BILL Lawry, Kate Ritchie and Leisel Jones star in Meat & Livestock Australia’s new musical ad, ‘The Greatest Meat on Earth’, which forms the cornerstone of the industry’s new domestic beef marketing campaign.

The new platform evolves from the previous ‘You’re Better on Beef’ campaigns and inspires consumers to reconnect with beef by incorporating messages spanning versatility, nutrition, provenance, welfare, sustainability and eating quality.

Beef Central flagged the arrival of the new MLA domestic marketing campaign in this article published on Tuesday.

The new campaign will run across TV, online video and social media channels. It will also include a radio partnership with NOVA FM to drive engagement and interest among younger audiences.

Engaged to develop the beef campaign ad for the first time was creative agency, The Monkeys, which already does MLA’s award-winning lamb campaign work.

The beef campaign kicks off with a man walking into a butchery asking for “just a rump steak” before he is told by irritated butchers they don’t sell them. The ad then turns into a musical with the butchers explaining why ‘just’ is an inadequate word to accompany beef.

The long-play version of the ad (click link above to access) starts in a local butcher shop and cuts to famous landmarks across Australia and around the world to show how the customer’s request for ‘just’ a rump steak fails to do it justice. The ads include appearances from Aussies who ‘embody greatness’ including legendary cricket commentator Bill Lawry, award-winning actress Kate Ritchie, and Olympic gold medallist Liesel Jones.

Three other 30-second ads (access full series of ads at the bottom of this article) deliver supporting messages on why Australian beef is the greatest meat on earth, reinforcing this proposition to consumers on several levels: beef’s nutrition credentials, its versatility and range of cuts, as well as the superior provenance of Australian beef.

MLA group marketing manager Andrew Howie said the new platform has been developed based on insights centred on the consumer, highlighting their drivers and barriers to consumption and the challenges they face in meal selection and preparation.

“Australia produces the greatest Beef in the world. When it comes to taste, tenderness, flavour and quality, nothing comes close,” Mr Howie said.

“For most Aussies, beef holds an important place in their hearts and the new platform is aimed at reconnecting them with Australian beef. When was the last time someone raved about the chicken they had for dinner last night?” he asked.

Mr Howie said underpinning the new strategy was the need for the beef industry to find ways to continue generating value for consumers in the face of four key challenges:

• consumer willingness to pay a premium for beef
• changing population mix
• changing lifestyles, and
• proliferation of media.

“Ultimately, our marketing needs to be effective and drive demand for beef – and in turn provide returns for our levy payers,” he said.

He told advertising industry website Mumbrella that beef’s position as the category leader spurred the need for a more emotional campaign which reminded Australians of beef’s ‘greatness’.

“As Australians we use the word ‘just’ all the time as a way of playing things down, but it’s not ‘just’ beef, it is the greatest beef on earth,” Mr Howie said.

The talent chosen to drop into the ad was based on their ability to meet the brief of greatness, Mr Howie said.

“Kate Ritchie was chosen for the fact she has won two gold Logies, she is the people’s champion, and Leisel Jones is an Australian swimmer from the very young age of 16, and she went on to achieve greatness many times. They were chosen because of their ability to be able to deliver on the greatness brief.”

“One of the struggles is that beef is the meat protein category leader in Australia, and as such it does often become a magnet for criticism. And it also carries, as the captain, a lot of the burdens that the industry has, so in recent times we’ve been promoting the nutritional benefits of beef which is one of the benefits of it, but we realised that if we are really going to get Australians buying more beef more often, then we have to try and give them a more emotional platform that sits above some of those rational reasons to buy,” Mr Howie said.

“We went back to the beginning and started a full brand review process and what that actually started with was, ‘What’s the true essence of the brand?’ And where we got to was greatness,” he said.

Creating distinctions between beef and lamb

Mr Howie told Mumbrella that the ad aimed to deliberately differentiate both of MLA’s ‘brands’ – lamb and beef.

“We are an organisation but we have brands, and the brands are very different in what they set out to achieve and what their purpose and the role they play in the consumers’ repertoire,” he said.

“For lamb it is unity, it is about bringing people together and you see the work we do there it is all about the coming together of Australians, and so we really wanted to make sure we pulled the two apart given that we look after both,” Mr Howie told Mumbrella.

“Lamb very much focuses on unity and beef is now this idea of greatness.”

Too many marketers are “crap”

In light of his comments made last month that too many Australian marketers are “crap, and scared”, Mr Howie said it was important for marketers to spend more time on the strategic process, which is what MLA did this time around.

“This whole process actually came about at the very top of the funnel, which was sitting down doing a strategic review for our brand and identifying where the opportunity for our brand was to try and own a space,” he said.

Using strategy, instead of creativity as “solver of problems”

“Too often we try and use creativity as the solver of our problems, but actually it should be strategy, and if we get those things right, then the work is brave, sure, but it’s commercially sound and it makes sense to be doing the work that we are doing.”

“The audience for this work is Australian consumers, and if we sell more beef, then that’s a win.”

Click on the links below to view more short-form ads from the series:

https://youtu.be/MzMPIpKnqJc