[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
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Hello, friend. Not every flop is because someone did a bad job. Some campaigns fail because they tried to do too much, some fail because they just absolutely forgot about the basics. Today we're discussing the reasons why some campaigns hit just right and others fall flat. And [00:01:00] no standing out requires much more than just celebrity endorsement and a big budget.
To hash this out with me, I've got Campaign Del Mars Community Manager, Lily Brown, joining me once again on Got Marketing. Welcome back, boo.
Lillie Brown
What a pleasure.
Mia
Uh, I gave you about 30 minutes warning that we were doing this. So I love it. You know I could talk underwater. I know you do. Alright. I reckon what we need to do today is we need to compare the pair. We need to look at two campaigns that were on the surface, like similar, but one was a resounding success like resounding and the other one. Just fell really, really flat.
Lillie
I think people might be quite surprised about the campaign that we are marking as the one has fallen flat, because if we look at the exterior, it's quite shiny.
But that is almost always deceptive, and I'm really keen to unpack this with you.
Mia
Yeah, yeah. All right, so we've got bonds featuring Robert Irwin, which dropped a couple of [00:02:00] weeks ago, and then we've also got Michael Hill featuring Miranda Kerr called a New Era. The Bonds one was called. Made for down under such a cheeky tagline.
So both of these campaigns are basically celebrity led campaigns, and they're both brand campaigns as opposed to sales campaign. I mean, they are intended to make sales, but they're brand campaigns. Cool. So where do you wanna start? Let's start with Michael Hill first. Alright. I don't like it just straight out the gate.
Lillie
Neither do I. And I think Michael Hill is aiming to rebrand as more of a luxury jewelry retailer. And so this new campaign with Miranda Kerr, she's come on board as brand ambassador, which when I initially saw it, I was like, oh, that's actually kind of sweet. It's a bit of a full circle moment because Michael Hill was actually one of Miranda's very first modeling clients when she started her career over 20 years ago.
So I was like, oh, that's kind of sweet. And then I watched the campaign film and I was like, that's it. I [00:03:00] felt nothing. It was very much in line with the luxury marketing playbook of style or aesthetic over substance, and it just made me feel nothing. The only thing in the campaign film, and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, was that Miranda was driving a manual.
Like the rest of it was like, I'm just not interested at all. It's given me nothing.
Mia
Yeah, it was so overproduced. It was just so perfect, but absolutely soulless. I'm gonna link it in the show notes, but it's basically a series of vignettes. And she's driving in this car with a headscarf. Then she's delivering a presentation to a board.
She's pregnant in one shot, but not pregnant in another. So there's a really disjointed storyline, lack of storyline. But can we just go back to the premise? That they're trying to reposition as a luxury brand. And this might come off as really mean girl for me, but unless you are Chadstone, then Michael Hill, being [00:04:00] a brand that has stores in shopping centers, it doesn't give luxury to me, doesn't give Collins Street.
To me.
Lillie
No, neither. And because they're doing this rebrand and repositioning campaign, obviously this is all going to unfold over a period of time. This campaign with Miranda is not going to be the be all and end all. It's just the beginning of their repositioning strategy. But I think it's come to early because if they're actually wanting to try to reposition as a luxury jewelry brand, I think the first thing they should be doing is fixing their in-store experience and elevating that.
So it does feel like more of a luxury experience rather than, you know. Stepping into a store like Prouds in a mall.
Mia
Yeah, you're right. It's not even a store lil, it's like it's open. You know when you go to Chadstone and you go into the Chanel store, which I've never done 'cause. I'm never gonna buy anything from Chanel.
There's a door, there's windows, right? This is like Michael Hill is, you can just stroll on through. It gives market [00:05:00] vibes to me.
Lillie
Mm, totally. It's not luxury. There's nothing elevated or particularly special about the experience, and so I think that's also part of the reason why this campaign has fallen flat.
It's really. Inauthentic to the history of the brand and also where the brand is currently. They haven't done any of this deeper repositioning work. Maybe if they had done that prior to this campaign, it would have a bit more weight to it, but it just feels super inauthentic. Oh, and back to the campaign video, that tokenistic boardroom shot had me rolling my eyes.
Mia
Oh, it was so nf, so nf. It's also just completely detached from how people actually live and buy. Now this idea of perfectly polished, aspirational content, it's done, it's cooked, and then you compare that to the bonds, Robert Owen, which is just like, let's go suburbia, hills hoist chaos. To have this like McMansion, it wasn't a mansion, it was a McMansion.
