In this new AdNews series, we pass the microphone to CMOs and their partner agencies for a frank and honest conversation about their process. For the first session, MyDeal CMO Ryan Gracie and 72andSunny president Ross Berthinussen take us behind the pitch process and rolling out a campaign for the $200+ million eCommerce business.*
Ryan: We're here to talk about the campaign we launched together, the process we went through, the success of it and all the pain and love we felt along the way. Maybe we can start with the pitch process. I'll give it a little bit of a rundown from my point of view.
I came into this business in May 2021. At the time, the ASX-listed MyDeal was turning over about $220 million for that financial year. Even though it had one million active customers and one million people who had shopped with it in the past 12 months, there were still a bunch of Australians who didn't know who MyDeal was. So, it was my job to start to build some brand fame for mydeal.com.au.
I engaged Lydia and Darren at Trinity P3, who I had worked with before. We started out with five agencies in this pitch process, 72 and Sunny being one of those. I did it from this very room, working remotely. We met with those agencies, went through the whole process and got to a point where we were down to three, down to two, down to one.
It was fairly obvious to me from the start that we had an amazing rapport with the guys from 72andSunny. The energy that they brought to the pitching process and the reply to the brief was pretty much spot on. So we knew early on where we were heading. I'll hand it over to Ross to talk about his view on it.
Ross: Yeah, I thought it was a really fun process actually. I think it starts with chemistry, doesn't it. We met your crew and we said what is this brand about? And you played Armand van Helden to us, the My My My song, and you were like...
Ryan: My, my, my, da, da, da...
Ross: I thought this is what it feels like and we loved that. Brands are very emotional and it was a very clear feeling from you from the beginning. You set a tone for the pitch and for the project. I think pitches are about figuring out whether you can work together, because great work is born out of the relationships that you have and that you build. I think we were just connecting well through all the meetings that we had and the work that we shared. So, we had a chemistry.
Then we had a Q&A, where we just threw loads of questions at you and team, and a strategy session. We were like, what's some different strategic playgrounds we could own? We explored brand platforms, like different design systems, and then we kind of locked into one and ran out a campaign.
Ryan: I remember playing that My My My song. I mean, I've danced to it on plenty of dance floors back in my day, and there were two reasons behind playing it. The first one was, trying to convey that sense of energy and the tone of the voice of MyDeal. I could either just sit there and try to articulate that or I could press play and you'd kind of get what I was after. But then, it was also about seeing how the agency would react. I remember pressing play for a few agencies and they had sort of sat there and went, "You know that song? I don't know if I know that song," and didn't really move.
Then there was 72andSunny who got up out of their seats and gave us the shimmy. I knew straight away that this is the kind of chemistry I was after, this is the agency that I'd like to work with. Because you can bring in that energy when you're all in different rooms, sitting a thousand kilometres away. I think I'm going to employ that technique. Although now I've given it away, everyone will dance. So, we'll see what happens next time.
Ross: I think it was part of a bigger unlock as well in terms of brand strategy. There was this feeling but it was a blank page, which got to conversations about difference. How is MyDeal different from eBay and Amazon? Quite a big unlock for us early on together was - it's not different but that doesn't matter. All the great work of Professor Byron Sharp; you don't need to be different, no one thinks of a brand as different, you have to be distinctive. That was great to be able to hold onto. That was a great kind of spark. That helped get to that thought, which was quite a big pivotal kind of strategic building block for the whole pitch, wasn't it?
Ryan: Yeah and that's always been the challenge amongst these challenger brands. Thinking about my time at Catch and now at MyDeal, the question was always, so what makes you different? Why are you different than Amazon? Why are you different than Kogan? Why are you different than anybody? We sell over six million products on the site and those other players also sell millions of products. So, when it comes to the product play, not entirely different.
Experience is where we try to differentiate ourselves. Our CX, our customer service. Then comes the brand play and that tone of voice that myself as a marketer tries to put out there: a little bit of Aussie, a little bit of brashness, a little bit of reverence. There’s now also a distinctive colour palette that 72andSunny brought to the business. We revamped the logo just after I got here. There’s a smile there and that sense of emotion around the joy of shopping. So, we're trying to bring that to the front. I think you said it best: very early on in the process, you identified that it was not about the differentiation, but it was more about the distinctiveness.
Ross: Should we talk a bit about the business objectives?
Ryan: The objective of the campaign was to build some brand fame for MyDeal. As I mentioned earlier, it was a relatively unknown brand despite turning over $200 million worth of revenue per year. We needed to get on that consideration list. When people are thinking about shopping for - well for most things, but primarily home and lifestyle products - they think about us. We needed to be very distinct and that's where we wanted to be able to leapfrog some of the others by using highly recognisable music.
So I played the My My My by Armand van Helden track. 72andSunny took it to a new place with Devo's Whip It, a track that everyone knows. Everyone knows that song. Everyone has rocked out on a wedding dance floor to that track. The highly relevant way they were able to shake Devo's lyrics to make it work for My Deal was genius.
It was amazing. That first time we played it to the crew here, everyone's eyes just lit up and they started bopping along. It became very apparent that there was this shimmy motion that crept into it very quickly and that's the shimmy that we like to own. So just that first part of the brief was aligning ourselves to some music: let's be recognisable, let's be distinct and it all just came to life very quickly.
