The Lamb Ad: Unpacking Australia’s most anticipated ad of the year
What does it really take to keep one of Australia’s most talked‑about campaigns culturally captivating every single year? In this CMO Show masterclass, Nathan Low, CMCO at Meat & Livestock Australia, lifts the curtain on the annual Lamb Ad.
It’s a deep dive into the creative mindset of this enduring cultural moment. We get a behind the scenes look at the process, which starts well before a single line is written, scanning the cultural landscape to understand what feels big enough to bring people together.
Nathan hints at the six‑month rhythm, from exploring broad cultural territories to pressure‑testing concepts and why the Lamb brief stays constant even as the culture shifts around it.
And here’s the paradox every marketer wants to create: in a world where most consumers pay to skip ads, Australians still make time for this one, waiting for the drop each January, sharing it and, more often than not, helping it jump borders and make global headlines. That kind of anticipation doesn’t come from media spend; it comes from culture, comedy and craft and from an organisation willing to back brave ideas, knowing “safe” ones would be riskier.
Listen in if you want to know how to evolve your brand’s marketing without losing the core, how to balance instinct with just‑enough research, and how to turn a campaign into a national conversation people choose to watch.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Niall Hughes and Kirsten Bables and audio engineer Ed Cheng. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
In marketing, it's really easy to move from one campaign to the next. We have this short-term mindset. But what if you were in charge of a campaign that went for year, after year, after year? How would you keep it interesting and how would you build on your success without burning out? Welcome to The CMO Show. Great to see you. Mark Jones is my name. Wonderful to have you with us. The CMO Show is of course, produced by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe. Now, I'm really stoked about this interview we have with us, Nathan Low. He's the Chief Marketing Communications Officer at Meat & Livestock Australia MLA. Of course, he is the custodian of the famous Lamb ad. It barely needs any explanation, but the Lamb ad of course, rolls around every January, and it reminds us that we need to go and buy lamb.
But it also is a touchstone for Australian culture, and a really wonderful multicultural approach they take to it as well. So what does it take? And really in a nutshell, this interview is all about a deep dive into the creative process. What does it take to do it each year? How do they think? Do they feel? What data do they use as a whole team? How do they work with their agencies, and what are the approaches they take to really challenging old ideas, to being brave, to use a bit of marketing speak, and to thinking about how they can adequately reflect Australian culture in a way that keeps us talking for days and days. Fascinating interview, let's get into it. Nathan Low, thanks for joining us.
Nathan Low
My pleasure.
Mark Jones
So tell me about the origin story. Where did it come from?
Nathan Low
Yeah. Most people probably don't realise is when we talk about the Lamb ad being 20, 21 years old and in its current form as a TV ad or a film it is, it actually started five years earlier as a call to arms radio campaign. And ironically, given the world we're living in today, it actually started because the US government with Bill Clinton as president at the time, slapped 40% tariffs on Australian lamb being exported to the US. So in response to exporting less to the US and needing to consume more domestically, it started as a tactical campaign to rally Australians to support Australian farmers. And so the whole origins of eating lamb being an Australian thing to do. Summer actually didn't have a lot of campaigns at that time. So January and the lead-up to Australia Day was chosen deliberately because there weren't many other brands. Everyone was focused in the lead-up to Christmas, and January was a bit of a wasteland for brands. So there was a gap there.
Mark Jones
Let you stand out.
Nathan Low
Let you stand out. It was 2000 by the way as well, so there was... National pride was booming because it was an Olympic year. All the investment that was going into Sydney at the time, so it was really cool. So I actually started as a radio ad, and it was a radio ad for five years before it became a TV ad. And it only became a TV ad because they wrote a radio script that was so good that Warren Brown, the ECD at BMF at the time, went to David Thomason who was the marketing director at MLA, and went, "This is so good. Find 40 grand and we'll make a TV ad." Now, of course, he had to find more than 40 grand. That was just to make it. He then had to find media money to put it on TV, but unless those two people had the vision that this writing is so good, we need to get it beyond radio. We wouldn't have the Lamb campaign the way we have it today.
Mark Jones
Now, let's just hypothetically imagine nobody understands the Lamb ad, or maybe there's one person listening to us that is not quite sure. How would you describe the Lamb ad?
Nathan Low
It's a great question. Well, certainly what we've done for the last few years, it's like a state of the nation. It's an ad to drive demand for Australian lamb, but tries to find something really topical, something really culturally relevant that is a reflection of what's going on in Australia at that point in time.
