taussig
DOP – Daniel Ardilli
Post Production – The Editors
Editor – Stu Morley
Sound house – Song Zu
Composer – Remesh Sathiah
Media Agency – UM
Group Director – Mike Worden
Senior Client Director – Tim Rogers
Sydney Strategy Director – Chris Colter
Strategy Director – David Toussaint
Partnerships Manager: – Jessica Ngu
Partnership Trader – Emily Ng
PR Agency – One Green Bean
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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topics
Advertising
Lamb Side Story
Meat and Livestock Australia
MLA
Paul Middleditch
Sam Kekovich
The Monkeys
Pretty indulgent…
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less politics, more lamb please.
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Is it ok to stereo-type gay men as mincing prancing pansies on the grounds that its a store? I don’t think so.
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A take on a 60 year old musical that has been parodied too many times. I stopped buying lamb on Australia day when the ads lost their humour. They would sell more product re-playing 2015 “Project Boomerang” rather than this unfunny, unimaginative garbage.
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Politics does not dominate the lives of typical Australia, outside of the inner Sydney media/politics/business bubble. Most people are not on Twitter. This won’t have any resonance with a family in suburban Adelaide or Brisbane, or Sydney for that matter.
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OK, so it’s quite clever but not all that funny (except for Sam’s cameo). Maybe that’s the problem – bring back Sam.
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What an echo chamber the Monkeys’ office must be…
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Hahahahah – Nailed it.
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Few issues with this.
– MLA has lost it’s relevance in launching this just ahead of Australia Day. Might have well have launched it at the start of summer for a better ROI, as there’s no real link to Australia Day anymore. Presume there’s been a wear-out in anticipation of these ads amongst audiences as well, as they’ve lost the campaignable link that holds the executions together.
– The days of long form video content are pretty numbered, and the branding comes through right at the end. Would love to see audience completion rates or drop off figures….
– Lack of a clear and unique reason to believe – a hyperbolic reason to believe that it’s ‘one thing we can all agree on’ could be applied to push any old product
Good luck to them, but I still find it astounding considering MLA’s business model that relies on the struggling farmer’s hard earned to find their output, that MLA continues to shoot money into the air to parade this stuff that gets worse year on year, and has probably one of the most ineffective non-working to working media ratios in the country. But I supposed The Monkeys would be happy with that…
If I was a farmer paying my levy, I’d be asking to see some trended scan data and ROI figures…… and preferably for a new marketing team to supply them….
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I’m surprised so many people are happy to be credited for this terrible short film.
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Seriously monkeys people. Get out of Surry Hills, Bondi and the Northern Beaches occasionally.
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Seems like the creatives are forgetting their target audience is not their mates in Surry Hills.
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Given that the lamb ads keep winning Effies and effectiveness awards, someone, somewhere, has data to prove these ads do the job at selling lamb…. maybe that’s what the farmers are interested in.
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zero humour. music poor. no class.
Looking to liven up your brand by bringing politics into the discussion…..now that’s a new one.
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The Monkeys probably need to have a look at their own diversity beyond the Bondi/NYC/London triangle. This is way out of touch, and is just not funny. Though Sam K gives some reprieve.
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unwatchable. wtf has happened over at the Monkeys? How did this possibly get beyond concept stage?
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I was hoping to see the positive impact the Accenture acquisition has had on The Monkeys.
Instead it’s more like Arthur Andersen, in that this ad is a colossal waste of money and will fail.
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……….on the grounds that its a satire
[I’ll spell-check next time]
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If it won an award it must be good… there is a reason why award participation is on the decline. Just because some former CD judge from Inner city Melbourne said it was good and they have some vanity metric to prove effectiveness doesn’t mean it worked.
Bunnings ads are effective, this is rubbish.
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Up until 2015 each year the MLA would come out with figures of how much more lamb had been sold because of their ads {eg in April 2016 https://mumbrella.com.au/australia-day-lamb-campaign-most-successful-ever-for-meat-livestock-australia-358258}
That was the last time they came out claiming success based on sales.
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Ask MLA to produce an advertisement that appears in prime time and costs $5 million and you might get some traction. Cannot for the life of me understand how this childish nonsense gets beyond concept stage. Hope they paid through the nose for rights to use anything associated with an Academy Award movie and great show. Appalling. Sackings should follow.
