MEET GRANT

Short List
TitleMEET GRANT
BrandMELBOURNE ADVERTISING AND DESIGN CLUB
Product / ServiceMADC ANNUAL AWARDS AND EVENT
CategoryA01. Fiction & Non-Fiction Film: Up to 5 minutes
EntrantTHIRTEEN&CO Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation CUMMINS & PARTNERS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Production THIRTEEN&CO Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Armand De Saint-Salvy Thirteen & Co Director
Roy De Giorgio Thirteen & Co Executive Producer
Charity Downing Thirteen & Co Executive Producer
Chris Ellis Cummins & Partners Creative Director
Heath Davis Cummins & Partners Creative Director
Liam Jenkins Cummins & Partners Copywriter

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Meet Grant is a parody film that became on over night viral hit within the advertising industry. It was made to rekindle excitement for the Melbourne Advertising and Design club's annual advertising awards. Given our target market was the advertising industry of Melbourne, the spot's global success not only translated to tickets sales and entries for the event selling out, but it brought together the advertising community of Melbourne in a way that hadn't been seen in decades.

Background

The MADC, an advertising club from Melbourne Australia, faced a problem. Its award show was declining and increasingly met with cynicism from those it was meant to inspire: Melbourne's advertising industry. Our goal was to re-ignite passion for MADC, increase attendance, ticket sales and awards entries. To do this, we chose to build a campaign and online film that celebrates one of the most famous pieces of Advertising that was created in Melbourne.

Describe the creative idea

Meet Grant is a parody celebrating Melbourne’s most famous advertising piece - Meet Graham. Meet Graham is an interactive installation about road safety. The campaign features a human being scientifically designed to survive a car accident. It was a Cannes stand out. Here is the original case study film about Graham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTwlhGA8zMI For our parody, we centered the film around a man scientifically designed to survive the dangers of Advertising. We highlighted how his liver would be fortified to endure drinking sessions, his ears would filter out conflicting opinions. The film concludes with the tag line "you can't beat the original", effectively acknowledging that our "Grant" is but a poor imitation of it's original inspiration "Graham". Our message is simple - MADC celebrates only the best ORIGINAL creativity out of melbourne.

Describe the strategy

Given our target audience was the advertising industry of Melbourne, we felt it important to center our creative around work that originated from Melbourne. We thought a clever way to celebrate the originality of Melbourne's great work, was to make "poor imitations." By making the Meet Grant parody, we only highlighted just how brilliant the original, Meet Graham, truly was.

Describe the execution

The film was made on a shoestring budget with a small crew using real people. It was directed to look like a documentary. The spot was released online October 9 through vimeo, and through the MADC facebook page. Because the Melbourne Advertising community is fairly small (just a few thousand), we were very targeted with our release. It was a complete surprise to us when the spot went globally viral a few days later.

Describe the outcome

The spot went viral immediately and far exceeded expectations. It was picked up globally on most industry blog, winning Bestadsontv, getting selected as Adage Editors pick. Was number 3 on Adforum's worldwide top 5, and spent time as number #1 on Creativity's top 20 list. It was also a vimeo staff pick, where the video got 110K views. The results were outstanding for the event. Ticket sales were lagging until the release of the video. Afterwards, the awards night sold out, and infact, people were complaining they couldn't get a ticket. Entries to the event skyrocketed, and the event itself was a raging success. Since, the spot has won 2 x silvers at the NYFAA in Film craft, and shortlisted in 2 categories for the One Show.