Mark Jones
And it's interesting you say that because we've had MLA talking about the Lamb ad back in 2017. So it's quite fun to revisit it now through that cultural lens. And I love the idea that advertising can become cultural reflections and commentary to an extent, but the thing that strikes me about it is it's always been funny. How hard is that?
Nathan Low
Well, look, when you work with great creatives and really talented writers, it's hard for me to be funny. It doesn't seem to be hard for them to be funny. I think where the real trickers is it's hard to be funny and on-brand and authentic and culturally topical.
Mark Jones
This is where in creative we talk about being brave, right? And I think the braver actually comes about, I guess, getting a new tweak on it every year. So maybe just give us from your perspective, how do you steward something like that? There's sort of like an ongoing journey and an energy that you've got to maintain.
Nathan Low
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because we talk a little bit about how you can... The Lamb ad has proven that you can be consistent and stay with the pace of culture because it's the model for that. The brief hasn't changed since I've been at MLA for six years. We've really held true to the core brief of what we're trying to achieve, what the lamb brand stands for, and what makes a great Lamb ad. But I think the trick is when we start the process, which every year is June, July, so we're trying to pick six months out what's going to feel really relevant and topical January the following year. And we don't dive into writing scripts. We start with broad cultural territories, and we explore those quite a lot to find out what feels sticky, what's going to be creative, what you can write really interesting scenarios to, but also feel relevant for Lamb to comment on. And that Australians will think it's okay for us to poke fun at it.
Mark Jones
So maybe describe for us then how you go about doing that in partnership with your agency, because I think a lot of marketers wonder about that creative process behind the scenes. If we pick on the latest one, right, so Happiness?
Nathan Low
Yep.
Mark Jones
Sam Kekovich with that. I got to say, I love the... He had the barbecue on his desk, right? How did that come about? So what was the creative process like with that big sort of cultural sketch that you're speaking about?
Nathan Low
Yeah. I mean, that's where the strategic planners with your agency partners really add a lot of value, as well as the experienced senior creatives that have worked across multiple campaigns. There's a bit of corporate memory there and a feel for what is and isn't going to work. Historically and certainly for a long time because the campaigns really always been anchored on the idea of unity. We've started with looking for things that are dividing Australians, and that's how you end up with campaigns that talk about border walls or campaigns that talk about the generation gap, or even the campaign that felt like a very full circle moment for Australian lamb where we took on calling everything Australian.
So we always start there. This year was very different. For me, this year's campaign struck a different tone to the other five that I've made, and it's because we couldn't find anything in those initial phases that felt big enough, that was from a division perspective to bring people together. And where we got to this idea is it started from a point of view of thinking just feels like Australia needs a pep talk. It felt like we needed to be a bit more rather than going for division and bringing people together to actually have a more positive slant.
And just remind Australians about all the things that we love about Australiaand that make us happy. But as we started exploring that territory of Australia feels like it's lost its mojo a little bit. Maybe lamb needs to come along and give it a pep talk. And then the creatives and the strategic planners start diving into what's going on culture. And the key thing certainly for me in terms of leading the project from the MLA side as the client is, yes, empower the agency to go for broke. But for me it's just about focusing the team on the right idea that feels big enough that I feel will serve the needs of the Lamb brand and will be consistent with the positioning that we have.
Mark Jones
So just to quickly recap and reflect, you've actually got a narrative arc that you try to repeat, which you said was about how we look for division, lamb brings people together. So that's actually the recurring narrative that you look to build on, what's interesting to me is thinking about how long that process must have taken. There's got to be months baked into this, right?
Nathan Low
You'd be surprised because it's quite an intense process. And it has to be because we can't start too early. If we start too early, the risk is you pick a topic that becomes irrelevant, like-
Mark Jones
But didn't you say there was six months or is that just the whole elapsed timeframe?
Nathan Low
That's from when we brief the agency to when the ad goes on here.
Mark Jones
Right, okay.
Nathan Low
Yeah. So we'll start June-July, we'll explore territories for probably 4 to 6 weeks. And the second phase of that is then trying to develop campaign ideas off those territories. The first campaign idea for this year's ad was actually about trying to make Australia more Scandinavian. Because all of the top three countries were Scandinavians.
