What you need to know:

• AAMI wins media gold for Rest Towns.
• Project with Spotify developed by Ogilvy Melbourne and OMD Sydney creates two-hour playlists for drivers, then prompts them to stop – and spend – in small rural towns.
• Suncorp CMO said firm aims for purpose with practical upside, a sentiment echoed at Cannes by some of world’s biggest brand owners.

The work

AAMI’s Rest Towns aims to save lives and help rural economies hollowed out by three years of pain, first bushfires and then Covid. Via Spotify, the journey planner creates two-hour playlists and then prompts drivers to stop in small towns along their route, taking a break and helping to refill local coffers.

Developed and submitted by Ogilvy Melbourne and delivered by OMD Sydney, Haysom said the media gold recognises the work from both agencies in solving a problem, doing genuine social good and taking a genuinely smart approach to media delivery.

“AAMI has always played in the road safety space and we’ve been recognised for earlier work with Spotify,” said Haysom, nodding to its ‘Warning Spots’ platform that tells drivers when they are approaching high propensity crash sites.

“Then for Rest Towns, we were thinking about bushfire impacted communities, particularly around rural Victoria and New South Wales. We wanted to help generate some business for some of those small towns where all of the tourism dried up off the back of the bushfires and then Covid.”

Eyes on the pies

With borders shut, road trips boomed. “We wanted to use that shift to help communities and the team at Ogilvy and the OMD team came up with this great idea of promoting rest stops that we could also promote through media: ‘take a left turn and go visit Bev’s Bakery in Bundaberg – and here’s a discount for a pie’,” said Haysom.

“So it was using data, it was using insight, it was using content, it was using a whole lot of different types of media. But inherently, it was there to help solve a problem that we were seeing in our regional communities, which was a lack of business.”

Haysom said the campaign drove both brand and business metrics – including for the local local firms being promoted. “They told us it was having a really positive impact on generating business during that period of time.”

Brands, it seems are starting to deliver on pragmatic purpose – and Suncorp is starting to reap the rewards of long-term thinking. Which is why One House, a two-year marketing program designed to show Queenslanders how to build disaster-proof homes in the face of climate change, took home the Innovation Grand Prix on Wednesday (details here).

“We are a very purpose-driven organisation, and we want the work that we do to work. It’s not just about driving business growth for us, but positive community impact – and I think that’s what you’re starting to see come across in the work from brands more broadly.”

Haysom said that was major theme running throughout Cannes.

“What has struck me is that so much of the work is focusing on creativity to solve social issues and problems.”

That sentiment was underlined by the Media Lions jury and the Grand Prix winning piece of work: Hope Reef, by cat food brand Sheba brought a corral reef back to life, made it visible from space and underwater via Google maps and turned it into a piece of living out of home advertising, with ad revenue from associated platforms being used to fund further projects. The coral restoration model developed for the platform has since been adopted by governments around the world.

Equally, “some of the most powerful ideas are actually the simplest”, said Haysom.

“Think about what is your purpose, what are the problems you are trying to solve and create impact by making great work that connects with audiences and solves those challenges.”