Comedy legends Billy Birmingham and Austen Tayshus reunite to launch Subaru Outback ‘Australiana’ campaign via Disciple, Sydney

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Coolangatta.jpgSubaru Australia, via agency Disciple, Sydney, has used the launch of the new, appropriately named Outback SUV, to coax Australian comedy legends, Billy Birmingham (The 12th Man) and Austen Tayshus back together for the first time since 1983.

The pair were approached to create a new Outback TV campaign based on their iconic comedy hit Australiana, which was written by Birmingham and performed by Austen Tayshus.

Australiana was a pun-laden, spoken word comedy piece set around a typical Aussie backyard BBQ and used famous Australian place names, flora, fauna and iconography to tell the story.

Australiana spent an incredible 13 weeks at No.1 on the Aria Singles Chart in 1983 and became Australia’s highest grossing single of all time.

Disciple came up with the idea of paying homage to Australiana as the creative platform for the Outback campaign.

SUBARU-BALLARAT.jpgAgency partners, Tim Brown and Pete Buckley, approached Birmingham about writing the commercials with Austen performing them. The result is a very funny yarn about a quintessential, Outback loving Aussie family trying to organise a holiday road trip with other like-minded families.

The spot, directed by Patrick Hughes from Finch, tells the story of the family discussing who to invite and who to dump from their annual holiday road trip.

Brown said the Disciple team had a great experience working with Billy and Austen when they were reunited to work with Brad Power at Stellar Studios: “Billy is a genius, a perfectionist and a top bloke. It was an honour to have spent so much time crafting the scripts and watching him work,” he said.

SUBARU-SCRIPT.jpgSays Subaru Australia general manager marketing, Andrew Caie: “With Subaru Outback’s rich and proud Australian history, it was the perfect fit for the collaboration with Billy. The original Australiana is a classic and Billy takes the TV commercial version further than we’d ever imagined with some brilliant scripts.

“He then worked with Sandy Gutman (AKA Austen Tayshus), whose iconic vocal chords of course grace the track, to create a series of commercial soundtracks for television, cinema, radio and online.

“It’s a fun campaign and a great way to launch a great new Aussie family car. The Subaru Outback is the perfect SUV for the everyday and for getting off road – it’s the ideal car for Australia.”

The premiere of the first long-play television commercial was at St. George OpenAir Cinema last night, before being rolled out on the television, radio and online nationwide.