• Situation

Three months into a second lockdown vaccination rates in Australia were cripplingly low, partly due to misinformation about vaccine side effects. Australian businesses and workers were suffering, not least pubs and clubs which were chained closed.

On the face of it, the path to our doors reopening was clear. We just needed to hit the vaccination milestones set by the NSW state government...there was just one problem. 30% of Australians were expressing some form of hesitancy in getting the vaccine.

• Brief

Use TAB’s National Reach to do something to remind people that their local pubs and workers were suffering.

• Objectives

Enter the side of pro-vaccine to urgently speed vax rates to the 80% target.

Create PR for the TAB brand that positions itself as bigger than the bet.

Make a tangible and visible change that showed we were pro-vax, that we were more than talk.

30% of Australians were hesitant to get vaccinated, holding a natural “mistrust of authoritative members of society such as government officials, scientists, and health care professionals.” In short, our audience didn’t like being told what to do.

We did know however that “vaccine hesitant or resistant people are more receptive to messages regarding COVID-19 if they are delivered by individuals within non-traditional positions of authority and expertise.” We just needed to find the right motivation.

It became clear that what our hesitant audience was missing most, wasn’t the stuff filling government campaigns, it was their Saturday ritual of watching sport with mates at their local.

We needed to:

Get: Aussie blokes

Who: Didn’t like being told what to do by the government

To: Feel they were getting vaccinated on their own terms

By: Showing vaccination was the ‘key’ to unlocking their beloved locals

Proposition:

For the love of your local

An overnight branding change from TAB to JAB in social and physical locations. Backed by PR and picked up TV Broadcast and radio programming. Social media encouraged people to tag their ‘local’ and tell stories of what they missed about it. In advertising we documented the empty streets and pubs with sentimental music. And in national press we published real stories as told by Aussies about their ‘Local’. JAB was a simple message you couldn’t escape.

A name change. A call to action. An activation. A PR tool.

This campaign was run nationally from mid September 2022, with the bulk of the paid media focused in Australia’s two biggest states that were the hardest impacted. New South Wales and Victoria.

Vaccine rates accelerated faster than expected and both states reopened weeks ahead of schedule. We like to think Australia’s biggest wagering country with 1.5 million active customers helped create that acceleration.

30% were more likely to get the jab

Over 60% felt more positive about the brand

We shifted preference with 60% of younger punters more likely to use TAB

Earned reach of 32 million

Took off on Twitter with 4.8M impressions (33% higher than AU benchmark).