Blockbuster Australia Day Lamb campaign via The Monkeys launches ‘Operation Boomerang’
This year, the highly anticipated Australia Day lamb campaign created by The Monkeys sees Lambassador Sam Kekovich joined by legendary newsreader Lee Lin Chin and a host of Australian icons for ‘Operation Boomerang’.
Their mission: to save Australians abroad from going without a lamb barbecue on Australia Day.
Operation Boomerang was the brainchild of commander Lee Lin Chin. Having spent Australia Day 1996 in Warsaw, without ‘a chargrilled chop in sight’, she vowed to ‘never let that happen to another Australian again’.
Cut to present day, when Chin’s army, including Sam Kekovich and Fitzy & Wippa, commences its calling to save as many overseas Aussies as possible. Other notable Aussies such as rugby player Stephen Moore, acclaimed cricketer Mitchell Johnson and someone who may or may not be Princess Mary feature throughout the content.
As the troops land back on home soil, they’re met with a message from the ‘Prime Minister’ and a delicious lamb barbecue, manned by chef George Calomobaris. Because after all, you never lamb alone on Australia Day.
Says Scott Nowell, executive creative director, The Monkeys: “Australia Day is a day for coming together over lamb. This year the thought was around what about the Australia Day orphans – all those ex-pats in foreign countries, cold and alone on January 26th, missing out on a lamb barbecue with their friends or family. Then it was about how we could get them back home with their loved ones this Australia Day.”
The Australia Day campaign will be supported on-air via a major radio partnership with The Nova Network’s Fitzy & Wippa show. Airing from Monday 11 January through to Australia Day, the hosts are showing their commitment to the Operation Boomerang theme by airing from London throughout the first week, and seeking out overseas Australians to be flown home for Australia Day and a lamb BBQ.
Additional media spend will also see the ad pushed out across digital, social and TV, whilst PR will spread the message across earned media. In-store, product-focused point-of-sale will deliver lamb BBQ inspiration, focusing on a selection of different cuts.
Says Andrew Howie, group marketing manager, Meat and Livestock Australia: “We’ve had a blast bringing this campaign to life with The Monkeys. The Australia Day Lamb campaign is now in its twelfth year. The challenge of evolving the campaign to ensure it remains relevant each year is certainly a fun one to have. This year’s campaign continues to highlight the value MLA places on brave creativity. Kookoo Koo.”
Advertising Agency: The Monkeys
Executive Creative Director: Scott Nowell
Senior Art Director: Paul Sharp
Senior Copywriter: Mike Burdick
Head of Production: Thea Carone
Managing Director: Matt Michael
Planning Director: Michael Hogg
Content Director: Katie Wong-Hee
Content Manager: Siena Shuttler
Production Company: Rabbit
Director: Lachlan Dickie
EP’s: Lucas Jenner & Alex Hay
Producer: Lucas Jenner
DoP: Germain McMicking
Production Designer: Jackson Dickie
Offline: Dan Lee @ The Butchery
Post Production: White Chocolate
VFX Supervisor: David Mosqueda
Colourist: Scott Maclean
Designer/Compositor: Michael Blanche
Sound: Song Zu
Sound Designer: Simon Kane
Producer: Jess Bonney
Music: Damian de Boos-Smith, Sound Planet Australia
MLA Group Marketing Manager: Andrew Howie
MLA Brand Manager – Lamb : Matthew Dwyer
PR Agency: One Green Bean
Media Agency: UM
53 Comments
Classic lines: “Mitch, no-one retires from backyard cricket.
Gary, get out of the pool.”
Well done Monkeys, this equal to Richie from last year.
A few gongs should come back from this effort.
Well done Monkeys.
Well don son
This ad makes me wish I was home for Australia Day, but, never fear, the Aussie expats will have a few chops on the barbie in New York!
Love it overall but it took me a second viewing to realise Lee Lin Chin was playing the evil Blofeld character (with the white cat) from the early Bond movies. I’m sure it doesn’t matter but I wonder how many viewers under 50 would get that?
What’s with all the bros? I thought the idea was to make Australia a lamb nation, not a sausage fest.
Vegan !!! Abort mission!!! HA Ha Ha!!!
Love it haven’t laughed so out loud at an ad for ages!1 Well Done Monkeys not the lamb!! HA Ha Ha
Very nice.
Sharposs you legend! Bloody nice VFX from White Chocolate and great edit too Dan!
“Get out of the pool Gary”, classic line.
Genius
Fun to watch 🙂 nice job.
Interestingly, while the US has 10, India has 2 and even Thailand has 1, Australia hasn’t had an aircraft carrier in its fleet since HMS Melbourne was decommissioned in 1982.
HMAS Canberra
Sorry, Canberra is a helicopter landing craft, not a fully fledged aircraft carrier, the type shown in this Lamb spot.
Excuse me while I file this under non-fiction for you
The monkeys are hotter than droga 5 ever hoped to be.
Well done!
