Australian Lamb reunites Australia with the rest of the world in MLA’s new TVC via The Monkeys
Australian Lamb is back with the annual summer campaign, in a new TVC, developed by The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive, that celebrates Australia reuniting with the rest of the world after years of isolation.
In true Aussie Lamb style, the hotly anticipated ad for Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), features hidden jokes, political digs and of course, mouth-watering lamb.
The long form advert directed by Al Morrow from Rabbit, follows a world explorer and their protégé, as they rediscover there’s a whole world outside ‘fortress Australia’. Inspired by the tantalising sight of Aussie lamb, the ultimate unifier, the duo cultivates a plan to get Australia back on the international map.
Lambassador Sam Kekovich is the architect for a full-scale national lamb rollout, a scheme that enlists Aussies around the country to spark up BBQs, sending out a huge cutlet shaped smoke signal to the rest of the world.
The TVC is a reminder that Australia is a country not to be forgotten and we see heart- warming reunions as returning travellers make their way back to sunnier climates and lamb barbies. With appearances from space travelling billionaires to US conspiracy theorists, the ad is a satirical look at the world we live as we move through the global pandemic.
Says Graeme Yardy, domestic market manager at MLA: “Each year the ‘Share the Lamb’ brand gives us a great opportunity to show how the unmistakeable flavour and aroma of Lamb brings Aussies together, even through the toughest of times. In 2020, we were all about breaking down state borders, but this year we’re ready to finally open back up to the rest of the world, and what better way to issue the invite than with tasty Australian Lamb.”
Says Scott Dettrick, creative director at The Monkeys: “It’s been another truly bizarre year in Australia where it feels like everything and nothing has happened simultaneously. We’ve been exploring our own backyard and generally being introspective but as 2022 begins we are finally turning our attention towards reconnecting with the rest of the world. We’ve worked long and hard to put Australia on the map and we don’t want to become ‘the lost country of the pacific’. What better way to reunite with the rest of the world than luring everyone over to ours for a Lamb barbie.”
The ad launched across free to air and subscription TV nationally last night and will be pushed out across digital, social and retail OOH channels by UM, with One Green Bean driving coverage for the campaign across earned media and owned social.
Client – Meat & Livestock Australia
General Manager – Marketing and Insights: Nathan Low
Domestic Market Manager: Graeme Yardy
Campaign Consultant: David Rebetzke
Brand Manager: Anna Sharp
Assistant Brand Manager: Krystina Batt
Creative Agency – The Monkeys, part of Accenture Interactive
Group CEO and Co-Founder: Mark Green
Managing Director: Matt Michael
Group Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder: Scott Nowell
Chief Creative Officer: Tara Ford
Creative Director: Scott Dettrick
Creative team: Emmalie Narathipakorn and Seamus McAlary
Head of Production: Penny Brown
Senior Producer: Katie Bassett
OOH Producer: Alex Watson
Business Strategy Director: Kit Lansdell
Business Lead: Topher Jones
Senior Business Director: Fizzy Keeble
Senior Business Manager: Mitchell Bevan
Design Lead: James Halliday
Production Company: Rabbit Content
Director: Al Morrow
Executive Producer: Lucas Jenner
Associate Executive Producer: Marcus Butler
DOP: James L Brown
Production Design: Elisa Baker
Casting: Peta Einberg
Edit House: The Editors
Editors: Mark Burnett and Grace O’Connell
VFX: White Chocolate
Colourist: Matt Fezz
Music & Sound by Song Zu
Composer: Haydn Walker
Sound Designer: Simon Kane
Producer: Katrina Aquilia
Media agency – UM
Hayley Pyper – Senior Client Director
Laura Ellis – Client Director
Shannen Clout – Senior Trading Manager
Joshua Coles – Partnerships Trader
Cameron Roberts – Strategy Director
Maddison Thompson – Strategist
Monique Chirgwin – Integrated Planning Director
Andrew Harris – Senior Integrated Planner
PR Agency – One Green Bean
98 Comments
Where’s my lamb?
Embarrassing. So contrived.
Lamb? More like jingoistic tripe.
“People learn the names of the state premiers” got me good.
Love it, nice timing as always
3 minutes too long.
Enough already….. .
Love it! True to form with loads of re-watchability
I truely enjoyed this. Well written and just funny.
Lol
But who is the boomer fuelling all of the Monkey’s new ad’s with these cringe news.com.au political angles? BCF tents for young people trapped out of the housing market, and now a lamb ad espousing the immigration of Chinese immigrants and succession from W.A? Feels like you made Scomo’s wet dream in order to sell lamb to 60+ Sydney siders, rather than an ad that galvanises the country around Lamb.
