Beyond the Brief: “What if it was like The Italian Job?” How Princess cracked MLC’s ‘The Heist’
For MLC’s latest campaign, Princess – A Creative Company, was tasked with reframing super as an active plan people can engage with, rather than a lump sum they don’t think much about. The ambition was to make people smile and say, “I like that MLC ad.” The result was The Heist, which turns the retirement message into a full-blown heist movie, directed by Mark Molloy. In this edition of Beyond the Brief, Princess founders Beth O’Brien, Cameron Bell, Sam Dickson and Jonny Berger reveal how a throwaway “Italian Job” idea became the campaign, how Molloy helped shape it, and what went into bringing it to life.
What was the brief from MLC, and what did you see as the biggest creative opportunity within it?
When we received the brief for MLC’s next big brand campaign there were a lot of moving parts to it.
The big strategic piece that stuck out was about reframing super from a lump sum people don’t think about, to an active plan people can interact with.
One thing both the client and Princess agreed on was the ambition of the work. Let’s make people smile and get them saying “I like that MLC ad”.
It sounds simple, and at the end of the day, that’s what you want brand work to do. But to actually achieve that you need to be bloody entertaining.
So off we went, to find a bloody entertaining way to talk about super as a plan.
What was the initial spark for The Heist, and how did the idea evolve from that first thought into the campaign we see today?
Well, we banged our heads against bad ideas for the better part of a fortnight.
We bumbled our way through half thoughts over half-finished pints at the Darlo, picked through references, listened to music on walks around the block.
Then one arvo, while staring desperately into the middle distance, a rough idea was said out loud.
“What if it was like an Italian Job kinda thing… like, a group of oldies planning to rob a casino or something…”
Then someone else growled in a character voice “one last job, we do this right, we retire happy.”
That first line unlocked a solid hour of making jokes, imagining characters, plotting out the shape of a script. By that evening a script had been written and we all knew in our guts that it was the winner.
It did the job of being entertaining, of being simple, and being the reframe for super that MLC was after.
What did the first version of the script for The Heist look like?
The beauty of playing out a genre film is that it is full of tropes. We could write a script pretty quickly because we could follow the beats of a Heist film. A mastermind who suavely details the plan, the characters with special abilities, and the cuts back and forth that show glimpses of how it “should” all play out.
We wanted to stay close to the tropes because it meant people could lean on their understanding of a Heist film and get what was going on quite quickly. We didn’t have to spend ages world building.
The twist at the end was also there: that everything falls apart, and that actually you can retire happy by simply signing up with MLC.
How did Mark Molloy’s vision shape the world of The Heist once he came on board?
Mark’s name came up as soon as we had finished the first draft of the script.
And luckily for us, he liked it.
When you get someone like Mark on board, you aren’t just getting a director, you’re getting a creative powerhouse.
He came in to Princess after reading the script and we spent that first meeting workshopping a few ways to bring the script to life.
He introduced new ideas, new characters, new lines, while staying faithful to the original idea and shape of the script.
There was a lot of back and forth which meant we ended up with something that made us laugh every time we read it out loud.
What were the key ingredients you were looking for in the cast to bring The Heist to life?
Casting is one of Mark’s superpowers. We knew this from working on Footy Country with him. The key, always, is performance. Especially for a spot like this that requires a fair bit of dialogue, a range of emotion and a bunch of reactions.
Because it was an ensemble performance, there was a lot of balancing that had to happen. Who was loud, who was soft, who went big, who played it straight. How did they feel as a group and how did their individuality stand out.
It’s been funny to find out that people who watch the spot will usually tell us their favourite character, and it’s almost always someone different each time.
What was the biggest creative or production challenge you faced bringing The Heist to life, and how did the team solve it?
The scale of the production was massive. And the time we had to make it was short. We had to make many decisions very quickly.
There is a lot of trust that exists in that timeframe. But through thorough planning and a really tight pre-production you see it all come together, from the big calls to the tiny details.
We shot across 5 days, and Mark had two units running in tandem to capture everything we needed. Plus Ian Butterworth, our stills photographer, and MLC’s Social & Content team on site.
Also, a huge testament to the client who was there every day and let us do what we needed to do to capture everything we needed for them.
What did this campaign allow you to do creatively that you don’t often get the opportunity to do in advertising?
We always love the chance to work with Mark. It’s our third time and it is always a pleasure to have a titan of their profession make something alongside you.
Having a client as excited as we were for the work makes SO much of a difference. MLC were all in, only wanted it to be better, and gave us the space to do that for them.
And, as a new creative company, getting to make the kind of work we want to be known for, so early on in our run, feels really special.
Client: MLC Australia
Chief Customer Officer: Renee Howie
GM of Brand and Content: Wylie Fowler
Senior Manager Brand, Advertising and Media: Dennis Poropat
Head of Client and Brand Insights: Tracy Lane
Head of Customer Marketing, MasterTrust: Ana Weaver
Senior Manager Creative Operations: Angela Lemon
Senior Media Activation Manager: Justyna Zawadzka
Senior Content Manager: Caitlin Shennan
Brand Performance Manager: Megan McAuliffe
Agency: Princess A Creative Company
Founders: Beth O’Brien, Cameron Bell, Sam Dickson, Jonny Berger
Chief Strategy Officer: Lilian Sor
Executive Producer: Renata Barbosa
Client Lead: Cece Chieng
Operations Lead: Mez Truong
Design Director: Josh Hart
Head of Studio: Grant Graham
Media: Kaimera
Chief Client Officer: Anna Magliano
Chief Strategy Officer: Max Broer
Client Director: Rachel Evans
Client Manager: Caitlin Walsh
Production Company: EXIT
Director Mark Molloy
Managing Director: Declan Cahill
Managing Partner: Wilf Sweetland
Executive Producer: Leah Churchill-Brown
Producer: Alex Taussig
LP/HOP: Jacquie Riley
Production Manager: Elaine Roy
Production Co-ordinator: Millie Lombardo
Casting: Natalie Harvie
DOP: Sam Chiplin
1st AD: Jeremy Fitzgerald
Production Designer: Steven Jones Evans
Costume Designer: Joanna Mae Park
Key Hair & Make-Up: Yvonne Savage
Stunts: Harry Dakanalis
Post House: The Editors
Editor: Alexandre de Franceschi
Editor: Jack Hutchings
Editor Assistant: Rosie Byrne
Post Producer: Nicoletta Rousianos
VFX: FIN Design & Effects
VFX Supervisor: Mikey Brown
Flame Artist: Jacob Street
Executive Producer: Emily Newbould
Colourist: Fergus Rotherham
Production Company: Louis & Co
Photographer: Ian Butterworth
Producer: Luke Della Santa
Post-Production/Retouching: Cream
Executive Music Director: Elliott Wheeler
Executive Music Producer: Emma Hoy
Composition and Arrangement: Scott Langley
Score Mixer: Evan McHugh
Sound Design and Mix: 750mph
Sound Designer: Sam Ashwell & Jake Ashwell
Executive Producer: Olivia Ray
Head of Production: Rachel Saxon
Sound Post-Production: Sonar Music
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