In Australian culture we have a phenomenon called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’, where ambitious people are verbally or emotionally cut down. Basically, nobody is meant to be better than others, nobody is allowed to stand out. This is bad news for ambitious business owners, and even worse for the brokers who help insure them.

CGU Insurance, Australia's leading insurer for small businesses, set out to change the nation’s view of ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ by creating a B2B integrated campaign like no other, including a 5-minute long film created with the Jim Henson Company.

To change Australia’s attitude towards ambition and draw attention to the issue, we developed the idea of ‘Tall Poppy’, a not-so-little girl who is ambition personified. Poppy faces the same challenges as our small business owners, misunderstood and bullied by those around her, but like our small business owners, she won’t be cut down and her ambition prevails.

The ambitious nature of this approach was designed to spark the conversation directly with small business owners and brokers on what it means to be a ‘Tall Poppy’ giving small business owners the confidence to stand tall.

Our aim was to target business insurance brokers, in a world usually dominated with dull, uninspiring messaging. There are 12k insurance brokers in Australia. Our Tall Poppy narrative spoke to them directly by creating a B2B campaign to elevate their role in culture: to nurture and protect their client's ambition.

The ‘Tall Poppy’ film was created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop using a technique which has never been done before. This involved taking tabletop puppetry that has always been a minimalist performance art form for theater and bringing it into the world building of feature films. Each puppet was shot individually, the puppeteers were digitally removed and the characters were composited into computer generated backgrounds.

We launched in mainstream media (TV, cinema, online) in February and the film premiered nationwide during 60 Minutes, ran on TV, BVOD, cinema, digital and direct to broker video mailers.

Says Jim Henson “This is a Tall Poppy of a production because we're doing something that's never been done before… What we wanted to do was take tabletop puppetry that has always been a minimalist performance art form for theater and find a way to bring it into the world building of feature films.”

Launching February 20 2022, the campaign film achieved an incredible 230k YouTube views in it’s first two weeks. These promising results suggest two things. One. This idea has directly tapped into the cultural phenomena of Tall Poppy syndrome in Australia. Two. By leveraging an unexpected and innovative entertainment format, we delivered impact and cut-through in a cluttered, uninspiring category. The campaign received high engagement and reach:

The campaign received high engagement and reach:

61 pieces of earned coverage secured across print, broadcast (TV & radio), online and social.

100% neutral to positive brand sentiment with all referencing CGU Insurance with a reach of 18 million.

98% of people watched 5 min film through on 60 minutes.