It was just sort of like, what is this? This is, it's not giving Downton Abbey, it's not giving like period dramas, romantic era. It's just very much like. A jewelry brand who has stores in a shopping center, a kina square in Darwin is trying to do luxury. It's like, they don't understand luxury.
Lillie
No, I don't think so either. And it also could have been anyone in that campaign film. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there wasn't any, you know, there wasn't any Miranda. Her flavor, and let's be real, she is a bit of an Australian icon. Many people are aware of her going up through the Australia's Next Top model ranks. And her company, Cora Organics, a couple of books that she's written.
She's a pretty well-known public figure in Australia, but there was nothing about her or her personality that was conveyed in the campaign film. Yeah. Right. And I think particularly because she's been brought on in this brand ambassador role and we really saw nothing of that. A smarter campaign, an angle to take would've been something along the lines of bringing luxury into [00:07:00] the everyday.
You know, Miranda always speaks about how important her businesses are to her, her family. Mm. It would've been so much more relatable to see her hanging out with her family, cooking a meal, actually working in one of her businesses with those shots of the jewelry. So it's like, yeah, I'm bringing a bit of luxury and opulence into my everyday rituals rather than this totally overdone, highly polished campaign film that's.
Totally giving 2016 luxury brand, people don't wanna see that anymore, especially in a cost of living crisis. It was super tone deaf.
Mia
Totally. Especially when eggs are like 10 bucks, babe. Right. Like, you know, it's like, yeah. That's a really good point around this idea of like brand ambassador, like back when she was the brand ambassador for, was it David Jones or Meyer?
Lillie
Yes. David Jones.
Mia
back when she was the brand ambassador for David Jones. So like a decade ago, all she needed to do was lend her face, her body, her look to them. That's how we did marketing. But now in the [00:08:00] creator influencer era, you need to give so much more of yourself as a brand ambassador.
You have to have your personality and your life needs to kind of be on the table. But she didn't even have a speaking role. In this brand video. So we didn't actually get to see anything about the real Miranda. We just got to see supermodel, and that just feels very different to what marketing looks like now, which is just so social media first.
This brand campaign sticks out like a, so. Thumb on Instagram and Facebook. It just does not belong. And I really questioned the strategy of that when all marketing now should be designed for social media first. 'cause that's where people are hanging out. It's where they're making decisions.
Lillie
And I'd be interested to know who Michael Hill's target audience actually is with this campaign, particularly in line with the repositioning strategy because it just.
Doesn't really make sense to me. As I watched the campaign film and I watched it a couple of times, I was like, who is this actually [00:09:00] speaking to?
mIA
Yeah. Can I just make a point about Michael Hill as a brand? Aside from the campaign film, I don't actually know what they stand for. So like if we think about Tiffany's, we think about the Tiffany engagement ring in the brilliant round cut solitaire diamond or the love heart necklace.
They've got some quintessential Tiffany products and then we think about, is it Van Cleef and Apples have just got some like items that you are known for, like the Cartier Love bracelet or what's the one that it's like Little Opal and it kind of looks like, crosses that everyone can't. Get enough of, yeah, it's Van Cleef and Apples and it's like, it looks like a little cross and a lot of brands have sort of knocked this off and it comes in a necklace and it comes in a bracelet, but they have kind of got these cult status products that people are like, oh, I go in and I know that Tiffany's engagement Ring Van Cleef and [00:10:00] Apples this signature style.
No idea what you go into Michael Hill. I reckon they could reposition as a brand for creating necklace stacks. So you go in there and you can have like so many different options to create your own kind of style of necklace stack. And you can have like a chain and then a chunky, and then you can have a pendant like build your own cool necklace.
Stack as opposed to now, which is like we're all things for all people in the shopping center.
Lillie
Exactly. Also, if any representatives from Michael Hill are listening to this, if you want some marketing consultants we're available, slide into the dm we're available. Yeah, I completely agree. And I mean, even just hearing your idea about the necklace stack is so exciting.
They're so topical at the moment, so that is for sure a niche they could move into to fill. Yeah. And when you were saying, what is Michael Hill known for? All that came to mind for me was that, oh shit moment you've forgotten to get your mom something for Mother's Day or your wife, something for her [00:11:00] birthday.
