STAND BY FOR SKY TROOP, CLEMENGER BBDO’S DEBUT FOR CARLTON DRAUGHT

On Thursday Foster’s, via Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne, launches the fifth installment in Carlton Draught’s ‘Made from Beer’ campaign with ‘Sky Troop’, a $9 million integrated campaign based around a 50-foot schooner of Carlton Draught that runs amok in the suburbs following a dodgy skydiving performance.  Released exclusively in cinemas, MPEGs of the campaign are not available until the digital campaign is released mid-March, and will run exclusively for six weeks before airing on television for the laggards in May.

Directed by Plaza Films’ Paul Middleditch, the director behind the Carlton Draught ‘Big Ad’ and Pure Blonde’s ‘Utopia’, it is the first piece of work released by Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne, since they won the account from George Patterson Y&R, Melbourne. Creative director was James McGrath and creatives were Ant Keogh and Grant Rutherford, former Patts’ creatives who worked on the last four ‘Made from Beer’ executions.

The big-budget blockbuster opens at a sports stadium and is set up as Carlton Draught providing the half-time entertainment. Three hundred ‘ordinary’ blokes in bright yellow jumpsuits jump out a 50-foot schooner of Carlton Draught to form the beer’s horse-shaped logo, before spelling out the word, ‘wow’ in reaction to cheers from the crowd. They land successfully, however the schooner misses the stadium and goes on to wreak havoc in the suburbs, destroying a couple of $69,000 Jags in a car yard before traveling over the red-tiled roofs leaving a TV repairman hanging to the side of a building for dear life.  A grumpy old man, who is watching the skydivers on television, says to his wife: “That wouldn’t make me buy it” just as the pot of Carlton Draught comes crashing into his house, demolishing it.

While post production was by Animal Logic, much of the commercial was shot in-camera as possible. For example, about 30 blokes jumped out of the plane, which was manipulated to make it look like 300, and the Jags were smashed – in one take – but the houses were models built to scale.

Peter Sinclair, general manager of beer at Foster’s, says media fragmentation meant Foster’s couldn’t just roll this out with a traditional big ad on a big screen. The campaign will test the proposition that ‘content is king’ with four million people seeing it before it launches on TV. The target market is 18 to 39-year-old blokes, which research shows are active online users.

“It will cost us up to fifty percent less than if we had got those four million through just traditionally putting it on TV. So, the model is almost saying you invest in the content and part of the return is upfront because you don’t have to invest as much in actually showing them. This is because if it is that good, through the experience you have in cinema and through what happens in digital, you will pass it on, you’ll be happy to send it to your mates,” says Sinclair.

Rather than using an interruption model, people will be invited to watch the advert, providing they are over 18. This will be done digitally via internet search engines, including Yahoo and ninemsm and social networking sites, including Facebook and YouTube as well as its own website www.skytroop.com. Furthermore, a partnership has been formed with 3 Mobile, asking subscribers if they would like to be sent the advert.

Sinclair says Foster’s has every confidence this campaign will continue to do the job started back in 2003 with ‘Horses’ and continued with ‘Canoe’ and ‘Big Ad’ and more recently ‘Flashbeer’.

“There will be inevitable comparisons with ‘Big Ad’ because of the scale of it, but the reality is that I think this is unique enough in terms of the idea and unique enough in terms of content and crazy enough in the way it plays out that it will find its own unique place in consumer’s hearts,” Sinclair says.

He adds that in the past seven years Carlton Draught had defied all the market trends and grown three-fold, a success story driven by the brand positioning of ‘a good honest beer that doesn’t take itself too seriously’, and the ‘Made from Beer’ campaign.

“Each time we have brought quality content and world class advertising to the table Australian consumers have reacted positively and voted with their wallets and their hearts and brought into the brand and that has primarily driven the success,” he says.