There’s no shortage of transport options to and from Sydney Airport; train, bus, shuttle etc. Add to the mix, increasingly popular ride sharing services like Uber, and it’s no surprise that less people than ever are opting to drive and park.

So why aren’t people opting to park at the Airport? Cost? Time? Effort? Research showed that it wasn’t just one reason. The combination of all of these factors had led people to begrudge the overall parking experience.

It was clear that addressing individual pain points wasn’t going to help us dramatically shift the dial. We instead needed to focus on making people feel differently towards the overall experience.

But how could we get people loving, not loathing, airport parking?

Now, we know that parking is a particularly dry and unsexy subject, so it was important we inject some good old-fashioned Aussie humor to get our audience to take note. Not taking ourselves too seriously and showing our ability to laugh at ourselves would go a long way with Aussies who love a little irreverent and self-deprecating humor – after all, this is parking, not rocket science!

We looked to the content and recognizable formats that Aussies already know and love to inspire us. Is it just us, or is there now a reality TV show for just about anything? Reality TV shows like ‘The Airport’ – which simply show the behind the scenes goings on at the airport are being watched by everyday Aussies. So why not a reality show about parking?

Our approach was to create a mockumentary series about the staff at Sydney Airport Parking filmed in the style of “Border Security” or “Bondi Rescue” portraying SAP in that comedic self-deprecating light we aimed for.

To make our mockumentary a success, we needed some well-known and much-loved Aussie comedians to play a starring role. Enter, BONDI HIPSTERS.

BONDI HIPSTERS (https://www.facebook.com/BondiHipsters/) are a Sydney based comic duo who are well known for their award-winning work spanning web and tv series, amassing over 200 million views since their inception. People love their dry wit and their previous characters - they were the perfect creative partner to shine light on life at the airport.

Our strategy was to take this much-loved FORMAT and mix it with a little BONDI HIPSTER HUMOUR to create CONTENT (about parking!) that people actually wanted to watch.

With a small budget and no creative agency, we created our humorous 4-part mockumentary series where we followed parking attendants, Keith & Brent, in their day-to-day life working at Sydney airport parking.

They gave us a glimpse of the daily challenges they faced, including troublesome customers. This allowed us to make the experience a little more relatable and highlight (somewhat ironically) the problems faced by staff and customers alike, from never ending parking scenarios to the ridiculous questions and complaints the staff deal with daily.

To maximise our dialogue with our viewers and fans, we also created a Keith and Brent Facebook page. This page not only housed the longform content but allowed the Bondi Hipsters to INTERACT with viewers in real time as Keith and Brent. These comedic interactions led to a positive sentiment rather than the usual negative sentiments usually found on the SAP corporate Facebook page.

Our main objective was to increase sentiment around parking at Sydney Airport, and that we did!

We turned it around: Pages previously filled with negative comments were suddenly flooded with love for the brand. The videos received 99% positive reactions across Facebook and Youtube* and the social pages were filled with positive comments.Overall, the content was watched 1,216,700 times across Facebook and Youtube with an engagement rate of 0.77% on Facebook (Over 4 times higher than the industry average of 0.17%) and Aussies actively interacted with it. We saw 2.5m engagements with the content and 1,047 comments across the initial campaign period**.

Not only was sentiment positive, but our content led to a 21.4% lift in purchase intent*** (vs benchmark 7%) and a massive 61% lift across our core male 45-54 year-old target audience. We also alleviated any discrepancies with cost, with a 40% increase in cost awareness.