As a masculine, techy brand, Samsung Australia has been consistently under-indexing with females over a number of years. So in February this year, they shifted from sponsoring the male Aussie Wallabies rugby team to the female Australian Netball association and their World Cup-holding Diamonds team.

The brief was to leverage this sports sponsorship in softening the brand amongst a millennial (18-34) female audience.

Role Model. Noun.

A person looked to as an example to be imitated.

Our Hero film challenged Australians to Rethink Role Models, by shining a light on our netball Diamonds, and their personal stories of overcoming adversities to make it to the top.

In the film we see a young netballer inspired by our Australian netball Diamonds to overcome her own challenges after being relegated to the bench by her coach. Watching her role models, who overcame adversities in their careers and personal lives to achieve their goals, winning the netball World cup, the young netballer trains harder and never gives up to achieve her own goal and prove them wrong.

We show how much training and hard work goes into being an athlete and yet despite being one of the most played female sports in Australia these role models go unnoticed and uncelebrated.

We launched at the season’s biggest game, screening our film in Sydney’s iconic Olympic Stadium to record-breaking crowds. Our launch event hosted key media influencers and even the Minister for Sports.

#RethinkRoleModels tapped a cultural nerve, picking up 60.5 million impressions in just 24 hours – before any media spend went behind it.

Over the following month, we pushed our content live to a mass female audience, with custom edits for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. Retargeting and native platform tools were used to amplify each ambassador story.

We responded to questionable celebrity behaviour in real time. And used YouTube targeting to hijack poor role model searches, instead serving our more positive message.

Samsung’s credibility in the netball community was cemented too, as #RethinkRoleModels Live toured Australia – from grassroots games through to the professional leagues.

Importantly, we gave our netballers the recognition they deserve, airing a 60second content edit on TV.