Every year, MLA aspire to create the greatest cultural impact on a limited budget. This means making an annual film that cuts through the noise, connects with a broad range of consumers and gains wide organic reach.

We created an online film as a big, bold piece of entertainment designed to spark an immediate, emotive, and cultural reaction. We used a poignant cultural insight around the ‘generation gap’ to create an idea that was captivating to all audiences, whilst still being linked to MLA’s enduring brand messaging of unity.

Lamb’s brand essence is unity. As a meat that is often chosen for shared meals, like barbeques or banquets across many cultures and communities, our campaign is based on the idea that lamb brings Australians together. So each year, in an almost ‘State of the Nation’ style of commentary, we playfully examine what cultural, political or social tensions are keeping us apart.

While the Generation Gap is a global phenomenon, there are local nuances that are pertinent for Australian audiences:

For example, Australia’s property market is distorted, and buying their first home is an impossible dream for many young people without the help from “The Bank of Mum and Dad.” Investors, predominantly older, are given tax incentives and discounts while younger Aussies live for years at home in the hope of saving a deposit.

Despite this injustice, there is also a perception of older Australians (boomers) of Gen Z and Y youth as being coddled and entitled, with a ‘what’s in it for me’ mindset.

The older man at the end of the film is Sam Kekovich, he has been our ‘Lambassador’ since 2005. He’s well-known to Aussies over-40, but not to under-40s. We made light of this fact with the joke at the end where someone mistakes him for another older, white male – John Howard, who happens to be our nation’s longest-serving Prime Minister which many young people will not remember.

For many shoppers, lamb is an infrequent purchase. Our biggest challenge is ingrained shopping behaviours: Australians eat just 7kgs of lamb annually, compared to 50kgs of chicken.

By the end of 2023, Lamb sales had become dangerously reliant on older Australians who grew up with the tradition of a family ‘lamb roast’ dinner. Over-60’s accounted for a third of sales yet are just 23% of the population. While under-35’s accounted for just 16% of sales yet are 44% of Australia’s population.

We needed this generation’s support. Compounding the challenge, under 35’s have decreased spending power, at a time when Aussies were already battling inflation and interest rate hikes. Budgets were under intense scrutiny, with premium food purchases the first to go.

Our brief: Win back all Aussies’ hearts and minds, to drive record sales uplifts over summer. With three objectives:

Make Lamb famous,

Make Lamb more desirable,

Drive volume sales.

Australian Lamb needs to appeal to all Aussies, young and old, male and female. Whether they are the main grocery buyer or consumers. For the past decade its strategy being ‘unity’, as the meat that brings Australians together.

Each year, the brand shines a light on a cultural division and places Lamb at the centre of uniting all Australians. At the start of 2024, no cultural division was more prevalent, or of more relevance to Australians of all generations, than the media-exaggerated divisions and stereotypes of generational angst. Exaggerated to such an extent it appeared the generations were intractably divided. Our insight was that ‘it’s not age that divides us, it’s attitudes’.

‘The Generation Gap’ satirised this cultural truth, ensuring every generation was equally made fun of. A uniquely Australian, and Australian Lamb, trait because as Australians we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

The 'Generation Gap’ is dividing our entire nation. As the news becomes more fraught, we’re focusing on our differences. So, it was up to Australia’s favourite annual lamb ad to unite the nation – because nothing brings us together like lamb. We poked fun at every generation, ensuring that while we reached our target millennials, we captured everyone’s attention. We built a literal gap to divide the generations, having it widen as we focused on our differences. Then came the fragrant waft of a lamb BBQ. Suddenly, the generations began to confess their similarities and the gap closed, and Australia was once again united over lamb.

Film was the most powerful medium for big, bold entertainment to spark an immediate, emotive, and cultural reaction and to drive younger audiences to the idea.

From experience, we knew ‘the more eyeballs on the campaign, the more sales.’ With just a six-week campaign there was no time for a slow build-up. The approach to PR implementation was to ‘fire a rocket’, maximising views from the very first day and sparking and sustaining cultural conversation.

Day one the 3-minute hero film launched simultaneously on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Embargoed media pre-pitching sparked nationwide coverage, the film aired in full on the biggest nightly national news bulletin. Live interviews with Lambassador Sam Kekovich supporting the launch across mainstream TV and radio media.

Two weeks after the launch, native content extended the cultural conversation spanning the hugely popular satirical platform The Betoota Advocate to the more high-brow Guardian.

While influencer content pitted two generations from famous families against each other to further extend the conversation around lamb four week into the campaign.

Even amongst the lauded Australian Lamb campaigns, ‘The Generation Gap’ smashed its objectives and set new records for MLA.

Unable to buy national reach, Lamb earnt fame through views and coverage. In just 6 weeks, it was viewed 25,184,426 times, talked about in 875 articles including the New York Post, Fast Company and The UK’s Independent, and earnt an OTS of 282,300,000.

It made Lamb more desirable. A national YouGov survey found 38% of Millennials stated they were more likely to purchase Lamb after seeing the ad, 36% of Gen X, and almost 1 in 3 Gen Z and Baby Boomers.

And drove record volume sales. To be precise 1,417,694 kgs more lamb sold, a staggering 19% volume uplift vs prior year, reaching Lamb’s highest ever volume share of 9,9%, gaining +0.8% share of the entire category.

Life imitating advertising, with Lamb barbies for all ages enjoyed right across Australia.