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Did they honestly just sing a song about the right and the left….
Pillow please.
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can’t someone please mention the emporer’s state of undress?
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Neither the average lamb-chop chewer nor the person that reared the sheep live within twenty blocks of this cheesy cul-de-sac. Sure, plenty of back-slaps and in-jokes for people whose hobbies include live-tweeting during Q&A, writing letters to the editor of The Guardian, but f*ck me just make a lamb-chop look delicious and let me go about my business.
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This gives me pause for a long WTF. Did I just read the CMO say that it is “the meat that brings everyone to the table” and “Lamb as a brand stands for unity”??
And we wonder why people hate advertising.
Firstly Lisa, lamb is not a brand, MLA is. Lamb is an animal.
Secondly, would someone really think that a food brings people together? MLA doesn’t have to have a purpose beyond an industry mission. Pretending otherwise is simply Performance Purpose: disingenuous, annoying, and a more than a bit try hard.
I suspect it was The Monkeys that proffered the change in direction for this mighty chop of unification, but wow what a mess.
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Stop beating up on Surry Hills.The people who live here will will dislike or be as disinterested in this rubbish as their family and friends in Baulkham Hills.
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Looks like something that Baz Luhrman would direct and it’s a huge waste of money because it’s typically terrible (John Oliver & I both agree).
A huge step backwards this year, looks like the 2018 Lamb Ad has gone to “La La Land”!
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So bad it’s almost good. I imagine this what you get when you hire Monkeys….
Agency types – it’s time to get out of the Surry Hills bubble.
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This offends me as a raw vegan feminist fluid transgender Atheist who vapes and cross-fits 4 times a week
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Lamb has been positioned as the food that brings people together, whether you like this latest execution or not, for many years – certainly since the first multicultural ad from The Monkeys.
And consumers decide what the brand is. It’s lamb. MLA is just a company practically no one outside of the industry has heard of.
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It’s just waffle, plain and simple. And lamb gobbling Australian’s will hate it.
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It’s great to see that a first world nation that spends $4.5 billion to throw women and kids in rape camps simply because it scores bigot votes is able to get past that and come together in the spirit of late stage mass consumer capitalism.
Because if you can dismiss murder and child rape in the name of making money, you know you’re doing something right.
Some of the mildly sociopathic comments here support the notion that they certainly know their demographic well.
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It’s no wonder this drivel came out, look at all the “Directors” in the credit list.
Agencies are so done.
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Thanks Luke, these are the exact same thoughts I had when reading the comment from ‘The Accountant’.
Also, ‘would someone really think that a food brings people together?’ – uhhhhh, yeah. Because it does and has for thousands of years. Many food brands have this belief at the heart of their strategy.
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lol wot
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Instant dislike from me, and I’m a politically conscious, lamb-eating fan of advertising, musical theatre, and generally most work that comes out of The Monkeys and MLA.
The problem, having sat on it for a day or so, is that no-one really identifies as super “Left Wing”, or “Right Wing”. Sure, you might think of yourself as generally progressive, or conservative, but there’s no middle-ground in this ad – nor does lamb really do the job of closing the divide. What is does do, is make everyone look like a f*ckwit irrespective of your political opinions, regardless of how far left/right you are on the spectrum.
And no-one likes to feel like a f*ckwit. Especially for the eternity of two minutes and forty-seven seconds.
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I bloody want some Lamb.I love it guys. All you muppets hating have got too much time to waste. Get some lamb into you, and smile.
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The very gripe you are conveying is pretty much executed in the whole narrative, can’t you see?
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i agree that average ‘Straya doesn’t give a shit about Left/Right – but would also point out the hurty truth that average ‘Straya doesn’t give a shit about all the other MLA ads, which always seem to have been targetted at adland peers and award programs, not actual meat consumers
this strategic error has been compounded by inaccurate stereotyping of the Right – bit of a clanger to imply in 2018 that the Right doesn’t care about equal rights when it was a Liberal/National Coalition Government that just got marriage equality legislated – a historic step that Labor failed to execute in the 6 years it was in power
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Again, this is the problem. Ask a person outside of advertising if “lamb as a brand stands for unity.” Bollocks.
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Lamb has officialy jumped the shark.
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