Australian Marriage Equality: Case study

Credits & Description:

Company Entering : Airbag, Melbourne
Brand : Australian Marriage Equality
Advertiser : Australian Marriage Equality
Agency : Leo Burnett Melbourne, Melbourne
National Chief Executive Officer : Melinda Geertz
Chief Creative Officer : Jason Williams
Creative : Andrew Woodhead/sarah Mcgregor/katarina Matic
Account Director : Rhys Thomas
Public Relations : Katy Denis
Agency Producer : Eliza Malone
Film Production Company : Airbag, Melbourne
Director : Adrian Bosich
Executive Producer : Martin Box
Post Producer : Nick Venn
Production Assistant : Megan Glass
Post-production Company : Arc Edit, Sydney
Editor : James Ashbolt
Editorial Assistant : Damien Magee/lucas Baynes
Post Producer : Olivia Carolan
Grade Online : Ryan Brett (manimal)/chelsea Nieper (manimal)
Sound Production Company : Nylon Studios, Melbourne
Song : Don't Dream It's Over
Lyrics : Neil Finn
Vocalist : Sarah Blasko
Campaign summary :
In the midst of a postal survey to decide the future of same sex marriage, the ‘no’ campaign was outspending ‘yes’ by 2 to 1. A nation was divided, and homophobic slurs and hatred had begun to dominate the conversation. We knew that most australians would make up their minds within 48 hours of receiving their ballots. The day they arrived was also the night that tv’s biggest celebrationof heterosexual marriage, the bachelor finale was aired. We hijacked the reality show with an emotive 60” spot featuring real wedding footage, supplied by the lgbti community, in a donated media space in the final ad break. Within moments, social media lit up with words of love. Within hours the spot was shared by celebrities, politicians and activists, reaching an audience of tens of millions worldwide. Within 48 hours, the public was raising money to get the spot back on air and the conversation had swung back in our favour. On november 14, australians voteda resounding yes for same sex marriage.
The brief :
In the midst of a postal survey to decide the future of same sex marriage, the ‘no’ campaign was outspending ‘yes’ by 2 to 1. A nation was divided, and homophobic slurs and hatred had begun to dominate the conversation. We needed to swing the conversation away from hate and back to love by appealing to australia’s suburban heartland voters – those who were undecided and who may never have met a gay person, let alone attended a gay wedding. To do this we decided to show true love via footage from real same sex weddings – all kindly donated by the lgbti community after a small social media campaign to get footage.
The strategy :
As the ‘no’ campaign was backed by the catholic church, they could outspend us in nearly every media, with some reports suggesting as much as 5 to 1 (the guardian, september 13, 2017). We couldn’t match them on spend, but we could try and outdo them with impact and emotion. We had just 12 days to pull together a knock-out punch. We wanted to show the bachelor’s audience that same-sex weddings are just like any other, so we put out a call on social media to the lgbti community for their real wedding footage. Viewers of the show are big fans of weddings so we knew that by humanizing and normalizing same sex marriages we might have a chance of swaying their opinion. Their emotive reaction was bigger than we could have imagined and in a media landscape where hate and venom had begun to dominate, our ad put love and compassion back firmly back on centre stage.
The execution/the execution & craft :
We hijacked the bachelor with an emotive 60” spot featuring real wedding footage, supplied by the lgbti community, in a donated media space in the final ad break. Twitter immediately lit up with words of love and support. Within hours the spot was being shared by celebrities, politicians and activists, reaching an audience of tens of millions worldwide. Within 48 hours, the public was raising money to get the spot back on air.
The result :
58% of the voting public were reached, either during the bachelor finale or online. 21.5 million media impressions. All from $0 spend on media, pr or production (the 150k spot during the bachelor was donated by the show’s major sponsor, wrigley’s extra). All footage was donated by the lgbti community, with 68 couples agreeing to take part. The spot received more views, likes and shares than all other content created for both yes and no sides, combined. A majority of 61% of australians voted yes, and the australian government passed the legislation by christmas. Now every bachelor and bachelorette can have their finale.