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.
Let's dive in.
Mia
Hello friend. I'm back with another episode with your favorite guest, Lily Brown, campaign Del Mars Community Manager. She is a fan favorite and we love that because her and I just love talking about campaigns together. And today we have two [00:31:00] sensational campaigns that we wanna unpack. So, uh, juicy, juicy episode planned for you today.
But before we get into that, I don't know about you, Lily, but I discover. Most of my new podcasts from other podcasts.
Lillie Brown
Oh, me too. Apple and Spotify search function needs an overhaul because I feel like every time I'm searching by topic, all I'm finding is 10-year-old podcasts, not the new stuff. So I'm a huge lover of a Midroll podcast ad that recommends me to some other pods that I am actually going to enjoy.
Mia
Well, let me give you a shortcut 'cause I'm the same. And it is to check out the Ambition podcast from the crew at Mums and Co. It's a podcast unapologetically blending motherhood and ambition, real conversations with women who are building businesses, they're raising families, they're redefining what success looks like along the way.
And you don't need to be a mom to tune in. There is so much gold in this podcast. Ooh, amazing.
Lillie
Okay, I'll be checking this out afterwards because you know, I live and breathe [00:32:00] podcast, so anytime there's a good new wreck, I am all for it.
Mia
Well, that's my hot tip for today, so Perfect. Alright. Let's get in to two campaigns.
We are absolutely loving on hard, and the first one is the most surprising brand on the planet that I thought I would now spend 20 minutes discussing, and it is Cecil and Cecil. Make plant nutrition products.
Lillie
Yeah. The hero product is a seaweed plant tonic that you put on all of your plants, regardless of stage of life.
I've been using it since I was a child. Shout out to grandma, but this campaign completely blew me away. I was a sea salt diehard before this campaign, but after seeing this, it has completely reinvigorated the brand and breathed so much new life into it. So as soon as I found this, I was like, all right Mia, we've gotta get on the podcast.
We need to unpack this. All right, so talk me through the big idea, the campaign [00:33:00] platform. Spell the T. Okay. So the title of this campaign is Dirty Old Secrets, and for me, this is the kind of refreshing advertising we need more of, especially for that Gen Z or younger audience. Let's be so for real.
Mia
Gardening and a stinky seaweed plant to is a tough category to make exciting, but they've really nailed it. So the premise of the campaign is older Australian gardeners sharing their dirty, old secrets, their decades of trial and error, plant wisdom, but it's actually being repackaged with a cultural edge for this new generation of planned parents.
And so what they've done is put together a 10 part documentary style episode series. It's hosted on its own website, dirty old secrets.com. Thank me later. And it's giving the campaign a permanent home beyond the news cycle, which is really fantastic. And I think that was one of my favorite things about this campaign.
Lillie
What originally caught my eye was all the out of home bus shelter, advertising, and the billboards, because the branding was Chef's [00:34:00] Kiss, absolutely phenomenal. And let's be real, I'm sorry. If I see a billboard from across the street that says Dirty Old Secrets, you best believe I'll be investigating. So giving this campaign its own website was a really smart move because it's going to be enduring, right?
This isn't something that's gonna be gone in two weeks. It's actually gonna stand the test of time. It's something really useful. It's full of personality, and this is now a brand asset for CS o and a very rich one at that. Every single episode in the series includes real eccentric backyard experts, and they're dropping all their hacks and weird gardening rituals to care for their plants. There's content being made specifically for TikTok and Instagram. It's absolutely popping off. Total Masterclass in campaign social content, and then they've also got this hero website. Now in the first episode, we meet Carolyn and she says all her citrus brings the boys to the yard, though she locks the gate to keep them out.
And that [00:35:00] absolutely send me, Carolyn, I'm there with your girl. Lock that gate. But her secret that we get into is letting citrus soak up at least six to seven hours of sun each day. And she goes on to say, because citrus are the opposite of English backpackers, they can never have too much sun. All the content is really fresh.
It's funny, it's shareable, and it brings so much humor and personality to a topic that most people would find dull. This is the sexiest that gardening has ever been in my eyes.
Mia
What I really love about this is the big idea, the overarching creative strategy that underpins this campaign is that younger people, gen Z, so you are getting into gardening, right? That's the insight that is driving this. The AI slop and dead internet theory, all of the things that we've previously discussed are leading us to wanna go and do things with our hands in the garden. Touching grass, right? Touching dirt, getting dirt under our nails, and that being a good thing rather than [00:36:00] an ugh no.
