Carlton Draught: Big Ad
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The Carlton Draught Big Ad is an award-winning advertisement for Carlton Draught created by George Patterson and Partners (Young & Rubicam) of Melbourne, which used viral marketing techniques before being released on television. It premiered on Australian television on 7 August 2005.
In the advertisement, two armies, one dressed in maroon, the other in yellow, march toward one another singing "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, but replaced with lyrics such as "It’s a big ad/...expensive ad/This ad better sell some bloody beer". A heroic figure on horseback leads the charge. Viewed from the air, we see the armies form a glass of Carlton Draught and a human body. The glass is then lifted to the mouth, and the audience sees the beer (the rushing, ecstatically leaping yellow-clad men) flowing into the stomach of the figure.
The ad parodies the visual style of battle sequences currently in vogue (a la Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films) complete with sweeping, larger-than-life panoramas of rugged mountain terrain.
The advertisement was released on the internet two weeks prior to being shown on television. Just 24 hours after release, the Big Ad had been downloaded 162,000 times (Frilingos, 2005, p.8) and within two weeks it had been seen by over one million viewers in 132 countries (Lees, 2005). The viral release of the Big Ad was so successful that the television media budget was reduced so as to not overexpose the advertisement (Lee, 2005, p.29).
The company decided to use a viral campaign because of the distracting environment in which television is viewed, and the fragmented audiences of traditional media. Matt Keen, General Manager of Regular Beer at Foster’s Australia, said that with digital media, the audience has actively taken the time to see the ad and it is a way of personally engaging with drinkers (quoted by Lee, 2005, p.29).
Since the original ad campaign, the advertisement has been parodied by Australian clothing brand Jay Jays and two people from Belgium (see [1])
Whilst widely held within the advertising industry to be a successful ad, sales of the Carlton Draught brand nonetheless fell, as with equivalent Australian beers, presumably failing on the ads own criteria of "sell[ing] some bloody beer".
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[edit] Factors contributing to the successful distribution of Big Ad
Firstly, the advertisement was streamed to its audience via a dedicated website (www.bigad.com.au) rather than being downloadable and spread via email. Sophocleous and Cubito (2005, p.6) say that undoubtable part of the success of Big Ad was that it was streamed rather than being in the smaller format of an MPEG. This enabled the video to provide a high quality image and contributed to the success of the viral campaign. However, it is important to note that this technology was more expensive; the streaming technology, provided by Vividas, cost the client around $30,000 (Sophocleous and Cubito, 2005, p.6).
Secondly, the connectivity of the advertisement contributed to its successful distribution. The Big Ad’s dedicated website had around 3,160 webpage links as of October 1, 2005, according to Google’s link search. Many of these links were within blog entries, but it cannot be established if any were seeded by the advertising agency, the company or their staff. Also within days of the campaign being released, the Big Ad website had ten mentions in major newspapers around Australia (according to a search conducted on October 1, 2005).
Finally, and probably the most important factor contributing to the successful distribution of the advertisement, was the tone of the video. The advertisement was a parody of advertising. This type of comic, satirical tone has been seen to increase the likelihood of a viral message being passed on to a person’s acquaintances (see Viral marketing). However the Big Ad is not a sell out for Carlton Draught; this type of appeal has been used throughout the brand’s recent advertisements, including "Made from Beer" and "Canoe". Therefore the success of Big Ad can also be attributed to its comical content and the fact that this appeal is consistent with the positioning of the brand.
[edit] Technical Acknowledgements
Agency: George Patterson and Partners, Melbourne
- Creative Director: James McGrath
- Art Director: Grant Rutherford
- Writer: Ant Keogh
- Producer: Pip Heming
- Group Communications Director: Paul McMillan
Production: Plaza Films
- Director: Paul Middleditch
- Executive Producer: Peter Masterton
- DOP: Andrew Lesnie (Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Post- Production: Animal Logic (The Matrix)
- VFX Supervisor: Andrew Jackson
- Senior Compositor: Angus Wilson
- VFX Producer: Caroline Renshaw
- Editor: Peter Whitmore - Winning Post Productions
- Music: Cezary Skubiszewski
- Location: Queenstown, New Zealand
- Cast: 300 locals (consisted mainly of backpackers)
To create large (tens of thousands of people) crowds for the ad MASSIVE software with semi-independent AI actors from Weta Digital was used.
[edit] Lyrics
The Lyrics of the Carlton Draught big ad were:
It's a big ad.
Very big ad.
It's a big ad we're in.
It's a big ad,
My God it's big!
Can't believe how big it is!
It's a big ad!
For Carlton Draught!
It's just so freak...ing HUGE!
It's a big ad.
Expensive ad!
[edit] References
- Canning, S. (2005) "Business Big Shot," The Australian: Finance, 23 Jul., p.34.
- Frilingos, M. (2005) "As big as … a Carlton beer ad," The Daily Telegraph: Local, Jul. 23, pg.8.
- Lee, J. (2005) "Very big ad shows why we still call Carlton a beer," The Sydney Morning Herald: Business, 28 Jul., pg.29.
- Lees, N. (2005) "Big ad hits one millionth viewer," Adnews, 29 Jul.
- Sophocleous, A., and Cubito, A. (2005) "Clients catch the viral bug," Adnews, August 12, 2005, p.6.
