With 1.2 million viewers, The Gruen Transfer had the highest rating launch in ABC’s history, beating cult classics, Kath and Kim and Summer Heights High.In their first week, the Gruen ads generated record complaints to the ABC, thousands of comments were posted online and every major newspaper, and radio and television station picked up the story.Over 8,000 viewer-generated ads were made on the website, viewed by over a million people.Gruen is the highest rating show in its timeslot, reaching a high of 1.5 million people, with an excess of over 100,000 episode downloads and streams on the website.

The brief was to get as many people as possible watching the first episode of The Gruen Transfer, a new show on the ABC. Our goal was 800 000 viewers.The target market was both loyal ABC viewers and the wider community.The Gruen Transfer is a television show about advertising and the advertising industry. The strategy of the campaign was to arouse widespread interest in this topic, capitalizing on the fact the ABC is the country’s only commercial-free broadcaster, and the target audience, who primarily existed of ABC viewers, are opposed to television advertising.

The creative solution got the country talking about advertising.We created three fictional products bearing the shows name and made ads for them. We then convinced the ABC to run these ‘ads’ without any call to action or hint that they were fake. The public erupted. Complaints flooded into the ABC and onto websites and forums across the country. The ads sparked debate about advertising on the ABC in every major newspaper, radio and television station.Six further executions revealed the Gruen Transfer, its air date and a website where people could make their own ads for the Gruen products.

The strength of the creative and its originality meant it sparked nation-wide debate on the subject of advertising. Appropriate considering that’s what the Gruen Transfer is about.