Yeah. Growing our own food and doomsday kind of prepping. This is absolutely a cultural shift, but who are we gonna learn gardening from? Right, and this is where the big idea of the campaign comes from. It is our boomer parents. Okay. Or boomer in your case, maybe even grandparents. And actually, it's a really nice way to cross the generations.
So I love that this brand is showcasing older Australians. And really spotlighting them and showing the younger generations that there's so much value in our boomers and we have so much wisdom we can learn from them. And it's so true. Like my dad, of course, being Greek, he grows tomatoes and lemons. And Dave's parents, they live on an acreage.
We are constantly calling them for gardening tips and it's a really nice way to. [00:37:00] You know, have that relationship. We can't talk about everything. 'cause like, you know, there is that generational divide, but we can really connect over our love of eggplant.
Lillie
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so beautiful how they've built this intergenerational connection and almost a sense of community through this campaign as well, because that has traditionally been a really difficult bridge to cross the older generation versus the younger generation.
So this is a really beautiful way to do it, and they've done it in a really tongue in cheek fun. Personality driven way that doesn't feel like, oh, here, sit down and here's a lesson from the elders type of thing. It's really fun and yeah, of course I ask Carolyn for citrus advice.
Mia
Carolyn's a vibe. It's also this, um, idea that your growing plants, we think it's a exact science and that you need a horticulturist and you need con from the, that show, you know, con with the beard.
But the truth is you don't know what's gonna work and sometimes you have to make [00:38:00] a few little cheats and a few little, like actually it's newspaper or vodka that that plant needs. And this is what I really love about showcasing real people, is that. It's telling me the customer that you, you, you're gonna fuck this up.
And that's okay. There's, it's, it, this is imperfect growing vegetables, growing herbs, growing plants is imperfect. There is no like, you know, you have to do it this way. And it's that permission to fail and permission to experiment and yeah, do it in a way that's really fun as opposed to so many people, myself included.
I wouldn't wanna take on something new like growing a garden unless I had done a 10 week course on it and gotten a degree in plant growing. I just don't, I'm not the sort of person that is okay with failing at something. And I really, the, the strong message that I'm getting from this campaign is that you do, [00:39:00] you, failure is welcomed.
We all have little cheats and hacks and it's not pretty, it's dirty and it's a little. Secret into how we actually get these plants to grow.
Lillie
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think the copy and tone of the campaign being really tongue in cheek and fun allows it to feel fun, right? Because they've taken this thing growing a garden, which historically, you know, overachievers unite.
We feel like we need to know everything before we start. Yeah. But it's actually giving us a permission slip to have fun, fuck up as we go along, learn and embrace all these weird and wonderful hacks and rituals that have worked for people for a really long time. And I think this is almost repositioned CEC O in a way, because previously it's been like, oh yeah, we know it's great, does the job, but it's not very sexy or exciting.
But CEC O really is the unsung hero of your garden, particularly if you grow fruits and veg and flowers. So this has also been a little bit of a repositioning campaign in a way because it positions sea salt as this often forgotten garden product on [00:40:00] your dusty shelf. To a cultural icon, the secret to a really thriving garden, and it's beautifully woven together with storytelling and all of the individual personalities of the older people who are in these episodes.
And one of the key taglines that they're using in this campaign is be a grower and a show, which I'm completely and utterly obsessed with. It's so funny.
Mia
Yeah. Could we also just talk for a minute from a marketing perspective? That this campaign is a brand awareness campaign, and it actually goes one step further.
It's a brand platform, so when we think about brand platforms, it's like it's beyond just a one-off campaign. It actually can become part of the ethos or the fabric of that campaign. Like qantas's. I still call Australia Home or Masterclass, priceless. It's actually the basis of all their campaigns, and that's what CECs O is doing here.
And actually, I was discussing this this morning in a Marketing [00:41:00] Circle session with the crew, because product-based brands their go-to is a conversion campaign. Buy my new limited editions, see Soul for weeds, or buy it for, you know, they, I'm sure that in their skews they have flour versus veggie versus whatever.
This is not about that. This is not about selling an individual product or promoting the latest launch. This is about building a brand, right, investing. In the brand so that it has value, so that next time I am buying a garden product, it is top of mind. And I don't just buy one, I buy several. But this is about playing the long game and establishing this as an essential ingredient.
