Meat & Livestock Australia’s Spring Lamb campaign has departed from its more political advertising in favour of a more conventional food campaign that illustrates how easy it is to prepare lamb.
The ‘Too Easy’ campaign, by The Monkeys and directed by Matt Kamen, shows a man in a hot tub and a woman having a massage while preparing lamb dishes with minimum fuss.
The integrated campaign is the first to feature the new brand line ‘Share the Lamb’, an evolution of ‘You Never Lamb Alone’.
Past ads illustrated how lamb could bring Australians of all races, cultural backgrounds and religions together for a meal.
Tackling issues of multiculturalism and religious tolerance, You’ll Never Lamb alone ads were regularly among the AdNews top 10 ads of the year, however, a recent spot caused a backlash for depicting the Hindu god Ganesha as a carnivore and was banned.
MLA domestic market manager Graeme Yardy said the aim of the new campaign was to make food central to the storyline.
“We want to remind Australians that it’s easy to bring people together over lamb, no matter the occasion. This campaign celebrates the classic Australian ‘too easy’ culture and builds on lamb’s core positioning of unity and inclusivity,” Yardy said.
“Australian Lamb is such a versatile meat, with many cuts, and works with many flavours, we wanted to make sure the food was central to the campaign storyline.”
The ads are shift from the politically-charged and often controversial You’ll Never Lamb Alone ads of recent years under former MLA marketing boss Andrew Howie, who recently exited the business in 2017, following a successful stint, joining Westpac and, most recently Amazon.
Other MLA Australia Day ads fuelled complaints and calls for bans, but were regularly among the most memorable on TV and had positive impacts on lamb sales.
Read more: Take a look through 12 years of epic MLA ads
The new Share the Lamb brand line appears to tread on much safer ground and it will be interesting to see the impact of this approach.
The ‘Too Easy’ campaign will appear across TV, digital, social, OOH and radio from today, while PR will spread the message across earned media in the coming weeks.
Campaign Credits
MLA - Chief Marketing and Communications Officer – Lisa Sharp
MLA – Domestic Marketing Manager – Graeme Yardy
MLA - Brand Manager – Anna Sharp
MLA – Acting Brand Manager – Kelly Spence Creative Agency -
The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive
Group Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder: Scott Nowell
Executive Creative Director: Vince Lagana
Creative Director: Scott Dettrick
Senior Copywriter: Benn Sutton
Art Director: Alastair Flack
Head of Planning: Michael Hogg
Managing Director: Matt Michael Group
Content Director: Ciaran Miller-Stubbs
Senior Content Manager: Victoria Zourkas
Content Executive: Will Davies
Head of Production: Thea Carone
Senior Broadcast Producer: Kaija Wall
Producer: Katie Bassett
Production Company - Goodoil Films
Director: Matt Kamen
Producer: Helen Morahan
Executive Producer: Juliet Bishop
D.O.P: Shelley Farthing-Dawe
Editor: Dave Whittaker @ ARC Edit Post Production - The Editors
Production Design: Arabella Lockhart
Sound: Song Zu
Media Agency – UM
Senior Client Director: Tim Rogers
Senior Partnerships Manager: Jenny Lam
Partnerships Manager: Anna Cox
Senior Connections Designer: Jonny Day
Partnerships Trader: Yasmin Sherif
PR Agency – One Green Bean
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