For years lamb was a staple household meal, celebrated as Australia’s ‘national dish’ on all tables. But with Australians spending less time cooking and eating together, Lamb’s role of bringing people together was fading. And record high retail prices had left them feeling even further apart from Lamb.

Our brief was to create a celebration of unity reminding all Aussies nothing brings us closer together than sharing lamb. With an original, provocative creative idea that could get the entire nation talking.

The campaign had two core objectives. In the battle to get on shopper’s mind we aimed to increase Lamb’s awareness by 2%. And grow Lamb’s retail sales +4.5% over the campaign period.

Australia wrote the book on how to handle a global pandemic in 2020, but as the country watched the rest of the world return to normality in 2021, our continued isolationism together with our strict border policies began to make us feel left out, insular and disconnected. The satirical film ‘The Lost Country of the Pacific’ is a response to the country’s isolation. Australia and the rest of the world have forgotten about each other, and the nation is in danger of becoming a permanent hermit island. However, the power of Australian Lamb inspires some restless Aussie Explorers to send an invitation to the rest of the world to reunite over a Lamb BBQ. We expanded on this idea by actually placing provocative OOH in cities across the globe, inviting other countries and their leaders to a Lamb BBQ down under.

‘Fortress Australia’ wasn't a healthy long-term solution. We’ve toiled for years to put Australia on the map and until recently the world looked to us as one of the safest, most liveable places on Earth. As Australians watched the rest of the world reopen, we were in danger of being left behind or worse... forgotten.

Remind Australians that nothing brings us closer together than sharing Lamb

With a purpose of bringing Australians together, &unique truth as the most multicultural of meats, Lamb targets all Australians.

Lamb adopted a two-stage strategy. Stage one ‘sparked the flames of fame’ with a satirical, topical long-format online film to generate media and consumer conversation. Stage two ‘stoked the flames of fame’ with high-profile OOH in New York, London, Paris, Auckland (and Perth). And not one to miss a a PR opportunity, we topically capitalised on Djokovic’s Australian Open scandal welcoming him to our barbie.

Our 3-minute film launched exclusively on Australia’s highest rating breakfast TV show with a live interview with the brand’s ambassador, Sam Kekovich setting the media agenda and generating maximum media coverage. Immediately afterwards the film was shared across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter to provoke engagement and cultural conversations.

The campaign ran for 6 weeks from the 10th of January 2021.

The campaign provoked widespread national conversation, covered in 1,360 individual pieces of media coverage. From Australia’s national newspaper The Australian to our highest rating radio station KiiSFM. And from National Sky News to France 24. The coverage generating over 274,778,000 OTS, in a country with a population of just 25 million.

The film captivated the nation, becoming Australia’s No. 1 trending YouTube video one day after launch. Over the six week campaign viewed over 10,336,000 times.

On the day the campaign launched, journalists raised the film with the Western Australian Premier. Premier Mark McGowan commenting “Yeah I saw that. The map looks very similar to a map I’ve got in my office so I’m not sure how they got in and filmed it. But it was a very funny ad.”

Australian’s even asked on Reddit if the map of ‘The Entire World’ was available to purchase.

Becoming the talk of the nation saw Lamb’s awareness soar +4%, double our target. And in the face of record prices, perceptions Lamb ‘fits my budget’ leapt +2%, reinforcing its price premium.

As the campaign launched a new Omnicron outbreak dramatically impacted the fresh meat supply chain. Thousands of processing, delivery and retail workers forced to isolate. Resulting in severe out of stocks and empty meat shelves. A Kantar survey finding 53% of Australians weren’t able to find their favourite products in supermarkets.

Despite extraordinary supply chain challenges, which saw the fresh meat category slump –3.3%, lamb sales grew an impressive +3.9%.