In my growing Garden journey
Lillie
for sure. And I think that's the thing with a lot of product-based businesses that I see, and let's be real, it does bleed into service-based businesses as well, that whenever they think campaign, they get really focused on the [00:42:00] granular level of what they're offering. So this campaign is about the product, when actually the campaign will probably be much more successful if we zoom out and make it about something bigger than the product alone.
This campaign isn't actually about Cecil, it's about the generational wisdom that gets passed down through gardeners. Yep. It's a love language.
Mia
Exactly. Spot on. Alright, let's shift gears and talk about another incredible campaign that has launched right on time. Okay. And I just wanna shout out to Janine Staunton who sent this to me.
Um, by the way. Nothing in this world makes me happier than people sending us campaign examples. That's how we know we have nailed our positioning at Campaign Delmar, right? Like. Oh my God. They thought of me. I prefer it to flowers. I prefer it to chocolates. I prefer it to really like words of affirmation.
Just [00:43:00] please send me a campaign and say, I would like for you and Lily to unpack this. That's all I need and I am yours for life. Okay, so a quick cheat sheet of how to get in our good books. Yeah. How to potentially maybe score yourself a guest episode on this podcast? Mm-hmm. Hey, Mia, saw this campaign.
Would like to pitch this as an episode to you. Do you reckon you can kick Lily off for a little bit and bring me on and I'll maybe consider it?
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Mia
Alright, so like Her is a pet food brand and their latest campaign is called. The brutal pickup horror movie. Talk us through it Lil
Lillie
The insight that's underpinning this campaign is something that all of us as dog owners can relate to the indescribable, unspeakable horror of picking up a sloppy dog poo in public. There is nothing that erodes your dignity like that. It honestly feels like a humiliation ritual every time. So this campaign was born out of the insight that many Australian dog owners have normalized bad dog poos, right? The sloppy poo. Oh, yep. That's normal. It [00:45:00] is what it is. But they're not actually realizing that bad poo can be a red flag for gut health issues.
Exactly how it is in humans, right? If our poop is a bit sass, we're like, Hmm, okay. There's something going on with my gut and it's no different with our furry friends. So the message here is that's driving the campaign is switching to a real food diet, not shitty supermarket. Kibble is the single most powerful way to improve your dog's gut health, and they've backed this up with a statistic from their own customer pool.
87% of Leica customers notice that their dog has had better poos after switching from whatever food they were on to the Liker brand. So they're backing this up with data and they've also spoken to this really emotive and universally relatable element of owning a dog, right? So the brutal pickup is the hero of this campaign film.
It's a real tongue in cheek short film, and it brings it to life this absolute nightmare of the sloppy unpickable dog poo. It a really [00:46:00] dramatic score in it. The color grading is spooky. There's a few jump scares. And the main character is taking a dog out on a walk. Everything's nice and chill. Then all of a sudden, her dog starts doing little poo dance squats.
The sloppiest poop imaginable, exits that dog, and then there's a jogger who runs past. There's this slow mo footage of the jogger and the dog walker making eye contact as she's got a bag that's doing literally nothing against this liquid poo on the pavement, and it is hilarious. And then it ends with, you know, switching to a real food better poos The camera flips and rotates.
Mia
Yeah. Yep. They've really leaned in and dramatized it and made the campaign film super cinematic. But you can't help but take notice of the underlying message. And really, we all want less horrific dog poos to deal with. Yes, please. So what's really interesting to me about this campaign is that most pet food brand campaigns have really focused on.[00:47:00]
What's the best thing for your dog and your cat and your, you know, because your fur baby is your baby, right? And so the love that you have for your cat and your dog is akin to the love that I have for my human children. There is no difference. And so pet brands have really capitalized on this and said, you want the best for your dog, but this campaign.
Takes a different angle, which I think is really interesting and very disruptive for the industry. It actually makes it about the pet owner. Who the fuck wants to clean up the brutal pickup. And so I've got a hypothesis, right? And this is my skeptical, very seasoned marketing brand. We're living in a cost of living crisis.
Um, people have got less discretionary income. As much as they love their pets, they were paying for really expensive dog brand like Leica and have switched to a cheaper brand because everyone is trying to [00:48:00] economize. Leica has realized this and has said, okay, but now you've got this horrific poos that you need to pack up, and so.
