Optus Rockcorps

BACKSTORY

While I was living in Sydney, I worked at M&C Saatchi, one of the largest and most reputable agencies in the country. One of our clients was Optus, the country’s 2nd largest telco.

THE PROJECT

In an effort to build brand affinity with younger Australians, Optus partnered with RockCorps, an organization that gives teens concert tickets in exchange for volunteer work. They arranged a big concert in Sydney with several popular acts. Our brief: make teens aware of the partnership and get them to sign up to volunteer.

THE BRIEF

In terms of insights, the brief was pretty thin, but RockCorps did tell us to focus on the positive and keep it light. They told us to avoid discussing all the people and organizations in need of help, and instead just make kids feel good about doing something positive in the world. They just talked about how much fun kids have volunteering, and how happy they get about attending the concerts. They wanted us to capture that joy. So we had our north star. Just had to find the way in.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Early on in our brainstorming process, we explored a few different directions, but we kept coming back to concert posters. They’re just so iconic, and we knew we were going to use them in some way, so we felt like we just had to find a unique spin to make them surprising and interesting. We were talking a lot about how RockCorps events are so unique — in our case, three major musical acts were traveling all the way from England to do a special concert just for kids who volunteered. Because they did something special. Because they were special. In a way, the kids were the star of the show.

THE BREAKTHROUGH

We hit on the idea of putting a volunteer on the concert poster, treated like the star of the show, with these famous acts in the background as their supporting artists. We imagined hundreds of different posters featuring real teens. We wanted kids to imagine themselves up on the wall, getting their moment of fame, with their names in big letters. I was playing with lines to support the concept, and I hit on “When you volunteer, you’re the star.” It just clicked. It felt right. The spirit of it really matched what the RockCorps team was looking for. It was simple, and it all came together really easily, which is always a good sign.

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

We put together the first comps, with a silhouetted figure representing “you” in some executions, and real kids in others. We added lots of other ads and extensions. The work sailed through approvals.

COLLABORATION

Then it was time to share the work with the inter-agency team, comprised of M&C Saatchi, the PR company, the media company, and RockCorps’ own internal creative team. Each group had brought their own ideas to the table. It was a tense scene, with each group digging in to support their own ideas and pick apart the others.

I didn’t like that feeling.

That competitiveness. The quiet hostility. I didn’t want to play the game that way.

So I made friends.

I went out of my way to get to know everybody at those meetings. I found in-between moments to chat with them, get to know them, understand a little about what they were after and what they needed. It went a long way. They felt heard, and they also got to know me, so I wasn’t just a guy with a competing idea. It felt better, and it ultimately it led to a great result. That stuck with me, and it’s still how I approach cross-functional or cross-departmental collaboration.

Our idea was moving forward, but I also gave the other teams constructive feedback on their ideas, and genuinely invested in helping them get their best work through as well. My general approach to feedback, especially in a cross-departmental or cross-organizational situation, is “make the best stuff better.” Don’t waste time on what’s not working at all, no one wants to hear why they’re wrong, just focus on the best of what they’ve got and help improve it. When I’m managing creatives, I’m more willing to discuss what’s not working if it’s helpful or necessary, but I generally focus on the positive.

Ultimately, our idea won, and then it was time to make it.

PRODUCTION

We set up special mini volunteering events specifically to shoot kids for the campaign. We had a great time. The RockCorps team was right, the kids were so happy to be there, and they loved the concert poster idea, and their joy really came across in the photos. We pasted up posters all around Sydney and the surrounding areas, and ran digital versions as well.

We also translated the idea to audio ads:

INNOVATION

Aside from the paid ads, I had an idea for something that my agency had never done before. This was before “influencers” was an industry term. A former colleague of mine had started representing “vloggers” — proto YouTubers who were earning millions of views by documenting their lives. They had just started working with brands, and my old colleague told me that these young people were incredibly effective at getting kids to take action. He quoted insanely good conversion rates from a recent campaign. Thankfully, I had made a good connection with the media team during the ideation phase. In a following meeting, I pitched the idea, and they agreed to carve out a small portion of their budget for YouTubers. We gave them the construct that connected with the campaign idea — pick some of your fans to join you on a volunteering project, and make them the “stars” of the episode.

The results were amazing. Over a million views for a very small price, with an exceptional ROI. The YouTubers drove a massive amount of traffic to the website, far more than all the display banners we ran.

The event sold out in just a few weeks. The campaign was a massive success. Thousands of kids volunteered in their communities and got tickets to a great concert. And each one got to feel like a star.