Are you one of those grown men that makes tiny model aeroplanes?
@Don’t get Carriered away
It’s an ad, not a Wikipedia article.
Average idea. Execution saves it a little. Agency clearly thinks this is funnier than it is.
Still nice.
Definitely seen the idea before but the craft elevates it to another level.
Hopefully it does the job and gets Davo and Trev buying lamb chops for the barbie. Not 100% on that, time will tell I guess.
Nice idea. Does it do more than be an ad? Are they brining people home? Also why is it only dudes they’re rescuing? White ones at that. I didn’t realise boomerangs worked that way.
Please! It’s fucking freezing here.
A little bit overhyped. Nothing special here, hopefully more to come.
Well done fellas. Massive props to move it on in such an interesting way.
Last years effort set a high bar. This year’s puts it in a different place altogether! Well done all involved, ya feckers!
Princess Mary 😂😂😂
A marvellous celebration of that most traditional of Aussie values, intolerance of anything that’s different to the norm, vegans/ other peoples customs etc. Old jokes like warm beer etc, also it’s two minutes long and we’ve got the joke after the first 5 seconds, so the concept of a punchline- ie something worth waiting for, is lost.
But then again, some people might like being hectored into conformity. I don’t.
Lee Lin Chin for PM. Luckily she’s so rad, as she seems to be the only woman who likes lamb. In the entire universe.
Thanks everyone involved in making it or working for the companies that made it for sharing your comments above, but the bar would have to have officially fallen to the floor for such a piece of work to be considered quality.
Isn’t it pretty offensive to slaughter a country’s native people and then use their language and culture to commemorate the day and sell meat.
Well done, Monkeys. Exceptional!
I was expecting to see the start of a great integrated campaign that would reach every Aussies and make them proud. But instead the story falls short with an average TVC. Such a shame.
From Lamb to Lame in 5 seconds, well done Monkeys for ruining another aussie ‘brand’ Bring the old Sam back…
@C you’re so damn right, the line suggest something bigger and better then a 30’TVC very underwhelming finding out it’s all it is.
@C & @ psuedonym perhaps you missed reading the bit about the integrated campaign including…
‘The Nova Network’s Fitzy & Wippa show… the hosts are showing their commitment to the Operation Boomerang theme by airing from London throughout the first week, and seeking out overseas Australians to be flown home for Australia Day and a lamb BBQ.’
Well done Monkeys and everyone who worked on it! You have set the bar high for the year ahead.
@educate yo’self: Meh!
This is a bad ripp off of 72 and Sunny’s extraction ad.
Look it up – it’s way more entertaining than this
Look, I’m vegan and can usually take a gentle joke at my expense but flaming the vegan’s Brooklyn apartment was going a bit far one would have thought?
https://vimeo.com/84736058
ugh… must we do this in every comment section…
No
@flaming hell
I think he’s torching a salad by the look of it
Ughh indeed. It’s not every comments section. This is a direct lift from a previous campaign that was well known in the industry.
If the monkeys had done this say once or twice you could call it ‘coincidence’. But the monkeys seem to do it an awful lot.
Just off the top of my head;
Ship song, welcome to the jungle / there will be stories, sun sound…
Anyone else care to add here?
Everyone else can come up with their own ideas, why can’t the monkeys?
Give it back to BMF
The biggest shame about this is they have a great Aussie brand, seemingly decent budget, massive celebrity pulling power and a client who in his words is really keen on ‘brave creativity’.
And for whatever reason the director and agency have decided to do an almost shot-for-shot poor man’s version of CODNapped.
http://www.businessinsider.com/call-of-dutys-codnapped-2014-1?IR=T
Good clients deserve better work than that.
Forced “Aussie” humour.
Really cheesy ad.
However, it’s great the agency likes it so much!
@codpiece
They both couldn’t have possibly borrowed from a few decades of action films could they? Some of us watch things other than commercials.
Loved the torching of the vegan belongings. nice work dudes.
Was that militant Australian forces actually rushing people back into and over the country’s borders to eat meat on a day that commemorates indigenous genocide ? Really ? Wow … just … wow.
That’s interesting mate, are you enjoying working there?
It’s not like it’s the first time the monkeys have ripped something almost scene for scene. Sure, this uses celebrities and different scenarios, but it’s identical in structure.
Set up with a VO, show a few vignettes, then out.
Identical.
Music is amazingly similar too.
If you’re going to copy either make it subtle (steal) or super obvious (parody). Otherwise you just look like a monkey.
99% of Australian’s have never seen the inside of an abattoir , if they did they wouldn’t be eating this shit
Bit of a rip off but the first 5 seconds was great.
I agree, neither are an original idea. You have to admit it’s not the first time a faux-military mission theme has been used in advertising.
Both suffer from the same generic structure (briefing/montage/conclusion) but then again it is short form so I’m not sure what the alternative would be.
Oh stop your petty quibbling. It’s pathetic (the quibbling). The ad?…it’s pretty good I guess.