We all like having a laugh. But could comedy be your secret weapon to driving brand recognition, market share and even snaring a B&T Award?
The signs are certainly pointing in that direction. At last year’s B&T Awards, two campaigns stood out for their hilarity rather than their sincerity: The Monkeys’ “England Bitter” for Victoria Bitter and Special’s “Get Almost, Almost Anything” for Uber Eats.
In case you’ve forgotten, “England Bitter” was a glorious example of a brand playing in culture, after Aussie wicketkeeper Alex Carey’s stumping of England’s Johnny Bairstow when he wasn’t looking in the 2023 Ashes caused a complete pom meltdown. But it also showed how quickly the brand could move and with confidence. Slabs of special edition England Bitter bottles were delivered to the English cricketers, driving huge media coverage in the process.
The Monkeys even re-worked the classic VB jingle to “You can get it throwing away your wicket, You can get it invoking the spirit of Cricket, you can get it if you’re Ben Stokes, You can get it if you’re that coach.”
Results? In just three days, “England Bitter” generated over 23.5 million impressions and $4.5 million worth of earned media. Organic social engagement levels were the highest in VB’s history, too. Perhaps the best result, however, was seeing Piers Morgan’s face downcast and bitter face.
At last year’s B&T Awards, “England Bitter” romped home in the PR category, gifting The Monkeys one of its two gongs on the night.
Meanwhile, Special’s “Get Almost, Almost Anything” for Uber Eats has been widely lauded as one of the best campaigns in recent teams. It would be a hard task for anything to follow the runaway success of Uber Eats’ previous campaign “Tonight, I’ll Be Eating…” (also concocted by Special). But with this effort, Special and Uber Eats doubled down on the brand’s self-deprecating tone of voice while featuring some of Australia’s (and the world’s) biggest celebs including The Kardashians, Nicola Coughlan and Tom Felton.
The campaign, spearheaded B&T Women in Media Awards winner Celia Garforth, has been so successful that it has been exported globally. In fact, Special now has a, erm, special consulting role on Uber’s global brand team based in San Francisco.
At ADMA’s Global Forum event in Sydney recently, Uber’s CMO Lucinda Barlow, hailed the campaign’s strategy and execution for helping it to jump from fourth place in the race amongst food delivery services to the undisputed number one.
“There is so much power in laughing at yourself. It’s a great leveller. It breaks down barriers. It brings people in on the joke,” she told the crowd.
“Self-deprecation is a shortcut to humility and likeability. So Uber Eats leveraged shameless good-old Aussie self-deprecating brought to life by celebrities willing to laugh at themselves and the very tropes and constructs of advertising.
“Self-deprecation became a habit, not just a tone of voice. It became part of how we approached everything, our brand, our products, even our jobs.”
That tone of voice and approach to advertising has been exported from Australia to the world — showing that it works wherever you are.
This campaign was part of a B&T Awards tour de force from Special. It picked up FOUR campaign trophies and two Agency of the Year trophies, leading the agency to romp home with the Grand Prix, too.
However, it wasn’t just in Sydney last year where humour and hilarity bested earnestness and sincerity. In Cannes this year, the new Humour category received 798 entries (or five per cent of the overall total). The Grand Prix went to Doordash’s “All-The-Ads” created by Wieden+Kennedy Portland.
We think Uber Eats’ effort is funnier.