Mark Jones
Of course, it's the Nordics. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Low
It's like, what that they got going on that we could learn from? And they were really hilarious, funny scripts, but they weren't quite resonating because we're like, "Well, actually, it doesn't feel very culturally right for a nation that's competitive, that loves to punch above its weight on the world stage to say, we should be more like someone else."
Mark Jones
Just like the Winter Olympics at the moment, right. Yeah.
Nathan Low
So you have that phase where you are playing with the space and the idea, and writing scenarios to see what feels right, what sticks. And then by about mid-August, we've probably down to two scripts on one idea. We might've explored a couple of big ideas to see which ones would resonate the most with us. And then by mid-August towards the end of August, you've probably got a couple of scripts off the idea that we're locked in on. And by September, we're all in on a script by then because we need to be in pre-production by October. So September we're crafting, crafting, crafting. We're going into qual... We only do one round of qual. And by the time we get to research, we are already pot committed, we've gone all in. It's really just a gross negatives test to make sure-
Mark Jones
Describe that.
Nathan Low
Well, it's qual research groups. But essentially, all we are testing for in that is, is there anything that's really not working? Are there scenes in here? And the best example I have for that is the Un-Australian campaign we did two or three years ago opened in a schoolyard where school kids were being called Un-Australian and disappearing. And it bombed so horrifically badly in research because it was not acceptable to people to make kids disappear.
Mark Jones
Yes, of course.
Nathan Low
And we're like, "Oh." It's ruined the entire rest of the idea because people couldn't get over the fact that we were disappearing kids. And as soon as we rewrote the opening scene, it just resonated so much more stronger. Because we know they knew the core idea of labelling everything Un-Australian was relevant and topical, because we'd got to the point where we couldn't define what Australian was anymore. So we knew the idea was strong, but there's things in the script that look really funny on paper that make us laugh, that sometimes we learn from that research don't resonate.
Mark Jones
That sounds like a good reminder about this concept that you can get too close to your own work. You just can't see things like that after a while.
Nathan Low
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it works the other way as well. We've had the first Lamb ad I made about the border walls that had a reprise scene at the end of ScoMo coming back after the walls had been torn down off the plane from Hawaii. That was referencing an incident that had happened more than 12 months earlier. And I was like, "There's no way people are going to remember that. There's no way they'll find it funny." The agency was just like, "Trust us, trust us, trust us, it's going to work." And I'm like, "I just don't think it will. I think we need something else." But we put it into research and the first group, as soon as it got to that, everyone burst out laughing. And I'm like, all right, trust the people you work with because they know what they're doing.
Mark Jones
That sounds like a live mic night, the comedy. So tell me then from your point of view, what's the role of gut feel?
Nathan Low
We've tried to translate a little bit of that gut feel into science. So when I joined MLA six years ago, the team and the agency had quite honestly recognised that the last three Lamb ads hadn't been particularly good. There was a question out there, has the Lamb ad lost its mojo as a still fit for purpose? Should we be doing something else? And one of the first things we did was actually try and define a little bit what are the secret herbs and spices. So we looked at the previous 15 Lamb ads and went, "Okay, Watson, all the ones that were amazing that work really well, and what's different about..." There were five. So a third of them were defined by the team themselves as not as good.
Mark Jones
So what was the golden thread?
Nathan Low
Well, I don't want to give all the secrets away, but there's a few things that we now stick to. They've been in the brief for the last six Lamb ads. And if you sit and watch all the Lamb ads, you can see these elements in them that are trying to turn that instinct into things that if we know are there are going to make something that resonates. So the idea has to feel big to start with. We can't be picking on a niche topic.
It has to feel uniquely Australian. It can absolutely be global in nature. The generation gap idea or campaign blew up globally and did astronomical sort of view numbers because of that. Because that was a very global idea, but it felt very relevant to Australia at that point in time because you had Gen Z's blaming boomers for why they can't afford to buy a house. So there was a uniquely Australian truth in that idea. It has to be uplifting and inspiring. If we're not telling a positive story, why tell it? Because that's not going to benefit the Lamb brand. And we have to have permission to talk about it as Lamb. And a good example of that, not where we've got it wrong, but we are often nervous, have we got it right, is actually the first campaign I did which was the border walls around COVID. That's a very serious topic.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
People were dying, people couldn't cross borders to go to family funerals or major events. Parents were separated from children, et cetera, and vice versa. And we're like, "Can we really make fun of this?" But it's one of those things you go, well, if we tell the story in a way that's authentic, that's another component of it. It has to be really authentic, and we get the balance right and we are making fun of actual Australians lived reality and holding a mirror up to it so that they're in on the joke. So we're not preaching, we're not telling people how they should feel about the scenarios we're showing them. We're actually just reflecting their lives and what's going on, and letting people come in on the joke. I think that's one of the secret sources to why it's been so successful for so long, is we are not shouting at people.
