‘Eat the Wild’ campaign via Bonfire goes viral: viewers fall for Skull Island Prawns hook, line and sinker

He’s the Slash of the deep blue northern Australian seas – a guitar-wielding prawn, created by award-winning Australian performance agency Bonfire, that has taken the internet by storm, recording more than two million social media views and driving strong sales growth for Skull Island Prawns.

The Eat the Wild campaign, created entirely by the Western Australia-based Bonfire team, quickly went viral, recording more than two million organic views on Instagram and 30,000 plays on YouTube within days of its early August launch.

The campaign has also driven considerable commercial growth for the brand, with sales already up 12% year-on-year following the campaign launch. At the recent Good Food & Wine Show, Skull Island doubled its sales compared to the previous year.

The clever animation of a seriously musical prawn, shredding a guitar atop a skull off the northern coast of Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, and which used no AI-generated imagery, has gained wide-scale traction, sparking the interest of heavy metal enthusiasts, foodies, creatives and scrollers alike.

Developed for Skull Island Prawns, part of Austral Fisheries – one of Australia’s largest commercial fishing companies – the now-iconic campaign features all-Australian animation and production, along with original music by Australian musician Matt Templeman, who has worked with some of the nation’s top alternative bands including Birds of Tokyo, Voyager, Sly Withers and Make Them Suffer. The campaign’s guitar solo was performed by John Overthrow.

Australian prawn production is worth roughly half a billion dollars annually, with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences expecting its value to peak at around $A514 million in 2025/2026.

Austral Fisheries is a significant contributor to national prawn production, with a reputation for sustainability, premium seafood brands, processing, distribution and provenance. Its Skull Island Prawns are renowned as some of Australia’s largest tiger prawns.

Luke Williams, Bonfire Creative Director, attributed the campaign’s online success to its mass appeal and high-end production values: “The creative starting point was the product itself: Skull Island prawns are genuinely big, wild and slightly outrageous looking. Rather than make another seafood ad full of pristine plates, lemon wedges and appetite shots, the team asked what ‘wild’ might look and sound like as a personality. The best advertising usually comes from listening to what the product is already telling you. In this case, it was telling us to shred.

“Matt then helped turn that into an original, heavy-metal track that had enough musical credibility for the gag to survive beyond the first few seconds.

“Eat the Wild has resonated with audiences because it doesn’t behave like a typical seafood ad. A giant prawn shredding a metal guitar underwater is ridiculous enough to stop you, but the first-class production quality and original music make the joke good enough to watch and share. Importantly, you don’t need to know Skull Island Prawns to get the campaign; that’s why it’s travelled well beyond the original target audience into music, creative, meme and general entertainment communities.”

Says Dylan Skinns, General Manager of Marketing at Austral Fisheries: “We’re overwhelmed with the results of Bonfire’s campaign. Luke and the Bonfire team have succeeded in creating a campaign that gives Skull Island Prawns a personality that people love and can remember.

“Prawns are traditionally treated as a commodity. Consumers ask for tiger prawns, king prawns or Australian prawns – not necessarily a brand. Bonfire’s production values, creative idea and inspired approach, combined with Matt’s original music, have built mental availability around Skull Island. We’re hoping now people will start walking into a retailer or restaurant and asking for ‘Skullies’ rather than simply for prawns.”

Client: Austral Fisheries
GM Marketing: Dylan Skinns
Logistics & Stock Control Manager: Heng Lee
People and Culture: Ashley To

Agency: Bonfire
GM – Creative Division: Rene LeMerle
Creative Director: Luke Williams
Senior Art Director: Mike Dann
Senior Copywriter: Bronagh Spence
Senior Account Executive: Sam Marshall
Senior Strategist: Evan Dela Grammaticas
Senior Performance Media Specialist: Brayden Zuin

Production: Outer Circle
Producer: Adam Keogh
Animation and Direction: Josh De Boer
3D Model: Eoin Cannon
Sound: Nick Gallagher @ Fable

Original Music
Producer: Matt Templemann
Guitarist: John Overthrow

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