So I'll just pop down to the shopping center, see what they've got, and that does not align with luxury and this new positioning strategy that they're trying to roll out. And yeah, throughout the campaign film, as you said, Miranda was silent. We saw none of her personality. And I was reading the ambassador statement on the Michael Hill website before this podcast, and it was.
Waxing lyrical about their partnership and how Miranda and Michael Hill were the perfect pair to work together because they both have the same values and one of the main values that they were speaking to is sustainability, so that's a high value of their business. There was no examples of what this actually looks like in practice and.
You know, we've all seen the shift over the last 10 years, particularly in the last five years. Consumers are getting more and more sophisticated and they're able to sniff out bullshit like Greenwashing. Case in point, you know, brands need to be able to make claims and show their receipts. You can't just say, yes, I value sustainability.
Mia
How? What does that actually look like in your business practices? She was shooting it in a mansion. How is that sustainable? There was like a walk-in wardrobe. Filled with senseless consumerism.
Lillie
The irony prevails. The irony prevails. The irony prevails.
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Mia
Alright, let's move on. Bonds, Robert Irwin, everything that Michael Hill and Miranda Kerr did wrong. They did [00:13:00] right. It was Aussie suburban chaos, which brought up feelings, at least for me of nostalgia. It was. A bit ironic, really tongue in cheek, like real piss taking, like it could have been a Vic Bitter Phoebe beer campaign felt really current, like leaning into the unhinged, you know, like the Ryanair Duolingo, let's just, it doesn't need to make sense.
We're not taking ourselves too seriously. And that's what made it really relatable and really I think understanding of the cultural zeitgeist. Then really clever use of Robbie's personal brand as the wildlife warrior, like down to earth, likable. We actually got to see him as opposed to just his image and his body.
However, the body was banging.
Lillie
Can't complain. Uh, no one. Look at my search history. Please 'cause that campaign film has been watched too many times in the last few weeks. Moving right along from that. I loved what you said about it being tongue in cheek and a bit piss takey because it was, and it delivered in a way that wasn't trying too hard.
And I think that this is really aligned with the trend of lo-fi content that we're seeing, particularly social first lo-fi content in the way that he was just sitting on one of those plastic chairs in a backyard with a hills hoist. I mean. We've all sat on one of those chairs in our time, and he's just sitting there chilling, having a drink while a giant python is curling around his body and a giant spider is on his thigh.
And one of the things that I really appreciated about this campaign was that the wildlife that was featured, the crock called Elvis adorable, the giant snake and the spider were all real. There was no CGI, which I think again, really doubles down on the authenticity of the piece because who else is gonna allow a python to be around their neck unless they are actually trained in dealing with these kind of animals.
Mia
So yeah, there were just so many good bits to this. Honestly, one of my favorite parts. Was just how bonds came out [00:15:00] to play in the comments. So they posted the campaign film, they posted the imagery, but then they just went to town in the comments. And I really love this as a playbook that all brands should be using, which is that we use our content to create a conversation, but then we don't just fucking walk away from that conversation.
We stay and we engage. So it's like, here's my video. That kick starts this conversation, but then. I'm hanging around and I'm engaging with each and every person in the comments because that is how we give this campaign momentum and life beyond just broadcast. Here is a billboard, here is a video. Really loved it.
They just, they went to town in the comments.
Lillie
They went to town in the comments section, and there was so much personality with all the replies that they were getting back to people's comments with. We instantly got a strong sense of the bond's brand personality, which I think a lot of other brands lack, particularly when they're getting back to social media comments as well, right?
There's this tendency to be really businessy and professional, but actually people don't really want that, right? They wanna be involved. They wanna buy from brands that actually stand for something that they have similar values with, and. Brands that are relatable to them and where they're at in their lives.
So I think the way that they handled that community engagement as part of the campaign was masterful.
Mia
Cool. All right, so now that we've shared some examples of two campaigns, one we'll call the flop one, we'll call success, what do you think separates campaigns that work from the ones that miss the mark?
Like what are the essential ingredients? Sort of a successful campaign.
Lillie
The first thing that's coming to mind is knowing your audience. Right? And I know that sounds simple with this. Bonds and Robert Irwin campaign Bonds is an Australian brand. This campaign was launching them into the US market, and I think the way they did that was so smart because they've used this Australian icon, the notorious Australian wildlife in all their glory, not CGI and the Hills hoist, the plastic chair.
