Six years ago a roaming tongue and the insistent beat of the soundtrack that accompanied it put Toohey's Extra Dry on the map for hip Australian drinkers. This week it launches the next step in that journey with an ad featuring a track from a new Australian musician in collaboration with the music producer Mark Ronson and a host of international recording artists.
Late last year TED called for aspiring Australian music acts to apply for the job of working with Ronson, John Taylor of Duran Duran, Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet and singer Santigold to compose a track for the new ad. Fox by The Danimals, which is already airing on radio stations such as Triple J, appears in a series of ads depicting people on a night out, the first of which will air on Sunday.
TED is no stranger to music: the tongue ad's soundtrack, Satisfaction by Benny Bennassi, became a nightclub favourite and the brand has sponsored festivals and music competitions. But the latest initiative confirms the marketing trend that the content is as important as the ad that promotes it.
Lion Nathan national marketing director Matt Tapper said it cemented TED's reputation as a beer brand that does ''groundbreaking work'' and that also recognised the ''role music plays in people's lives in bringing them together''.
In the commercials, the advertising agency BMF was briefed to create ads around TED's positioning as the beer that delivers a ''clean, crisp taste''. But, in a decision that highlighted the element of risk in this campaign, the ad's writer and art director had to conceive the ad without knowing which track would appear on it.
Lion has also learnt that it is one thing creating all this content, but quite another ensuring people will see it. Lion increased its spending into television, print and radio advertising to ensure its target audience of young metropolitan men are aware of the extra content such as websites, video diaries and the like that builds up the ''back story'' essential to give a brand credibility.
Tapper said he learnt the lessons from the last initiative, ''6 Beers of Separation'', which offered young Australians the chance to meet their idols and was broadcast as a 90-minute special on Foxtel last year.
''If you can't get that content out in the marketplace via a number of effective touch points then it's all for nothing,'' said Tapper. ''You need great content but ultimately you need to get it out into the marketplace.''
While he said that 6 Beers of Separation was a success, the media spend behind it failed to reach a wide enough audience. ''Looking back, there was a sense that we would've liked to get more exposure and we've have learned from that journey.''
During the launch of its cider brand, 5 Seeds, the company relied heavily on social media and blogs to seed the idea first, before launching the brand on TV. Commercials then redirected people back to 5 Seeds' Facebook site where the story of how birds rather than humans were once the top of the food chain was told in depth.
Tapper said he believed that his marketers were finally getting the right model and paid tribute to his marketing manager, Josh Gaudry, for bringing together the efforts of all its agencies, which included the Peer Group Media, BMF Advertising, Holler, Zenith Optimedia and Momentum Worldwide. ''Getting the balance of content and media right is critical, but we are confident of where we are placed with this campaign,'' said Tapper of the latest TED campaign.