It's basically a subtle message to pet owners saying, you are gonna have to economize somewhere else. This is not a good trade off. This trade off is not, is not worth it, but it really, for me, the execution of this is what absolutely brings it home because the idea is good, but there's lots of good ideas every day they just fail to translate.
Releasing it just before Halloween and making it a horror film. Timing, perfection. Uh, also the campaign film is on the homepage of the, like a website. I do not know how many times I have to explain this to people. You are investing in a campaign. Please go and put it on your website so that we can see it, please.
And if you go to liker.com au, [00:49:00] it is above the fold and it says watch the 92nd campaign film. Use your owned assets. People don't just rely on paid and borrowed and you know, more paid assets. You have a website with great website traffic. Let's use that and leverage our own platform. The only thing I do not love about this campaign, and I am nitpicking, is the male gaze.
Okay. Why did they have to have. An attractive runner and she feels embarrassed against an attractive male runner. It would've worked just as well if it was another female to sort of bring home that, um, embarrassment, shame, peace. Without a cliche, a woman wanting to impress a guy. Fucking narrative. [00:50:00] Okay.
Lillie
Absolutely, and I mean, the guy runner was Sean Keenan of puberty blues credit. He's easy on the eyes, but completely superfluous to the story here. I think it would've been a stronger finish if it had been another woman. She was like, Hmm, yeah, girl, I've been there. That's a shit situation.
Mia
Yeah, yeah. Or a peer, like a fellow, a smug dog owner who's just like, Hmm, you know.
Um, that peer to peer shame rather than, but that, I mean, I am absolutely nitpicking here.
Lillie
Yeah. But I think it's also worth bringing into the conversation because it speaks more broadly to the sexualization and just how deeply entrenched the male gaze is, particularly within the world of advertising. And I think as marketers, as people who are providing cultural commentary on advertising. Breaking these concepts down and also teaching marketing to other people, because that's what you and I do. We have an ethical responsibility to go deeper into this. Yeah. To call it out and bring it into the light. Because most people who would've watched that campaign film, [00:51:00] they wouldn't have clocked the male gaze.
They wouldn't have actually brought that into the sphere. But now that we have, I think it's worth evaluating this, and as business owners who are running our own campaigns, there's an ethical responsibility that we have to ensure that we aren't perpetuating harmful and oppressive systems. Right. It might seem like a little thing that you're nitpicking, but it's symptomatic of this broader cultural issue around the sexualization of marketing.
You know, sex sells. It's used to sell products and services every single day. It has been for decades. But at the same time, if we authentically embrace and embody our sexuality, we're automatically labeled a harlet or a slut, or she's easy. So it is actually about zooming out and a part of our responsibility as ethical marketers who are talking about these things and teaching the tricks of the trade to other people is to bring these conversations into the everyday.
Mia
I would've loved for them to take a leaf out of Sea Salt's book and get an older Australian. Who [00:52:00] maybe, I don't know how you could visually represent this, but gives the vibe that they make their own pet food. 'cause that's what my mom does. You know, she's 67 and Daisy is her absolute child. And then there's this like smugness from this older Australian.
And then it's like, oh, you know, this generation still has a lot to learn. Could have been a better nod than another ad where she's trying to impress a guy. Like, how boring. Oh my God, it's so boring. It's so boring because let's be, so for real, Mia, trying to impress men is like a ticket to exhaustion and rage.
But that's a podcast episode for another day.
Lillie
Let's not start that conversation because Yes, yes. Okay. Just really quick before we move on, one more. So I was reading an interview with Likers creative director, Annalise Burwood, and she said, as a challenger brand, we can't afford to be quiet, to break through lifelong dog food habits.
We need a disruptive idea. So what's the best indicator [00:53:00] of a dog's health? Their poo. And she's absolutely right, but it's also not every day that you get a brief about dog poo. And the people who worked on this campaign said, we knew straight away that the way we were gonna cut through was by leaning into the grossness, flipping it into dark comedy, and really get people thinking about their dog's poop and what it's saying because poop is a communicator.
Dig up. I never thought I would actually say that out loud, but uh, here we are. Yeah. So this idea of being disruptive, of leaning in, it's almost like an anti-marketing approach in my book. So I'm curious from your perspective, when is it smart to lean into discomfort or grossness in marketing? Because I feel like this campaign could have flopped.
