If you don’t eat lamb on Australia Day, you’re unAustralian - that’s what former football legend Sam Kekovich has been telling Aussies for 5 years. His annual two-week campaign has made lamb our national meat, breaking sales records each year, earning millions in unpaid media and PR, and creating a new Australian tradition: lamb is to Australia Day what turkey is to Xmas.

In the campaign’s sixth year, our aim was to get more Australians than ever to engage with the campaign by:-talking about lamb;-helping Sam spread the message; -eating lamb in record numbers.

As Australia’s first Lambassador, Sam petitioned the United Nations to create International Australia Day. Because if the world stopped fighting, and had a lamb barbecue (like we do Down Under) it would be a better place.After a send-off from our agriculture minister, Sam embarked on a 33,581km tour of the USA, meeting Tanzanian diplomats, stealing Jackie Chan’s thunder, and chewing the fat with Donald Trump, and Oprah’s Aussie celebrity chef, Curtis Stone – he even had his own Lamb Rap.

The tour was documented in daily segments on Australia’s leading breakfast television show, current affairs programs and online, and was supported in point of sale.

Australians embraced Sam’s lamb message in an unprecedented fashion.

Sam’s videos were watched online by someone every 22 seconds, with a click-through rate on his UN speech of 85%.

Aussies talked about lamb too.

The campaign earnt over $5.9 million in unpaid media and PR – a 95% increase on last year.’And even after 5 years of breaking sales records, we did it again, with retail sales increases of up to 30% compared to last year.

The week leading up to Australia Day is now the biggest lamb sales week of the year.

The Sam Kekovich campaign has made lamb Australia’s national meat.

There’s also nothing Australians love more than taking on the rest of the world.So taking Sam global allowed us to rally the nation behind lamb like never before.

It gave the campaign even more stature and also allowed us to open the campaign creatively, and poke fun at new targets beyond our shores.Which in turn, meant more talkability for lamb as a brand, especially in terms of our annual objective of achieving as much earned media and PR as possible on a modest budget.