High Five: Treats from Down Under

When making Matilda Bay ale, it took 27 attempts to get it just right. To show the commitment, the brewer produced a limited-edition collection of the rejected beers. Failure in a can to show the quality control. I like the confidence of the campaign. Instead of telling you about the perfecting standards, it lets the product speak for itself. That - and the whole campaign - is beautifully crafted with names like 'Keep dreaming' and 'Ballpark'.

This is genius. Just like an airplane, if earth ‘crashes and burns’ from climate change, there will be a black box to recover from the wreckage to work out exactly why, when and how things went wrong. 'Earth's Black Box' records measurements of the earth alongside the contextual data of news headlines, social media, updates from key climate events and conferences. The 10 x 4 x 3m steel monolith sits purposefully in the Tasmanian wilderness. It’s beautiful and kind of chilling at the same time. Perhaps a future civilisation could benefit, but it certainly acts as a clear reminder that all our actions contribute, and we’ve very much headed in the wrong direction.

The creative answer to this new model launch and car giveaway could have been really boring. Instead, they took advantage of everyone’s dual screening behaviour and hijacked the entire ad break. Viewers got to race each other live on their mobiles for the chance to win. I love it when people mess with a media format and this does that well to become a truly interactive film.

Supercheap Auto lost its long-time sponsorship of the Bathurst 1000 race in 2020 and was quite publicly devastated about the break-up. This year it continues its love affair with Bathurst (a regional town in Australia) in a completely different way. Instead of backing the big race, they sponsored 1000 businesses in the town. Imaginative and memorable retail. Information delivered via entertainment, while never taking itself too seriously.

Natural disasters aren’t going anywhere, especially in Australia. We are resilient, but we are going to need all help we can get. So, this project is highly relevant. The ‘One House’ investigates how design and engineering can help a home withstand catastrophic weather conditions. Making our homes more resilient is important now and into the future. This is an important story to tell that hopefully inspires some positive change. Oh, and it’s beautifully executed.