I can assure you, no one this thinking this but you.
No you can’t, and that’s the problem. #boomerhubris
2022 just got a whole lot better
Bloody awesome Al. Beautifully made.
I love the social commentary these ads continue to nail. But my god this does not sell Lamb in anyway. It’s just an expensive film that hasn’t once influenced my bbqing
Have a read of MLA’s winning Effies papers from 2020, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015… These ads consistently deliver results, backed up by hard data.
https://advertisingcouncil.org.au/effies/case-history-database/
This is good and funny and I wish I’d done it.
Very well written and entertaining. Should be a short series. Doesn’t do much for selling lamb though.
Very entertaining. Congrats Scott Dettrick and team.
This is great
…as last year. Missing some of the suprise, and joy.
A bit more contrived. A bit too long.
But good on MLA for continuing to put budget into some better than average work.
Love it! Very well written and entertaining, just perfect for the current covid climate.
I’m all for humour, but do we genuinely think a giant cloud of smoke covering Australia that’s visible from space is funny?
Didn’t notice the length till it finished = Quality
A classic suit or a client comment. Or a 20 something who spends too much time on twitter in the inner west of sydney.
Classic sydney-sider comment. Or a 50 something who has completely forgotten about the fires in 2020.
This ‘discussion’ about the smoke reminds me how great it is to be out of the industry and therefore no longer have to tolerate the wowsers and naysayers who have the uncanny ability to ruin an idea because of some obscure ‘concern’.
We’re in lockdown.
So we’re travelling less.
And ppl are coming here less.
So the rest of the world may have forgotten we exist.
So let’s have lots of bbqs so that the smell travels globally to remind ppl that Australia exists.
And also that we have lamb here.
is the price of lamb
Good stuff. Well done.
Yeah totally – because the only people who care about the misuse of climate-centric jokes are either a suit, client or a woke 20-something? Rolling my eyes at the stupidity and it’s only the 10th day of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahxG3iPeVcU
Hey guys, let’s make a joke around this thing: https://www.sciencealert.com/stunning-images-from-space-reveal-the-extent-of-australia-s-bushfire-crisis
I am so over this shit every year.
It is NOT good.
It is just embarrassingly corny and does nothing to sell lamb.
SamKekovich again?
Please can we all move on.
Guys, I think it’s pretty clear. No more cloud jokes. Cumulonimbus especially. Nimbostratus might be ok though (rain-bearing).
I’d say bushfire smoke jokes are out for at least another 20 years.
This is the longest bow for a short drink
A tired formula not selling any lamb
A great run, but time for a change
Well done people
This had moments but one too many bad jokes. 6 out of 10 at best.
It feels like a topical ad………….with no reference to Covid.
Generally speaking, a bit average unfortunately. Could of done with a bit more Kekovich and definitely Novak getting his third (and fourth) meal of the day amid some jubilant interaction with the crowd outside his tiny hotel room.
Yeah, pretty average.
You want the Novak story from this week in an ad that’s been in development and production for months?
Sarcasm pointing out the sheer overwhelming nature of shallow yet topical references in here.
This is so bad. The craft and comedy timing stinks.
Just incredibly bad on all levels.
Nice one Al!
All good things come to an end.
It’s time Meat &Livestock had a look at what else is out there.
They might be surprised.
This is bloody great.
Very messy. Badly scripted. Unfunny.
This campaign celebrates Australia as much as it sells lamb. Quiet now Boomers and go count your investment properties
I was so bored, I had a hard time getting to the end of it.
Embarrassed by the unfunny gags. If I wasn’t in this industry I wouldn’t have watched past 15seconds.
A lot of bland tripe.
Feels tired already.
Miss an opportunity here.
re: novak – to quote another tennis player – ‘you can’t be serious’
Yes.
This is a turkey in lamb’s clothing.
I love a good Lamb ad. In my all time favourites this one doesn’t make it in the top 5. Last year’s Wall ad is the one to beat. Much funnier, smarter and got aussies talking like I haven’t seen an ad do in Australia before.
The expectation for the same work remains while the budget gets smaller every year. Prod company always does the MLA work at a loss. Time to write smaller ads?
You’re spot on. If everyone commenting here knew the actual budget they’d be applauding the production team for pulling this off at the level of quality they did.
I preferred when lamb ads were actually funny. This and more recent ones try and be too worthy, and miss the mark by a loooong way. Any positivity around this is simply legacy from previous work.