Mark Jones
Pun intended. Yes. So what I love about the way you've described that is you are again building on the cultural identity that we've set up around lamb. And this reminds me about this idea in marketing that positioning is everything, and it's about how you choose to position a product. There's only very few moments in the ad, if I think about the most recent one on Happiness where they're trying to convince these happiness inspectors that Australia's happy and they stick the lamb in his face. And he takes a bite and then his whole world explodes.
That's features and benefits marketing, but the tiniest bit in a... What's the punchline actually, but it's the tiniest bit in the overall campaign, how hard is it to hold to the big creative idea as a marketer when of course you've got all these commercial pressures, right? It's going to change year-on-year.
There's going to be this sense of like, well, sales are down or whatever, and we've got to drive maybe a different message that comes from a product story. Does that make sense? You've got a fixed narrative that you're applying, and maybe is there a temptation to sort of move back towards like the sort of product side?
Nathan Low
Look, I think there is for all marketers. I think all marketers in any industry, whether it's a emotional thematic campaign or a functional product driven campaign, there's always a tension there. For us where the truth lies is the strategy for lamb, without being too transparent about it, is we've defined that driving cultural affinity for lamb is a key component of success for the brand, if we consider Australian lamb as the brand. So because of that, the single biggest investment we make every year is in cultural affinity, and we measure that. So that's a KPI and we measure it. Because we see that as the path to success.
Yes, there are sensorial attributes of eating lamb, functional attributes. So we try to reflect in the ad, the aroma, and the sensorial attributes. The experience of eating lamb is amazing, but it's the emotional connection that that campaign exists for. But the number one reason Australians eat lamb, if you ask them, it'd be, "Oh, because I love lamb." Well, why do you love lamb? They don't list off all the functional attributes.
Mark Jones
No.
Nathan Low
What's cool about the core premise of unity is that there's a product truth to it as well. So one of the things The Monkeys did when they came on board 10, 11 years ago is they partnered with the MLA on a massive ethnographic study which looked at the consumption of lamb, the occasions, the types of meals, and what differentiated lamb from other proteins. And why unity as a cultural concept is also functionally correct for lamb, which gives the brand the permission to own the space.
Mark Jones
In other words, multicultural appeal, yeah.
Nathan Low
Crosses the most cultures, but also it's the types of... Not just cuisines, it's the types of meals and the occasions you're eating it. So if you think about big shear plates, whether it's a tagine or whether it's a roast, whether it's a lamb shoulder or-
Mark Jones
You're making me hungry.
Nathan Low
... Alfresco dining and you've got the barbecue. The barbecue is naturally a social, people coming together environment. So lamb is served more on platters as a centre of table shear dish than other proteins. So that idea of consuming it in a way with lots of other people in a style that is about sharing, there's a unique product truth there. So we don't don't feel the pressure to bundle in lots and lots of functional benefits because the concept and territory of unity is true to the brand functionally as well.
Mark Jones
I think that's a really powerful lesson is brand truth because we are often tempted or maybe there's some other data that tends to pull us away into an aspirational truth, but it's not actually grounded, so to speak. So, then tell me about the success metrics that you touched on, and I'm interested to track that from campaign metrics through to sales. How do you think about this?
Nathan Low
Yep. Look, we look at a lot, and part of it's because of who MLA is and who we do this for. So we are funded by pharma levies, so the government collects those levies from animal transactions and then gives those levies to us to invest on behalf of industry. And in the marketing space, our role is to drive demand for Australian Lamb both domestically and around the world. So ultimately, we need to sell more. Sales won't always...starting at the end and we'll work backwards. Sales is not always the right metric because it might be a year of low supply because of weather conditions and there hasn't been a lot of rain in the growing region, so there might be less Lamb in the market. So volume is not necessarily our core driver, but maximising the value of the product that's available is. So that demand pressure not just from consumers but also from food service channels as well. So we also work really hard to get lamb on menu in that campaign window as well to sort of ride the wave of all the mental availability that we're generating.
