Why is this work relevant for Direct?

People don't typically visit billboards directly. But in this case they did. People don't typically post pictures of themselves with billboards. But in this case hundreds did. And you know what? People never buy merchandise to remember the time they visited a billboard. But in this case we sold thousands of dollars in merchandise through our direct ecommerce site.

Background

Balter XPA is Australia’s favourite craft beer. But in an effort to go mainstream they needed to solve one problem: Not enough Australians knew that it even was a beer. XPA?

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

For this campaign, we had just enough money to buy one billboard. But funnily enough, when you look at that one billboard in the right way, it's exactly the same dimensions as a carton of Balter XPA beers.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

So, using our one single billboard, we made Balter XPA synonymous with being beer all across Queensland, with the introduction of the Balter Big Slab. A tongue-in-cheek ‘Big Thing’ tourist attraction where the joke was that it was clearly just a billboard, that just happened to be the shape of the slab. Yes, that sounds simple, but it really is a simple idea. The funny thing about it is that no-one had looked at a billboard and realised it's the same shape as a carton of beer.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

Now, the truth about big Aussie tourist attractions is that they're a great place to get both funny selfies and over the top souvenirs. So we decided to encourage selfies and drive sales of merchandise (to give to charity). Then we PR'd it. Then we offered free "Mini Big Slabs" to the first 100 people who took a selfie. And the internet took it from there.

List the results (30% of vote)

We actually succeeded in turning this one, ugly, empty billboard into tourist attraction. Without transforming it at all. People actually visited it. And that made a lot of Aussies laugh. - Year on year sales up 92%. - Campaign reached 2.49 million people - Campaign investment only $45,000