The Monkeys

Client: Macpac
Product: Brand
Title: A Bit Precarious
Media: TV/Online. Print
Country: Australia/New Zealand
Date Of Campaign: 19 April 2023

Background: Macpac is New Zealand’s original technical outdoor brand - making tough, high quality outdoor gear since 1973. Despite being well known in its home market of NZ, the brand is relatively unknown in Australia, with only eight per cent of Aussies even aware of Macpac. And for those that do know us, we’re seen as just another outdoor brand with little appreciation or understanding of our product credentials. Given the outdoors category is a crowded market, with many strong conventions to break away from – beautiful landscapes, inspirational quotes, wholesome activities – our challenge was to find some distinctiveness for the brand and ensure people remember Macpac when they came to buy. We needed to increase awareness of Macpac and more importantly increase awareness of what made our brand so great.

Idea: With the goal of growing awareness and consideration, our solution lay in highlighting two intrinsic truths about the brand: 1) Macpac makes superior quality, durable and dependable outdoor gear (trusted to last and perform in any environment) 2) Macpac is born in New Zealand (which comes with in-built outdoors credibility) To bring these two truths to life, we used one of the oldest, but often forgotten about, tricks in advertising — the product demonstration. Proof always works better than a claim. So instead of telling people about our Kiwi heritage or how good our gear is, we showed them. Our campaign dramatised a group of mountain climbers navigating a serious calamity, with the help of a Macpac jacket. It was an extremely simple, but powerful product demonstration, wrapped in the uniquely deadpan comedic style that New Zealand has become synonymous with. To reach our audience, the campaign was placed on traditional and integrated channels including TV, outdoor, social, online and in-store. Ensuring that each channel allowed us to tell our product story.

Results: Launching on 19 April 2023, the campaign was immediately met with positive reaction from the Australian and New Zealand public, as well as industry and mainstream media including The Australian, Ad Age (Editor’s Pick) and BestAdsOnTV (Best ad of the week). At the time of writing, the campaign has been live for just over a month, so full results are unknown but to date it’s been viewed over 3,000,000 times online and liked over 125,000 times. Pleasingly, it’s contributed to a huge lift in positive sentiment (with almost universal praise) and a clear message takeout of our original objectives (the brand’s quality credentials and New Zealand heritage). - “Now that's what we call marketing!!!!! Didn't know the brand now I kinda love it.” - “Kiwi humour, nice” - “I'm buying this jacket lmao” - “This is the best ad I've ever seen” - “This is fricken genius” - Whatever this company paid the creators of this commercial, they (creators) deserve more!! (AGREE - J&H)And by making the product the ‘hero’ of the spot, the commercial has received high levels of brand attribution, an important metric in an era where many commercials are regularly misattributed.