Mark Jones
Yep, that's the behind-the-scenes channel stuff that people won't see.
Nathan Low
No, not many people see that. You sort of see it like a couple of years ago we partnered with Domino's where they launched a limited-edition range of lamb pizzas, and they featured Sam Kekovich in their campaign-
Mark Jones
Nice.
Nathan Low
... delivering pizzas to people's doors and stuff like that.
Mark Jones
Obviously, yeah.
Nathan Low
So we look for opportunities like that that extends the campaign. So we do look at sales, but it's a little bit more nuanced. We measure demand and we use consideration as a proxy for demand. We absolutely measure the effectiveness of everything we've done. So whether that's have we efficiently and effectively bought media, all of the tracking of the ad. So we work with Kantar on all the diagnostics around that. But the beauty of the Lamb ad and because it's so popular and it's become iconic is we also get a lot of free additional research because people will publish case studies on it to promote their organisations as thought leaders.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
Which allows us to do some really cool fun things that wouldn't be the normal metrics people would look at, but I like to do because it's very engaging for the marketing team. And when the results are good, it's quite nice for the ego. So Cubery, big global advertising and concept research firm, they'll always publish their Cubery rankings ratings of the Lamb ad. But because they also do exactly the same in the first week of February for all the Superbowl ads, it allows me to benchmark the Lamb ad against all the Superbowl ads.
Mark Jones
Now I have to ask, how's it doing?
Nathan Low
So every year since we've been doing this, we come in the top 10, which if you think about the amount of money that get invested in those ads and you're talking ads-
Mark Jones
Yeah, it's an order of magnitude.
Nathan Low
Crazy with lots of celebrities and much bigger budgets than we have. So it's a source of pride again, it's like Australia punching above its weight on a global scale. This year we actually would've been on the podium, we would've been second equal. The chest was pumped out and the head was expanding when I did that chart. And then naturally, I'm showing it to all our stakeholders, because it's-
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
... bragging rights and stuff. But yeah, we look at all the same metrics that most marketers look at, and then we also have the luxury of being able to do some fun things as well.
Mark Jones
So how is all of that informing then your marketing mix going forward? You used to in the day get a lot of earned media as the primary, I guess, amplification channel. And there's an idea now that it's sort of not an ad, but more of a mini moment if you like. So give us a sense of how you're thinking about the strategies around the channels.
Nathan Low
Yeah. So look, the way I think about it and the way we've certainly how it's evolved over the last few is to be really anchored on what's the core objective of this. So it's about affinity and driving that demand pressure from a metrics perspective. But in terms of the mechanism of the rollout of the campaign, we invest all this money and making an epic three-minute film or... The aim is to make an epic three-minute film. It doesn't have to be three minutes, it could be 2:57, it could be 3:13. Because it actually only lives on YouTube, which is great.
Because when you get into the edit, you don't have to sacrifice a scene you really love to get from 3:05 to 03:00. So that's quite liberating for the creatives and the agency. But where we've evolved is to go, "Well, if the best result for the brand is the most amount of people watching the three-minute film or the long format, does it really matter if they see a six-second cut-down, a 10-second cut-down a 15-second cut-down, a 30-second cut-down? Because for a long time it rolled out like a normal campaign. There was the big film that sat on digital social, and then there was a whole typical campaign around it which largely served-
Mark Jones
So all the cuts and the... Yep
Nathan Low
All the cut-downs. So that gave you reach and it gave you frequency, and that probably was a good thing for driving people into the sales channel. When reminding people that it's summer and its lamb, but two years ago, three years ago, sorry. Well, those are really just movie trailers, or let's treat it like it's a new album that's dropping or it's a new movie that's coming out. And everything else, let's see what happens if we make everything else exist to serve the long-form film.
Mark Jones
In other words, yeah, use them as teasers.
Nathan Low
Yeah, so what happened then is we went from the most viewed Lamb ad ever prior to 2024 being 11 million views. Still a pretty good number, and we mostly only look at Australian views. Sometimes your numbers get boosted because expats share it or it gets into the marketing community and goes around the world. But this is a domestic marketing campaign for Australia-
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
... so we try to strip out international views. And treating those cut-downs like movie trailers, because we saw the biggest benefit only coming from people who consumed the long-form film. We went from the most viewed Lamb ad made ever being 11 million to 22 million, at which point I'm like, we will never beat this again. We've said a new benchmark that I don't know how I'm going to convince people that we can do better. And I don't know what to set our target at for the following year. Because how do you go from 11 to 22? Is 15 a good number?
