The Campaign

We needed an easy, but difficult to ignore way for everyday Australians to put pressure on their Members of Parliament to speak up and call for change. We did a little digging and discovered a surprising fact - all our politicians still use fax machines. So, we created an online platform that would allow people to type in a message and fax it directly to their local MP, at absolutely no cost to them. That way, every time a message was sent, rather than receiving another easy to delete email, the politician had to contend with a chattering fax machine demanding attention as it spits reams of paper out at them from the corner of their office.

The Brief

* Overall budget for the project was $40,747. * Agency: $5,000 (billable value: $127,240) * Photographer: $1,500 (billable value: $25,000) * Film production: $33,500 (billable value: $300,000) * OOH: pro-bono * TVC (FTA + PTV): pro-bono * Social: $747.

Creative Execution

Timelines on this were extraordinarily tight. The agency initially met with the client December 12th. Creative was briefed 20th December, we worked through the Christmas break and presented concepts to client January 5th. Once the direction was approved we pulled in favours with a photographer and a production company to start creating the assets we needed. The client immediately went to work sourcing talent. We encountered an unexpected last minute hiccup when certain government organisations wouldn’t allow their employees to appear on screen wearing their uniforms, but we managed to work around this. The finished creative and technology was ready and dispatched February 2nd, going live nationally across both free and Pay TV February 5th. It also appeared on 50 outdoor super-sites across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra. It ran for 4 weeks initially. A second burst has happened in this term of Parliament. Total budget including media - $40,000.

Results

* More than 11,400 faxes sent * All 226 federal politicians individually reached - some by hundreds of their constituents. * Marriage Equality back in the headlines and back on the political agenda. * Opinion leading and influential politicians are starting to break-ranks and draft legislation. * 660,000 organic Facebook views of the film * Over 6,000 Facebook shares of the film * Within 2 weeks of campaign launch reach totalled 1,604,528 with 95% reach organic and unpaid (1,501,485).

In an era of easy to ignore social media activism, we needed a way to cut through the clutter and grab politicians’ attention directly. So, we turned to something unexpected, noisy and frustratingly tangible right under their noses. Fax machines. That’s right, we discovered that in 2017, every Australian politician still owns and uses a fax machine. So, we created an online platform that would allow people to type in a personal message of support for Same Sex Marriage Equality and have it faxed directly to their local politician at no cost to them.

We wanted to reignite the debate by taking the gay out of gay marriage and repositioning the conversation around a core Australian value – a fair go for all. A value that this country has held close to its heart for decades, through all kinds of hardships and challenges. To do this, we launched a TV and outdoor campaign featuring everyday heroes such as doctors, nurses, firefighters, and military personnel. We then highlighted the inequality that, despite selflessly serving the community (and putting their own lives at risk in some cases), they’re still being treated like second class citizens, simply because they’re LGBTI. The campaign called on people to visit our website where they were directed to put pressure on their local politicians using our online fax tool.