The Campaign

Australia’s Heroes of the Sky is an explosive social content series that straps in millennials and takes them along for the ride making them feel part of the rescue crew. From a GoPro mounted perspective we shared the most compelling action and drama from the TV show. We introduced millennials to the lifesaving and heroic work of the crewmembers that turn up to work everyday to save the lives of Australians. Westpac branding on uniforms and the helicopters, as well as branded call signs and subtle natural audio and visual cues that allowed us to purely focus on entertaining a millennial audience. We featured younger crewmembers, 19-year-old Sammy and 28-year-old paramedic Charlie, characters we knew would resonate with millennials. Sammy showed bravery and skill to winch a woman 150ft from a tall ship and Charlie flew out to a remote tourist spot to help an elderly man in distress.

Creative Execution

We talked to millennials in their language. By partnering up a content strategist, creative & paid social planner we worked planned, scheduled & optimized content, spend and targeting. This ensured we aligned content creation to youth viewing habits. Snapchat stories filled with emojis and slang delivered action and drama for a time poor audience. Facebook served weekly wrap up highlights of the most critical and compelling edge of your seat moments and an Instagram partnership with 3 of Australia’s most renowned landscape photographers created thumb stopping photography profiling the heroic characters of the WHLRS. The WHLRS bases across Australia run their own Facebook pages so we ensured all assets could be shared and repurposed for their local community. Using location targeting we showed local heroes keeping communities safe. We served explosive content at the right time and provided real time learning’s to adapt stories to deliver younger audiences epic entertainment.

We captivated 1.6 million young Aussies aged between 17 and 34 and more than 676,000 millennials spoke directly to us through social engagements. User initiated social video content received over 330,000 views but more importantly we held their attention with incredible view through rates of 75%. The average view time was 83 seconds, an enormous feat considering the short attention span of millennials. Our Snapchat Stories had an impressive 60% open rate. The stunning content from our landscape photographers was prestigiously regrammed by Tourism Australia, an instagram account with over 2.1 million followers, delivering an additional 46,600 engagements for Westpac. Over and above regular activity, Australia’s Heroes of the Sky contributed 4% uplift in organic site traffic of people investigating Westpac products. This resulted in 864 approved and activated cards and 31 Home Loans with estimated revenue of $401,965 over three years.

The Netflix generation of Aussies watches what they want, when they want and how they want. TV ratings are in decline and younger audiences demand to hold the drama, action and excitement in their hands and they only give us just a handful of seconds before they scroll on. We had to radically adapt a stunning, cinematic, edge of your seat storytelling format from TV and into the hands of a hard to reach audience. We blew their minds with compelling, unexpected, gripping and entertaining stories and changed the perspective of a brand that struggled to talk to millennials.

When you’re competing with the likes of global entertainment juggernauts Redbull and GoPro you have to adapt to the mentality of these established entertainment platforms. We were ruthless in teasing and highlighting only the most radically and gnarly thumb stopping stories. Our mission was to bring only the drama and emotion you feel from real life events into the palm of their hands and onto the phone in front of them. Australia’s Heroes of the Sky delivers heroic and emotional stories in two ways: Inspire Content • Compelling and awe-inspiring stories that take Millennials up into the helicopter and along for the ride, a glimpse into the incredible work that happens day in day out. Inform Content • Dramatic stories around the important and life saving work carried out by the crew, reinforcing that in 42 years of the WHLRS nobody has ever paid to be rescued and they never will.