Mark Jones
Well, 22, just by the way, you're not far off the Australian population.
Nathan Low
No. So in theory everyone's seen it once, but the following year we did 21, so we almost got to 22. So, we've set a new benchmark here. What we did this year, which was definitely risky and probably I was more nervous about this than any creative decision I've had to make. We didn't make a single cut down this year. We actually went, what if we put all the money into the long form film so that every media dollar we spent is in the channels where that is going to live, to serve that in front of people?
Mark Jones
You mean amplifying it when it's... And so-
Nathan Low
And amplifying it on YouTube and through other sort of social digital channels. There's no cut downs. This year we made one film, a three-minute film. Now it did run in cinema, so we did take some money to put it in cinema, and that's a little bit more around, well, it's epic and it's theatrical. That feels like a good environment in summer. We bought one spot on TV in the Ashes in the tea break because the channel seven commentary team could lead into it. And then we knew they'd talk about it afterwards. So that gave us a moment. That's also really important for me for managing stakeholders because I can tell people where and when it's going to launch and they can go to see it. This year we've done 34 million views.
Mark Jones
Amazing.
Nathan Low
So in three years, we've gone from 11 to 34, just not really through making a better ad, although the metrics would say we have made a better ad this year, but just through optimising every part of the campaign. So that sort of looking at the marketing mix and trying to get better and better and learning from the past is a really quite important. I don't know what we're going to do next year.
Mark Jones
I was going to say, you're scaring yourself every year.
Nathan Low
I have no idea what I'm going to do next year.
Mark Jones
So what would you say to one of your peers who's in a similar situation where the mindset is, I actually haven't done it this way before. And there's that internal narrative of like, "Oh, this could go south."
Nathan Low
Yeah. So I think not every marketer has the luxury of some of the empowerment we have. So there's a couple of things that sort of allow me a little bit more freedom than some of my peers would have. So I don't want to be preachy and go take risks and be bold and what have you, because not everyone can do that.
Mark Jones
No, but we're all doing things we've not done before.
Nathan Low
True, true. There's two components for me that work. One is the risk appetite of the business. So marketing within the MLA.
Mark Jones
Yep.
Nathan Low
From a board governance perspective has a very, very high risk appetite. So that gives me that. That means my board is going to actually-
Mark Jones
So good.
Nathan Low
... challenge me for not taking risks. So when we talk about brave creativity, the risk is actually not being bold and brave. Because then you're a cookie-cutter, you don't cut through, it's not going to resonate, it won't be memorable. So for us, part of the campaign, the core success factors is to take risks. Now usually, that's a creative risk. This time it was very much a more commercial media risk.
Mark Jones
Yeah, and an execution risk.
Nathan Low
Yep. But it was the narrative. So you've got to build a narrative around it. You've got to be able to sit in front of your exec team, you've got to be able to sit in front of your MD, you've got to be able to sit in front of the board or in the case of me, I've also going to sit in front of a lot of Lamb producers, stakeholders.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
And be able to explain to them what I'm trying to achieve with the choice that I'm making. And for us it was a very simple explanation, which was you all love this thing. We're only spending directly in direct media terms, a third of our budget on specifically driving this. The other two-thirds is based on an assumption that if someone watches this cut down, they will go and watch the long form because we've reminded them that it exists. And I'm not sure that holds true. And we half proved it with the Un-Australian campaign where we actually went, let's make our entire outdoor buy QR codes for the ad.
Now, it wasn't just QR codes because that would be really boring. It was statements that people had made about the ad. Sorry, no. Sorry, not Un-Australian, comment section. We were taking comments people had made on the ad and turning them. So it felt like it was part of the ecosystem or the campaign idea.
Mark Jones
Yeah, it's fun.
Nathan Low
The numbers on people using those QR codes to link through to watch the long form weren't great. We thought it was a super clever idea and really cool, and it probably worked as a piece of out home, but it didn't work in terms of directing people to watch the Lamb. And now they might've watched it later because it was now in their mind that the Lamb ad was out. But we didn't have any hard data that says using all of this media on short form cut downs is going to result in someone watching the long form.
Mark Jones
No, but you are in a culture from an organisation perspective that rewards the pursuit of creativity. So you've got that, and that's a really amazing lesson. And you talk about the QR codes not working, what else have you got wrong? Because objectively this is a big thumbs up for all the work you're doing, but the journalists of me wants to know, what have you failed at?
