Cannes Contenders: PHD Australia

How will Australia perform at Cannes this year? In the lead up to the Festival, Campaign Brief will be showcasing the work we hope will impress the judges…

Nutella: Morning Smiles

PHD Australia

We all know that mornings can be difficult. Prying our eyelids open often requires some motivation. That’s where Nutella comes in; it’s the type of breakfast that’s guaranteed to spread morning smiles. But Australians generally opt for savoury based breakfast – eggs, savoury toast and cereals, instead of delicious, smile-creating Nutella. This is probably why Australia was ranked the sixth grumpiest country in the world! The Nutella “Smile” campaign focussed on changing people’s perception of mornings by bringing optimism and humour to their daily routine. Enter the animated “Nutella Jar” – a life-like computer generated character, who is excellent at identifying people’s morning moods. As people walked past the interactive OOH panels, a talking Nutella Jar would engage with them and ask about their mood. With capabilities for facial recognition, gender differentiation and item identification (such as glasses, number of people viewing the screen together, etc.), our nutty know-it-all could identify people’s moods and transform or amplify it accordingly. After all, smiles are contagious. So if you looked happy, you’d get a smiling Jar. But what about frowns? If our Nutella Jar identified a “got up on the wrong side of the bed” participant, they would get the “Grumpy” jar, reflecting the limited-edition Nutella jars available in store. Participants could then have a photo taken with their Nutella mood jar and have it sent to themselves via SMS or email. In Australia, there were 32,900 interactions, which equated to an average of 49 interactions per panel, every day. As 3.4 million people “passed by”, 1.9 million stopped to watch an interaction or observe the panel. This equates to a 55.2% engagement rate by our target audience, while 100% of the limited edition mood-labelled Nutella Jars were sold!

Doritos: Doritos Collide Clothing Collection

The Doritos Collide Clothing Collection is as ridiculous as it sounds. A corn chip brand bringing out its own clothing range, made for couples during Valentine’s Day, is not what consumers expected from Doritos this year, and that was the point. The salty snacks category is awash with new product releases and to get any level of traction with younger consumers, it had to be more than just availability to attract them to both notice and purchase the brand’s latest innovation. During the lead-up to Valentine’s Day this year, we launched our own bespoke two-headed jumpers so couples could literally collide. This, in turn, promoted our new Doritos Collide range, which saw two new flavours collide in one bag. We parodied global fashion brands’ marketing style with glamorous fashion shoots and Instagram-worthy content to fill consumers’ feeds for days. The campaign has been praised by Doritos as one of the most successful NPD launches in the past 3 years in Australia.

Macleans: Wiggle While you Brush

Kids’ brush-time is tough! It’s hard enough to get them to brush at all, let alone for the full two-minutes recommended by dentists. This was the insight that drove Macleans’ strategy in 2017, in an effort to stem the -18.5% decline in sales in 2016. Therefore, the brand teamed up with iconic Aussie children’s entertainment group, The Wiggles, to launch a new multi-platform campaign, Wiggle While You Brush.The campaign centred around a bespoke two-minute music video, which featured the dental brand’s superhero character, Captain Macleans, teaching kids how to brush their teeth, alongside his new Wiggly allies in the war against tooth decay. Written and produced by the group themselves, the music video was the first time The Wiggles had ever allowed a commercial brand’s character to be featured singing and dancing along with them, essentially allowing Captain Macleans to play the role of the fifth Wiggle. The campaign saw significant support during the year across shopper giants Coles, Woolworths and IGA in Australia, as well as Countdown in New Zealand. Retailer activity included a specially-produced in-store tray, which played excerpts from the Wiggle While You Brush song, as well as significant national consumer promotions, giving families the chance to meet their heroes at The Wiggles’ shows all over Australia and New Zealand. In addition, there was a special Macleans on-ground activation at The Wiggles’ Christmas show, allowing kids to create a personalized version of the music video to share on social media. The campaign resulted in a 41% sales lift YOY, and a 40% increase in Macleans’ share of category.

Canestan: Thrush the Musical

If you can’t talk about it, sing about it! That was the central idea behind Thrush: The Musical, a blockbuster comedic jaunt about a common vaginal infection many women are WAY too embarrassed to admit having. We knew making an ad in somber tones about the symptoms of thrush was not going to cut it with our extremely media-savvy, mobile-obsessed audience. So, with no creative agency involvement and a very small budget, we teamed up with Aussie YouTubers, SketchSHE, and created a Broadway-worthy, huge-cast, big-production, epic musical that women could watch, engage with and talk about. From “Poonanie” to “Vajayjay”, the girls melodiously took viewers on a journey through vagina euphemisms, taking the sting – literally – out of the stigma of thrush. After only one month in market, the video had amassed over 7.3 million views, and despite being aimed at Australian audiences, the content has been shared, picked up and written about by people all over the world – from Botswana to Barbados, the U.S., India and Russia. Best of all, people have contacted the brand to tell them how they loved the video and how it has affected them: ”It really made me think thrush wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Seriously great job!”