The idea: To celebrate Australia, whatever the day. We turned the entire idea of Australia Day on its head, for the first time ever, creating an Australia Day Lamb ad without mentioning Australia Day. Instead, we celebrated ALL the people, cultures and things that make Australia great. The resulting film is essentially the history of Australia told through a barbecue. And we broke a few taboos: We acknowledged that Aboriginal Australians were here before Europeans and the First Fleet. We reframed our refugee issue by pointing out that we’re all essentially “boat people.” And Aboriginal actors and celebrities—including Olympian Kathy Freeman and footballer Wendell Sailor—welcomed the opportunity to join the party and present a more accurate history of Australian history. All of this contributed to getting heaps of press.

The resulting film is essentially a 2.5-minute history of Australia, told through a barbecue. The film was shared only via Meat & Livestock Australia’s YouTube and Facebook pages. Upon the launch of the film, all factors listed above—no mention of Australia Day, tackling the subjects of invasion, refugees, and immigration—all contributed to the film being shared in its entirety across news platforms and discussed in panels and opinion pieces. Additionally, the high-profile celebrities—Olympian Kathy Freeman, cricketer Adam Gilchrist, former footballer Sam Kekovich and footballer Wendell Sailor—contributed to chatter in their own sports and amongst their social followings. Within 2 weeks, more than 8.9 million people (from a population of 24 million) had seen the film.

Despite no above-the-line media spend on the full film, it ran in its entirety on virtually every national Australian news platform, as well as international outlets, such as Buzzfeed, The Guardian and The Huffington Post.

It generated round-table discussions and opinion pieces around the political topics featured in the film and was mentioned by politicians, including the controversial Pauline Hanson. Despite the controversial topic, sentiment - as measured by Millward Brown - was positive, more than double any negative sentiment.

The campaign generated 1,460 pieces of coverage with an opportunity to see of 305,267,021 with a cost per impression of just $0.0004.

The film was the #1 trending video on YouTube Australia, and was viewed more than 8.9 million times - in a country of 24 million people - breaking all prior records for the brand.

The campaign achieved a 22.7% increase in sales over the campaign period.