Nathan Low
So look, I don't want to come across like everything we've done is amazing.
Mark Jones
Well, no, I mean it's obvious that it's hard work.
Nathan Low
I wouldn't say failed. It's more things that you haven't seen because they never saw the light of day, because we couldn't get them across the line or we couldn't make them happen. We wanted to rebrand. When we did Un-Australia, we wanted to do a cover rep, rebranding the Australian newspaper, the Un-Australian, and list all the things that people had called. It was just a big list of all the things people had called Un-Australian on Twitter. That to me is my biggest failure, because it was such a good creative and media concept and we just couldn't get across the line. So that [inaudible 00:35:13].
Mark Jones
What was the main reason? Just because it didn't think it had worked or...
Nathan Low
Well, you were asking a fairly large media property to play with their banner.
Mark Jones
Yeah. Okay.
Nathan Low
And we probably didn't allow enough lead time to make that happen. We probably underestimated the amount of negotiations and layers that you have to go through, because not everyone shares our culture of risk.
Mark Jones
Of course. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Low
And it's easy for us to say, that's a great idea because we're not putting our brand at risk to do that. So it's little things like that where you go, that was a brilliant idea, but oh, we just did not allow ourselves enough lead time to pull it off. The second campaign that we did, which is where we went from border walls to then we went to international border closures. And the campaign was all about the rest of the world has forgotten about Australia because we won't let anyone else come here anymore.
That's probably been the weakest of the six that I've done. And I think what we didn't get right with that one. So it certainly wasn't a failure. It performed well. It also coincided with Omicron, and that meant that lots of truck drivers were getting sick. There was not much Lamb in stores, people were distracted like a whole a... Where I think we're on the third round of COVID lockdowns by then. So there was a lot of external environment stuff going on. I don't like to talk about stuff that I haven't participated in, but one of our core learnings, looking back at the history when we were analysing some of the lamb campaigns that hadn't gone well, was most people probably won't remember or realise there's one of the last 21 that didn't launch in January. So we've learned do not move the launch date of the Lamb ad. And it was done for very real reasons. So-
Mark Jones
So which year was that?
Nathan Low
So that would've been 2018 maybe.
Mark Jones
Okay.
Nathan Low
So it was the year of floods and fires. It feels a little bit like this year as well, but really bad floods, really bad fires.
Mark Jones
So you thought it was bad timing?
Nathan Low
So from a ad campaign to benefit Australian producers who were doing it incredibly tough, it felt like it wasn't great timing to drop that ad. Actually it was 2019, sorry.
Mark Jones
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nathan Low
It was Lambalytica. It was also a very niche dark subject matter because not all Australians were aware of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the tone was dark and so they moved it to February to sort of move it away from all those natural disasters. And not only did it not resonate with the public because of the timing change, but actually Australia's Lamb producers got up the marketing team for "Don't Mess Around with our campaign that we love." And the team was like, "Whoa, we were trying to do it. We thought it was the right thing."
Mark Jones
You can speak for it, right? Yeah.
Nathan Low
To be respectful to you guys. So definitely we've learned that lesson loud and clear. Do not mess with that January window.
Mark Jones
A couple more quick things before we break. What's your favourite Lamb ad?
Nathan Low
So for me, it's the first one, and I don't know if that's just because the first one.
Mark Jones
First one you did.
Nathan Low
The first one that I did, which was the border walls one. But the reason why it's my favourite, and I learned a lot of lessons from that. The number one reason why it's my favourite is it felt like an incredibly risky choice to make at a time where... And it did a little bit. I was putting my reputation on the line, because it was my first Lamb ad, but everyone else was avoiding talking about COVID in negative terms.
Everyone was talking about the good aspects, more time at home with family or you can exercise more. And so brands were almost deliberately avoiding the lived reality of Australians experience of going through border lockdowns and all that sort of stuff. And we were like, well, it's not an authentic Lamb ad unless we're talking about what's really going on. And the challenge there is then, well, how do you make that funny? So for me, the biggest creative risk I've taken was the first ad that I made, because to do something that almost every other Australian marketer was deliberately avoiding. And I get why you would, for me, just makes it my favourite. And I also just love the ad, the idea of physical walls being built, and the story of that was so nice.