All of the iconography within that campaign film and all of the other assets was quintessentially Australian. And as a result of knowing their audience, it did have a really high resonance with the target market. And the tagline of made down under it was so cheeky, so relevant to the place that we're in, and it demonstrated a deep knowledge of who the audience is.
Whereas when I think about the Michael Hill and Miranda Kerr campaign, I just felt confused and bored as I was watching it. So to me, that demonstrates they don't know who their audience is.
Mia
Yeah, it was, um, weirdly aspirational, the bonds campaign because. What they're really saying without saying it, is that if you are a tough man, then you wear bonds because only tough men can have snakes and spiders all over their body.
So it's really speaking to that masculinity of like a real man, I guess. All right. So for me, what makes campaigns flop versus succeed? There's a couple of like essential components. So the first one is. Trying to [00:18:00] do too much at once is almost guaranteed to fail. And I understand. I understand the want to do that, the pool to do that.
'cause you're spending all this money and you've bought all this media and you're like, great, let's try to cram all of our objectives and all of our messages into one campaign and actually. Creativity requires restraint and sacrifice and less being so much more so trying to be everything to everyone is so dangerous, and that's exactly what Michael Hill did, overcomplicating the message.
There was an example of a Jira campaign that featured the actor from Silicon Valley and. It was a four minute campaign film. There were some really great zingers, but there were so many messages in that campaign film, and you kind of got lost in all of that. So just that simplicity of messaging, that campaign example that you shared in Marketing Circle of the deodorant brand.
But the deodorant goes everywhere. It's for all of your body, not just underarms. What was that brand called?
Lillie
Sure. It's a UK deodorant brand.
Mia
Yeah, sure. Like so good. It was like a simple message, a deodorant for your whole body. That's it. Because more than just your underarm smell.
Lillie
Exactly. And that message actually came out of some research they did that demonstrated that actually.
Most body odor isn't coming from your armpits, it's coming from all of these other places on our board. So that was the key insight that they used to inform this campaign. And as part of the broader campaign film, they used all these fun tongue in cheek terms to describe all of our smelly bits, which was fun.
It was relatable, and importantly, it was done in a way that was not shaming people for their body odor either, which I think is a really fine line to walk.
Mia
So like if we look at that and we are like, okay. One message. It's not your underarms that are the only place on your body that stink, so that's it.
Then it's just playfulness. After that, then it was like, cool, how do we describe the smell between your boobs? How do we describe the [00:20:00] smell between your thighs? It was just full playfulness after that because they just had this one message that they just needed to hit. Right?
Lillie
Oh, absolutely. It was such a masterclass.
So good. But I love what you said about creativity requiring restraint and limitations, because we see this all the time when we're talking to small brands. They're trying to jam all of these messages and objectives into one campaign or one piece of content, and it just muddies the waters in order for you to actually create something creative and meaningful and impactful.
You do need parameters of limitation, otherwise it just becomes too big, too broad. It gets out of hand and all meaning ends up leaching out of it. Yeah. I actually think that during Covid we saw some of the best campaigns ever made because there were so many constraints. Like there was filming constraints and how many people could be on set and how we were gonna produce this across the country.
And for the first time in a really long time, we had everyone. Feeling similar feelings in terms of [00:21:00] isolation and loneliness and craving connection. And that provided such a common thread that they could weave into all of these incredible campaigns. So I really feel like if you are a small brand and you're worried about, well, I don't have a lot of.
Budget and I don't have a lot of resources. Sometimes those constraints, those restrictions can actually be your superpower. Completely agree. And as someone who has a big creative brain with far too many ideas floating around in it all the time, I've found, particularly when marketing my own business, that sense of limitation and restraint has been so helpful.
To actually get me to move the needle and get shit done. Because I think at some point you end up with too many options, too many ideas, too many potential tracks to go down. So when you do have those limitations in place, whether they are born of necessity, like you said, simply not having much budget to work with, or you're bringing them in to facilitate your creative process, it's always gonna be beneficial to the end result.
Mia
Yeah. Which is totally one of the reasons why campaigns fail is that they just played it too [00:22:00] safe. It was just. Boring as the Miranda Ker campaign was just boring. Like what am I watching? A rich person with gorgeous jewelry, but I, not anything that I would wear day to day, like just no cultural resonance, honestly.
