The latest iteration of Meat and Livestock Australia’s annual lamb campaign has poked fun at online trolling in a bid to connect with a younger audience.
Droga5 has taken the barbecue tongs from the long running, and now absorbed, creative shop The Monkeys, and launched its first summer lamb commercial last week.
The newest campaign, directed by Max Barden from The Sweetshop, takes aim at the controversial comments section on social media.
The official “lamb-assador”, Sam Kekovich, is also back on our screens, for the 20th ad in a series, continuing the theme of bringing a diverse Australia together.
MLA general manager for marketing and insights Nathan Low said the campaign brief is similar every year.
“After such a long track record of success we now have a good understanding of what makes a great Aussie lamb ad,” he told AdNews.
“Every year we aim to engage as many Aussies as possible with the idea that nothing brings us together like sharing Australian lamb.
“For many years now we’ve done this by identifying culturally relevant topics that are causing division and overcoming that with the ultimate unifier, lamb.”
The annual summer campaign last year imagined a world in which the generations have been separated by The Generation Gap, an impassable chasm that keeps each age group away from the others.
This time the commercial was created with 100% Australian comments sourced from online platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook and YouTube.
Low said the challenge is ensuring lamb remains the protein of choice over summer, with Gen Z showing less affinity for it compared to previous generations.
“In particular, the last couple of years, we’ve also been mindful of engaging younger cohorts,” he said.
“That’s one of the reasons we leant into the idea of the comments section this year, but even more so writing the ad with real actual comments to ensure it felt authentic and relevant for that audience.”
However, Low revealed that 99.7% of Australians ate meat in 2023, indicating no decline in consumption.
“Australians love their meat and understand just how nutrient rich a balanced diet featuring animal protein is,” he said.
“Consumption patterns may have changed due to factors like generational change, household budget consciousness, and ethnic diversity, but this has only seen switching between proteins, with no indication that Australians are losing their affinity for eating meat regularly.”
MLA’s annual lamb campaign has become something of an anticipated opener, a start to a new year, in the advertising world.
Last year’s advertisement, The Generation Gap, with more than 28 million views, won six awards at Australian Effie Awards.
The commercial is also in the running for ad campaign of the year at the AdNews Agency of the Year awards, one of eight spots the agency has in the finals.
Low said it takes an army to execute an effective campaign.
“We take a number of risks and leaps of faith which is why the trust between agency and client is really important,” he said.
“Same with the director and production company because we deliberately leave some executional elements open-ended just in case something newsworthy happens and we need to slip in an Easter egg or a new scene at the last minute.
“One of the reasons the Australian lamb ad has remained consistently topical is that our whole agency village is open to being proactively reactive, which continues all the way through media execution and PR post launch.”
Most years MLA sees volume increases of between 5% and 10%, according to Low.
Last year purchase volume increased 19% compared to the previous year with volume per shopping trip increasing 9%.
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