I mean, it's a campaign about dog poop. It's been really well executed. How do you actually make taboo or tricky topics funny instead of off-putting?
Mia
Yeah. I will actually say that. That seems like what you should do because we are in the attention grabbing economy, right? Where everyone is competing for attention, [00:54:00] and so anything with shock value, taboo grossness is what's going to cut through the proverbial noise.
And so that to me. Seems almost like a safe bet, like, you know, sex poo disgust. These are the sort of things that they're gonna be a bit of a home run. So I feel like, uh, I guess an example, the one that comes to mind that's the most aligned to this is the Moldy Whopper by, uh, hungry Jack slash Burger King.
And it was like foul. It was a whopper that had just completely just, it was absolutely gross. It sent a really compelling message that Burger King Hungry jus doesn't use preservatives, and so if you're not using real food is going to look pretty fucking gross if it doesn't have preservatives. So long story short.
You can gross people out, you can use disgust, you can [00:55:00] use that, uh, as long as it's not shallow and there's follow through. And it's not just for click bait, stealing attention, but you can back that up with a really compelling message like Poo is a communicator because dogs can't talk. And so then it's like, okay, that gets a free pass because audiences are so skeptical.
I'm willing to accept that level of disgust because it was it for a reason as opposed to the trickery that I see happening where it's like it's shock value purely for the point of shocking. Um, with no follow through. I don't know if I explained that right, but that's what I got. No, completely. And I think that was a really important caveat that you just gave.
Yes. Lean into the grossness, lean into the shock, but only if it's substantiated.
Lillie
Yep. We don't just wanna be driving for ClickBank. That's a really quick way to erode audience trust. Exactly. And I did say, this was one last question, one last question ago, but one more. Leica is [00:56:00] obviously a disruptor brand.
They came onto the scene a few years ago to meet this gap in the market they saw. Do you think this brutal pickup campaign would've worked if it had come from a legacy brand rather than a disruptive brand? So say a brand like Purina or one of the other supermarket brands, do you reckon it would've landed the same?
Mia
Yes. If they were a premium real food brand, and this is just about them reinstating their positioning. This is what, um, market leaders failed to do. Mm. Is defend their market leadership position. And so they're like, we're the market leader, so all we really need to do now is just flog our product every second Tuesday.
No dudes. There's new entrants into the market every day. UNO is another good brand. Now need to make sure that we defend that. Holding on to that market leadership position is harder than winning it in the first place because you've got constantly people biting at your tails going, I'd like that market leadership position.
Do you know who failed to do that? Spectacularly and paid The ultimate price [00:57:00] is Airbnb, right? They came out. With a, we are Airbnb, we are the alternate to a boxy hotel that feels really corporate and stifling. And we all went crazy for them. And then all they did was performance marketing for year after year after year after year.
And then all these new people came to the market like Ripper Ride and Un Yoked is another good brand. Un yoked. Yeah. Even bookings.com got into that kind of short term more, you know, renting out your house and then all of a sudden people forgot why we should be choosing Airbnb over these competitor platforms.
And actually the CMO of Airbnb came out and said, we lost our way. We did too much performance marketing and now we need to get back. To brand building [00:58:00] campaigns and reminding people why Airbnb should be the market leader in defending that market leader position. For sure, and I think the two campaigns that we just unpacked, the brutal pickup by Leica and Dirty Old Secrets by Cecil, these campaigns are creating brand assets that are adding to the strength of the actual brand.
They're defending that position, as you said, and reiterating why they should be the favorite or top pick when you're considering one of those products. And that is so often what is a flop in campaigns is that it doesn't actually have a shelf life beyond the life of that campaign. Whereas this, I can imagine myself going to the Dirty Old Secrets website in two or three years time.
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say the same thing about Leica. They've seized the opportunity with Halloween.
That's less horror movie and more so, you know, something else. But that idea that poo is a communicator, we're gonna use that forever now, Lil.
Lillie
Yeah, I think so. [00:59:00] Oh my God, my naturopath would be so pleased with that.
Mia
All right, we'll catch you next week.
Outro
I've started a substack as the ideal companion to the podcast. It's packed with extra insights, visuals, and nuggets that didn't make it into the episodes. Plus you can revisit past editions, any type if you want more or just prefer to read, you'll love it.
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