We created Australia’s biggest crowdsourced documentary, a short film celebrating the lives of our Australians of the Day, from a unique perspective – their own.

Called The Inspiring Story of Us, the 23-minute film was created solely from footage shot by our Australians of the Day.

We engaged one of Australia’s most highly respected and acclaimed feature film directors, Gillian Armstrong, to take the crowdsourced clips and turn them into a film with a cohesive narrative and flow.

Gillian’s stature within the international film industry meant she added significant credibility to the project for earned media channels.

At the hands of such a proficient director, the amateur footage became a moving national portrait and a true reflection of the campaign message – that CommBank is celebrating everyday Aussies who, together, make Australia extraordinary.

We engaged 120 'Australians of the Day' to participate by filming a regular day in their life. Over 55 hours of footage was submitted, which took the director three months to edit into a 23-minute documentary film.

To support the film and drive campaign messaging, we created 60” and 30” trailers, which were amplified nationally across paid digital channels, YouTube and CommBank’s social media channels.

A 60” and 30” trailer were also created for cinema, and played across 289 movie screens around the country.

The film was launched through a major national publicity campaign, supported by Gillian Armstrong and our ‘cast’ of Australian of the Day spokespeople. Interviews and reviews of the film featured in major media outlets across broadcast, print and online channels. We used the individual stories within the film to carve out media angles that tapped into wider national conversations in the lead-up to Australia Day.

The campaign generated mass, national media coverage and over 55.7 million opportunities to see, which is approximately two and a half times the population of Australia. We hit every major online newspaper site in the country, giving us an earned media value of $1.8 million and a return on investment of 6:1.

Most surprisingly in the current media landscape, not only did every journalist we engaged watch the full 23-minute film, most of them admitted to shedding a few tears too!

The content for this phase of the campaign was viewed over 5.3m times and a YouTube survey showed brand interest increased by 21% as a result.

The documentary was embedded as editorial content on the country’s highest reaching news websites, and was played as inflight entertainment (not paid media) on Qantas domestic and international flights for six months.