Check the Effies, this stuff works. Funny, makes me so jealous.
The insight is fundamentally wrong. Makes the rest of the spot hard to watch.
Ok so whats the budget then? We can then judge to laugh or cry.
Worst one I’ve seen in 6 years or so. Boring. Poor script, poorly realised. Not sure what went wrong but I’d say multiple problems caused by multiple people.
Budget was like $520k or thereabouts.
Everyone knows lamb ads are like spec ads for whichever production company and director is willing to work on them for free.
Then my god we are truly f**ked.
I don’t think it is and never has been. It’s a freebie ad the agency takes on as they get mostly free run creatively in a silly tongue in cheek way and production companies take on for directors they want to push up because of the eyes on it. There’s no budget for them, so the work is always compromised by ideas that are way bigger than the budget. Not sure how those things equal the peak of Australian advertising?
It’s meat and livestock for covidsake, it’s not Nike, it’s not even aldi.
I’d say Larry the giant yellow ball was. Strangely, it was literally phoned in by a Swedish director who lives in the US, who most likely didn’t give a fuck about it compared to his other work. In fact if you look up his website and his US reps website, Larry is nowhere to be found, that’s how much he and the rest of the world care about what happens here. Peak Australian, equals phone up someone from overseas to do it because you have no faith in your own country’s creativity and then claim it as your own, whilst the rest of the world pays zero attention. Meanwhile we hold aloft a meat and livestock ad heralded as the peak of Australian advertising and yet is thrown to the hungry cubs to squabble over who gets to produce and direct it.
Choose your agency, choose your creative teams, choose your idea to meet budget, choose your producer and choose your director more wisely.
We need to have along hard look at ourselves if we want this industry to get better.
It’s pretty toxic that prod. companies feel they have to eat the loss to make an impossibly big ad on a small budget… for what, the Meat and Livestock Association? The agency should start being realistic about the budget when they write the spots. Otherwise our clients continue to say ‘see, you can make big ads on shit budgets’. It hurts us all in the end.
The Effies?
Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.
This is way too long. I really tried to watch it to the end but yawn, switched it off half way.
…you prefer 30 second ads rather than longer form spots that shift us from advertising to entertainment.
Cool story bro.
Interesting thought. But agree this is too long for what it is. It’s not entertainment simply because it’s not good enough to maintain entertainment for that length of time. The pacing, timing and story / jokes aren’t good enough for 3min. I also think the general public isn’t going to sit still for a 3min ad, not unless it’s truly mind blowing, they have better things to watch and spend their time on. Sure 30sec is sometimes too short, and we all want entertaining ads, but just because it’s longer doesn’t make it more entertaining? Possibly the 60sec and 90sec is a nice middle ground. Longer if you can actually make something great that has a unique and surprising narrative. Shorter if you just want to punch through and be assured you get that full attention for 30sec.
Awesome waste of my holiday viewing time. Should’ve played reruns of Hey Hey It’s Saturday instead!
Paul Middleditch did a few of the recent lamb ads.
I cannot believe he or Plaza did them for no margin just to get them on the reel.
Are you joking? Ofcourse they did. If you haven’t noticed Middleditch does just ads for a variety of budgets. Middleditch also co-owns plaza, so yeah they can cut markup a bit and he will still get paid. It’s about business investment.
Just because you did a bag with a director and flirted with his cute DA’s on set in the 90’s doesn’t make that director great 20 something years later.
I think the real problem here is that wokeness has should charged itself into the creative community and is sadly watering down any form originality and humour.
What happened to really taking the piss out of ourselves?
The last few Lamb Ads have lost their way and have settled for pc mediocrity.
Aussie ads used to be great because they were classic piss takes.
We all need to have a good look in the mirror and harden the f&^K up!
There’s a difference between woke, and writing a tasteful joke. If you think the bedrock of Australian humour is perching your backside over someone and taking a dump, than you need to go and revisit the greats. PS. it’s hard to even call these ‘jokes’, they’re just shallow and insulting points of view. Rodney Rude has more sophistication to his material than this, ffs.
I wouldn’t have got the job otherwise.
Agreed. The majority of Australia is over this woke pandering PC nonsense but for some reason the advertising industry still has a massive stiffy for it. PC culture is the arch enemy of creativity. You dare not say that in an agency though or you’re immediately labeled a toxic bigot and your career is over.
Nothing worse than knowing how massively screwed over production companies get to make these ads only to hear the people doing the screwing gloat on social media on how successful they think the campaign is doing. If the campaign is so successful like they claim to be every year and Lamb is sold (insert Effies claims from above posts) then pay the bloody production companies what they deserve. What’s your excuse? I really want to know.