The line at the end of that ad is my favourite ever line of any Lamb ad I've made where the little girl looks up at the sort of hero older man and go, "You did it, the United States, Australia." And he's just like, "No, it's just Australia." And there's such a heartfelt moment of unity that is what the campaign's meant to all be about. There's just so many aspects of that ad that I love.
Mark Jones
Well, I did some very unscientific research on AI before we started the conversation. And according to this unscientific yet slightly scientific Google search Make Lamb, Not Walls was the top three. It was in the top three. So that was like number one trending YouTube video with over 10 million views at the time. Number two was the generation gap from 2024.
Nathan Low
Exactly, right, yep.
Mark Jones
That got 20.... Sorry, 24.8 million views. I was boomers and Gen X's and millennials and so on. I think you made reference to that. And then number one was Richie's BBQ 2015, the Gold Standard, one of TV out of the year at the time. And it had that nostalgic feel with Sam Kekovich as being the Lambasador.
Nathan Low
Yeah. So look, Richie's BBQ is a cracker.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
And it wasn't meant to be Richie. For all of two days, that was Bob Hawke was going to play that role.
Mark Jones
Oh, wow.
Nathan Low
Mark had spoken to Bob and Bob had agreed to do that. And then I think somewhere over the course of a weekend, his political staff has probably gotten his ear and suggested might not be a great idea to be in a Lamb ad. So this year was actually a bit of a full circle moment for us. Because I don't know if you noticed, but in that download scene where all of the Australian things drop into the auditor's head after he is taken a bite of the Lamb, one of those little snippets is actually Bob Hawke.
Mark Jones
Oh, no I didn't... Yeah.
Nathan Low
And so we finally 10, 11 years later managed to get Bob Hawke into a Lamb ad. But I think that one worked really well getting Richie. I mean, Richie sadly passed away-
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nathan Low
... not long after that. He was perfect for that role, and that was the first that sort of established the new strategy for the second decade of Lamb ads.
Mark Jones
Now, no interview is complete without an AI question. And I think the interesting thing here is how we're seeing just how quickly AI can produce creative content that looks movie quality. How do you think it's going to impact the creative work next year?
Nathan Low
I'll come back to a word I've already used a couple of times, authenticity. We are making a food ad and actually the agency hear me say this a lot. I'm always reminding them, "Guys, just don't forget we are making a food ad. So the food has to look amazing. It has to look appetising." I'm sure AI can make food look good. I will probably resist using AI for anything that involves food for as long as I reasonably can. I mean, we've made AI jokes in Lamb ads in AI Kochie in the comment section ad. Look, I don't think because the nature of the Lamb campaign and how we make it and things we hold dear to what we think makes a great Lamb campaign that we are going to use a lot of AI in the creative process. I'm sure we will use it in post, but I'll resist using it on any of the food shots because I want the Lamb to look real or authentic. People eat real Lamb, so I want to show them real Lamb.
Mark Jones
My only critique would be like hamburger joints and all these food designers out there, that stuff this food to make... With all sorts of weird creative things, glue and whatever to make it look good for ads, right?
Nathan Low
Mm-hmm.
Mark Jones
So there is a precedent even though it's food, right? Maybe not for Lamb, but certainly in the industry.
Nathan Low
Yeah, certainly there is. Yeah. Probably more so for packaged foods. And I'm sure you'll see the use of it continue to grow because it just seems to be getting exponentially better and better. And bringing it back to the Super Bowl and how sometimes we benchmark the Lamb ad. There was plenty of AI used in Super Bowl ads this year, so... I don't want to be too old-school in a geriatric and say, we're never going to use it. But philosophically, from my perspective, if you want your food to feel, look, and your communication to be authentic around it, then you probably should be using authentic real food shots.
Mark Jones
Nathan Low, thanks for joining us on The CMO Show.
Nathan Low
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Mark Jones
Hope you enjoyed the interview. I got to say, the thing that I'm taking away from this is a reflection on the importance of humour. If I think about my own reaction is that it makes you laugh. And of course the things that are true are always funny. And so their ability to really get to this heart of what it means to be Australian, but in the sense of finding that point of unity, just love that. And the way that they've been able to apply different marketing techniques year-on-year to push the boundaries. And then really push into this idea that maybe we haven't done it before like this, we're not quite sure, but we'll give it a go anyway. Risk-taking is always hard, but in this case is paying off. So I hope you are taking a lot away from this episode. That's it for The CMO Show this week. We'll see you soon.