Ross: I feel like emotion was quite a strong thread. There was a lot of feeling for it, wasn't there? Without being too touchy feely, the brief was very much around how does this brand feel? Then our strategic journey was, let's define that emotion. What's the emotion that we want to own? All our research zeroed in on the joy of shopping. Shopping releases endorphins. We’re hard-wired to feel good when we shop.
Ryan: You know what's amazing? Someone referred to them as 'spendorphins'.
Ross: Yeah, that's it. We found out that in online shopping, because of the delayed gratification, it makes you even happier. That was really interesting because one of the things you do so well at MyDeal, is the delivery of that. You've got the range, the fast shipping. We felt like Amazon was a little bit too kind of corporate and lacked some of that joy, as was eBay. Whereas I think your awesome customer experience, we felt we could own that emotion and own that joy of shopping. Then we were trying to figure out what the system was. What are the assets that we can own? What's the feeling that we can own? Is there a track? There was a whole system that we created around the campaign to just express that feeling across all the different touchpoints.
Ryan: It's been great to see it roll out. Driving on my way home from the shopping centre the other day, I saw the big MyDeal billboard and I could spot it out of the corner of my eye from kilometres away. Just because it just stands out. The really distinct colours, the characters that were created. It's there and it’s front and centre. It's bold, it's vibrant, it's great and it really rolled out well across social. We could keep that going. Just the whole platform lends itself to being extended.
Ross: We agreed to figure out what the system was upfront before getting too much into execution. How do we apply the colours? How do we apply typography? How to work it in motion? How to work it in static? So it all just feels and looks the same.
Ryan: I feel like some brands have those assets as an afterthought. Then they get to a moment where they go, oh shit how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this in outdoor? How are we going to make this work on radio? It feels like we nailed that part up front.
Ross: Hopefully that's a platform for future campaigns as well, isn't it?
Ryan: It feels like it could extend and keep going. It's not stale as yet, so we can keep that going for sure. What about if we talk about some of the challenges? From your point of view, what were the challenges?
Ross: Well, we had to pitch first. That was always a challenge.
Ryan: I'm really cognisant of the amount of work that goes into it. I completely understand. Out of the five that pitched, there were four losers and they did just as much hard work as you guys. But unfortunately, there can be only one. So, that is a huge challenge for agencies. I don't know how else it could work though, until you kind of are on the roster. It's a strange one to have to go through every time.
Ross: Yeah, I understand and I think the actual pitch process was pretty smooth actually. We had a good beat and we had some good discussion and at each session, we brought enough stimulus to make decisions to move on.
Ryan: I carry that through most things I do. I just want to get straight to the point. I don't want to muck around because if you don't get the right feedback, then how can you go back and either adjust or elaborate on what you presented? You need to know exactly where you stand. There was four others competing and I don't want to get to a point where nothing progresses, so I'll always just be very upfront and frank with the agencies because I don't feel like anybody has any time to fuck around.
Ross: It was good because all the way through, you gave live feedback in the room and were super decisive. It was just straight to the point and off we go. We could move at speed which is probably the main big challenge. I mean, budgets were pretty tight as well so when we got into making it and then time…we had, phew, was it 11 weeks? No, six?
Ryan: Pitch to on-air, yeah. From the moment that we decided you guys were the one, then it was five or six weeks. It wasn't much time at all. When you think about just the products that we had to source, the location, the casting, the appointment of the director, securing of the music track, writing in the lyrics, everything that happened in 1.5 months. That was amazing and I think we finished the day before it went to air.
Ross: Yeah. It was a scramble, wasn't it?
Ryan: Even on the day, there were props that weren't there on the set. We were scrambling around to find these things. We're doing a lot of this with us in Victoria, you in Sydney. We shot it up towards Newcastle or something. It was interesting.
Ross: I know we had a super senior team on it, so they can move really quickly and make decisions in the room. All of our crew are senior, that's just the way that we roll because we get to better stuff faster. We worked with internal production teams for social assets and an external production partner to do the campaign, but we did both productions in the same shoot. So, we had one set up, one location, one lot of cast and wardrobe for two crews rolling to do all the different assets at the same time. We didn't put that out to tender, we just chose a production partner. We brought them on board really early, didn't we? Even during the pitch, we had them on board, so they were already involved.
Ryan: Yeah, they had to be a part of the process.
Ross: Yeah, well hopefully you can brief us sooner for the next one.
Ryan: Well, the problem is now you've made a rod for your own back. We understand you can do it in six weeks, so we'll give it seven.
Ross: It's done pretty well, hasn't it, so far?
Ryan: Yeah, it's been great. You know, with limited media budgets, we ran it from early November all the way through to just before Christmas. Lots of great exposure on major networks across TV, BVOD, YouTube, of course social. Outdoor continues, so we're big in outdoor. We're back on TV just for a short stint and we will keep that campaign running up until the end of financial year and then we - as in us two - will start to think about the hard follow-up second album as we call it. So, what do we do next? Whether or not this album has got some longevity in it and we keep playing it. The crowd doesn't seem to be too bored of it just yet. I would say it's been a very, very successful campaign for a player the size of MyDeal and with smallish budgets in comparison to others. I think we've squeezed a lot of juice out of this one. We’re currently now just looking at how we extend that and what other characters we can pull in to keep it fresh.
Ross: We really enjoyed it. I think you can feel it in the work, do you know what I mean? When it's fun to make it, then you can kind of feel it in the work. Thanks for the opportunity.
Ryan: Thank you.
*The transcript has been edited for brevity.
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