I get that agencies constantly undercut each other to win pitches, which is why we’ll always be screwed.
But I don’t understand why production companies do it.
There’s only a handful of good ones in Australia and even fewer great directors that agencies would want to work with on a flagship account like Lamb. Surely you could get together and agree not to produce work at cost or make a loss?
No offence but the above shows the naivety of agency to production. There’s a bunch of great production companies, if you look at the work and individual directors. Because for the most part it is the individual director that makes the work, not the company. It seems there is a false idea that going on that age old cred of a company, lazy agency producers advice, best friends, trusting a company to sell in whatever new director they have or the idea of whomever you’ve heard of working equals the best director for any project? Companies go up and down, cyclical, like agencies do. It depends on what directors they have at any given time and who’s running things. Same as it’s about the creatives ideas not the agency. Also, have you not noticed there are like 200 directors in Australia? Competition for work is fierce, and lamb is an underfunded ad that often utilises young / new directors or directors wanting to fix their career to get it made.
Historically, great directors haven’t worked on lamb, not if you look at their reels before they did lamb?
It’s not like Garth Davis, Nick Ball, Steve Ayson or Mark Malloy are working on lamb ads? So how do you think directors get the job?
Thanks for making the comments section great again Lynchy. Most people are playing the ball not the man and it’s insightful to hear different points of view.
These ads were only good when DK wrote them.
Nice in theory but it only works if all of them agree, like holding a picket line. There will always be opportunism, even if it’s misguided. The same way that production companies could only get away with being paid to pitch if they ALL agreed. Someone will always undercut.
Exactly right. However think of how things would change if directors were paid to pitch. Creatives and agency producers would really think hard about who they were choosing to pitch per project. There would be none of the disgusting 4-5 directors pitching of recent times. Production companies wouldn’t be hemmoraging money on wasted pitches when agency already knows who they are going to choose before the pitch. Directors would maybe put more effort into pitches in a realistic way, not just fluff talk. 3/4 of directors could live a more steady existence, rather than a constant gamble of the pitch, which equals better outcome of work. Most probably end result quality and use of everyone’s time would be way better. All of this for say at least 2k a pitch… 1k to directors, 1k to the company. 6k for 3 directors per pitch process. It’s not what it costs or the time used to pitch but it’s better than nothing and could really change things for the better for everyone, including client? 6k out of the whole budget of most ads is nothing? I don’t think clients would have a problem with that much at all? And why would production companies try to undercut 2k and a small pay day for their directors. ALL the production company MD’s and EP’s could get together and make this happen if they wanted? What’s stopping you? Its actually not completely about the money, it’s more about how this would help the quality of the industries output as a whole.
Have a think? Grow some balls or boobs or whatever you got that makes you actually brave and standup. Work together… agencies and production companies. It’s in everyone’s interest to do so.
Sozzzzzzz if this is piece of information ruinzzzzzzz everyones day but I d000000 get paid to pitch..
Good one. Not even the top 5 directors in Australia get paid to pitch. So we’re all wondering who you really are and what your motivation is for posting the above? Unveil and enlighten us all of your brilliance, because otherwise you just seem like a selfish arrogant so and so, trying to piss on everyone?
You sound like a lovely person to work with and a great inspiration and mentor for all the up and coming directors out there.
Got to really wonder what sort of quality director comments that? I’d say definitely not a great director, or even a quality human. Possibly a young naive director’s assistant?
this is not a good ad for lamb. It’s a so so comedy sketch from a show that would get cancelled after 1 season.
Correct. That’s why it’s not entertainment. It’s written by ad people who think they could write a quality comedy tv series, but have ended up in advertising. Stick to what you know, make a great ad. This is in between and that’s why it falls short.
Congrats to the team/s on this. Especially the writers, it’s was a huge, tough legacy to try and wrong out another spot of gold (after how many years now?) but you’ve nailed it.
This is almost back to the great work at the start. Certainly mining the same gold vs the woke-up rubbish of the last few years.
Your back to taking the piss out of ourselves as a nation instead of being embarrassed for not being someone else.
This will work, and work well. Assuming we have any workers in the farms, distribution and butchers.
Ummm, it certainly wasn’t Larry, the giant yellow ball. Nor is it this MLA ad.
Was there anything?
Thanks ben, you get a job with us. We can continue making average work and patting ourselves on the back for it.
i had this brief with the creative dept i work with! fuck we’d have some fun with it
And the farmers are contributing their hard earned money to fund this rubbish.
Shame.