And it just felt really invisible to me. That campaign, like it just sort of blurred into the background. No one ever has said in the history of time, I remember that completely fine inoffensive campaign. Like I remember it.
Lillie
Never, not once. Never. Not once, no. And it was so predictable as well. Every frame in that campaign film was so glossy and over polished.
And there's actually been some incredible fragrance brands in the past who are luxury fragrance houses, and they've created incredible campaign films that are really evocative. And I think for anybody listening, one of the key elements of a successful campaign is being emotionally evocative in some way.
When we look at the Bonds and Robert Irwin campaign, it's emotionally evocative. It's eliciting feelings of nostalgia, of relatability, like. [00:23:00] Oh fuck. I've actually been in that exact backyard before. Right. And comparing that to the Michael Hill and Miranda Kerr campaign, we felt nothing. There was none of that emotionality.
It was so disconnected from how real people live their lives.
Mia
Yeah. Like especially with a luxury brand. If I'm gonna drop $5,000 on a necklace, this is not a rational purchase decision. This is a hugely emotional one. So. It absolutely needs to convince me to override my critical judgment that a $200 necklace does the same job as a $5,000 necklace.
So even more important to tug on those emotional strings. The other thing that I'm noticing just generally beyond Michael Hill and Bonds is just really poor channel integration when it comes to why some campaigns succeed or fail. So like there are some brands. Jeans West wi, that kind of never evolved in terms of their marketing.
Obviously, like, you know, they're both closing, but it's like, alright, we make a 32nd ad and then, you know, now they're running those ads across digital and social media. One of the things that we talk about all the time with our customers is this idea that if we are running a two to four week campaign, then we need enough content to sustain a two to four week campaign and one hero video.
What are you gonna do? Play it 30 times for 30 days? No, you need lots of content behind the scenes content you need. Deals as well as the video, you need to have like little cutaways, all of that. Like Michael Hill could have produced all of that with Miranda actually saying words, but there is just so much content that has come out of the bonds campaign that they can repurpose across all of their channel.
Lillie
For sure. And I think the channel integration in the Bonds and Robert Irwin campaign is part of the reason why it was so viral. I mean, obviously it went viral 'cause it was just straight up iconic and Robert Irwin looked super hot. Thank you, sir. But I saw that for weeks across every channel that I was on, no matter what app I opened, I was seeing this campaign everywhere.
And it was really more of a cultural moment. Yeah, and I think that's why it got picked up and people were making all these reaction videos to watching Robert Irwin, like, I saw this great TikTok, A marketing agency posted it and the marketing manager was sat in front of her laptop watching the Robert Irwin campaign film on repeat.
Then someone comes into her office saying, what are you doing? And her just slamming her laptop shut, looking a bit bashful and because it was so fun, it allowed people to get in on that cultural moment. Yeah. No one's getting in on this Michael Hill and Miranda Ambassadorship this campaign. There's just nothing to get excited about.
Mia
Yeah. I think that's a big reason why campaigns fail and succeed is that they read the room and they seize a cultural moment and we are craving. Suburban backyard australiana like we just are. The world is sad and complicated and just a [00:26:00] barbecue with the kids on the trampoline and a sprinkler and a good old like, let's just hose them down.
It's exactly what the world needs right now, which is why Australians love this campaign even more than the Americans who think we have kangaroos jumping in our backyard. So like to them, this was just so wild. 'cause like they think of Australia as just being like, we don't have. Paved roads. So yeah, I, I feel like people want to feel like the brand gets them, that there's a two-way kind of understanding.
Lillie
For sure. And I think as part of that, it's also the marketing and brand overall that feels like a bit of a co-creation. There's an invitation to join the conversation. To join the movement, which is exactly what we saw with this Robert Irwin and Bonds campaign for the Miranda Kerr and Michael Hill campaign.
It was completely MIA. Yeah. There's no emotional buy-in for the audience.
mia
Totally. So just to wrap things up, Lil, thank you so much for your time. Really, it comes down to the campaigns that we remember. The [00:27:00] ones that actually work, they aren't perfect, they're human, they're timely, they're clear, they're brave, and they know exactly who they're for.
Lillie
I could not agree more. Perfect summary.
mia
Awesome. All right, well thank you so much. Thanks for jumping on such short notice and yeah, looking forward to seeing this one live. Okay. That's a wrap on today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. I welcome your questions and I'll see you next week.
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