The stakes for every summer lamb campaign are exceptionally high. It's the peak buying season and springboard for the year. A 2022 Omicron outbreak left shelves bare, impacting last year’s sales. Raising the stakes even higher.

Yet in 2023 lamb faced two distinctly different challenges to previous years.

Sales, penetration, and affinity skewed precariously towards aging Australians over 60-year-old. Coinciding with a worrying weakness in relevance, and sales, amongst multicultural Australians under 40.

And a new monster, inflation. Cost of living soared to two-decade highs, placing a ‘cut it out target’ squarely on discretionary, premium brands. Like lamb.

The brief was to make more Aussies eat lamb over summer by creating Australia’s most talked about campaign.

Our communication objective was to increase salience by making lamb famous. Our marketing objective was to increase penetration by making lamb more relevant and desirable. Our business objective was to increase value sales.

Irreverent humour is an endearing trait of Australians. And Lamb. To provoke a response Lamb poked fun at all Australians.

Our idea, to satirise the ridiculousness of the term ‘un-Australian’. Uniting Australians in celebrating what makes Australia a great nation, our diversity. Because we’re all a bit un-Australian, that’s what makes us Australians.

‘un-Australian’ was so pervasive it was big enough to be its own country. So, we created ‘Un-Australia’. An infinite cultural exile where Australians ever accused of being ‘un-Australian’ were banished.

To appeal to younger Australians, we executed the idea with entertaining content on shareable platforms.

Google research found 2-3-minute films perform best. A 3-minute hero film ran on YouTube, with bespoke 15” and 6” Instagram and TikTok teasers. With TV maximising reach.

Amplified by outdoor near national icons and events. Ridiculing the ‘un-Australian’ boastfulness of the ‘Great Barrier Reef’ and the Kyrios vs Djokovic AO exhibition match.

Lamb’s essence is ‘Unity’ focused on bringing people together. Developed after ethnographic research discovered a genuine difference about lamb meals. Unlike chicken and beef, Lamb’s mostly a shared experience, a meal bringing friends and families together.

After droughts, fires, and pandemics Australia's unity was battered. And the country had radically changed. 7 million (30%) Australians were born overseas. 11 million (48%) had a parent born overseas. Leaving a diverse nation struggling to know who we are as Australians. Lacking a sense of unity, asking “who are we?”

Yet quick to label anything ‘un-Australian.’ A term revived by Prime Minister John Howard in the 1990’s to call out behaviours contrary to Australian values, by 2022 it was an overused and ridiculous term for trivial differences.

OUR CRITICAL INSIGHT: As we struggle with what it means to be Australian, one expression, far from uniting us, has become a ridiculous term of division…’un-Australian’.

Since 2015, Lamb has focused on a brand essence of ‘Unity’. Developed after ethnographic research uncovered a meaningful difference about Lamb. Unlike chicken or pork, it’s mostly a shared experience; bringing friends and families together.

In 2022 Lamb faced two major challenges. Firstly, it was precariously reliant on older Australians. Over 60’s accounted for xx.x% of sales (2) yet are just 23% of the population. While under 35-year-olds accounted for just xx.x% of total lamb sales (3) despite being 44% of Australia’s population.

Secondly, Australians were being crushed by soaring inflation and rapid interest rates hikes. Lamb cost AUD$19.13/kg vs chicken’s paltry AUD$6.25/kg, a 300+% price premium. Tough to swallow at the best of times, let alone when Aussie budgets were suffering.

Our challenge was to create fame, relevance, and desire for lamb in the face of weak affinity with younger 'evolving Australians' and more affordable chicken and beef market leaders during a cost-of-living crisis.

As a nation, Australia has radically changed. Over 11 million Australians (48%) have a parent born overseas. 7 million (30%) are born overseas. Changing our sense of self as people and as a nation. Culminating in Australians asking; ‘who are we?’, in the middle of an identity crisis struggling to know who we are as Australians.

Yet ironically quick to label anything, and almost anyone, as ‘un-Australian’. A cultural term that had become a meaningless proxy for any difference however small.

Our insight: as we struggle with what it means to be Australian, there’s one expression, that far from uniting us, has become a ridiculous term of division…’un-Australian’.

The use of the term was so pervasive it was big enough to be a country of its own. So we created ‘Un-Australia’. An infinite cultural exile where Australians accused of doing something ‘un-Australian’ were banished (pretty much the entire population). Hapless Australians labelled ‘un-Australian’ for the most ridiculous reasons: accidentally switching to a subtitled foreign film not the cricket, eating a meat pie with a knife and fork, not knowing the lyrics to our ‘proxy national anthem’ Khe Sanh.

Epic, provocative entertainment has been at the heart of Lamb’s summer campaign success, as it’s delivered invaluable free exposure to an increasingly fragmented national audience.

Knowing that media networks and social channels were hungry for entertaining content, and happy to embed the film, our campaign focused on a 3.07 hero film.

To drive relevance with under-35’s YouTube, TikTok and Instagram were lead channels. 6” and 15” films specifically crafted for each platform, enticing audiences to our hero long-form film.

Extending the campaign, to further satirise the ridiculous divisiveness, we placed mobile large format outdoor executions near national icons and high-profile national events. Gently ridiculing the ‘un-Australian’ boastfulness of the ‘Great Ocean Road’ and ‘Great Barrier Reef’. Even hijacking the nation’s biggest sporting event in Summer, the Australian Open, and it’s ‘un-Australian’ exhibition match between Nick Kyrios and Novak Djokovic.

Communication Objective #1: Make Lamb famous.

Result: 999 articles, 212,000,000+ OTS, Australia’s No.1 trending YouTube video, 11,948,000 total views, lamb’s most viewed ever.

Communication Objective #2: Increase salience

Result: +6% Awareness, triple target.

Marketing Objective #1: Make lamb more relevant

Result: +11% brand affinity, 2.75 times target.

Marketing Objective #2: Make lamb more desirable

Result: +3% ‘worth paying more for’, highest level in 5 years.

Marketing Objective #3: Increase penetration

Result: +3% penetration, 316,000 new households. Under-40 segments ‘Young Transitionals’ +30%, ‘Start Up Families’ +26%, ‘Small scale families’ +10%.

Business Objective: Achieve value sales equal to prior best in 2021

Result: $xxx,xxx,xxx value sales (4) exceeded 2021 by $5,000,000, Biggest ever.

MLA calculate a ‘Farmer ROI’ based on ‘incremental volume’ x ‘over-the-hooks price’ (the price farmers receive). With an over-the-hooks price of $6.89/kg, the campaign generated an incremental 792,000 kgs and a Farmer ROI of $1.84 for every $1 invested.