Australian Eggs appoints Connecting Plots as creative partner following competitive pitch
The pitch process tasked the independent agency with elevating the versatility of eggs in order to encourage Australian families to increase their weekly egg consumption.
Consumer research conducted by the member owned not-for-profit company identified the need to tell an engaging and enduring story that demonstrates how to elevate every meal with an egg.
“We were really impressed with Connecting Plots’ creative approach and their ability to bring an insightful idea to life cohesively across every touchpoint”
Australian Eggs Managing Director, Rowan McMonnies.
Connecting Plots were awarded the business in late May, with a new brand platform and integrated campaign in development for release in the coming months.
Who doesn’t love eggs? It’s a real privilege to work on a product that truly touches the homes of so many families across the country,” says Connecting Plots CEO & Founding Partner, Tom Phillips. “The marketing and R&D work that the team at Australian Eggs do directly supports our Aussie eggs farmers, so it’s an important challenge to ensure our new brand platform drives a direct business impact for that farming community.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips.
The new Australian Eggs campaign will launch in August 2023.
Read more on AdNews →, Mediaweek →, Campaign Brief → and B&T →.
AdNews Better Workplaces - Connecting Plots' renovated 'marijuana den'
The office of independent creative agency Connecting Plots, according to neighbours, was once the scene of a major drug bust.
While the Plotters HQ was an unassuming industrial space in Beaconsfield, Sydney, when the agency purchased it in 2019, staff soon found out the building’s twisty history as an ex-pizza factory and ex-marijuana den.
Unlike most agencies, Connecting Plots kept the renovations “in the family” as the space was designed by the company’s three owners, Tom Phillips, Sophia Kang and Dave Jansen, with help from their partners who have a good eye for interior design.
Converted into an office within just two months, the office still shows its warehouse roots with exposed brick and a controlled colour palette of textured blacks and browns such as leather and wood.
We wanted to keep it simple but sophisticated and create a space that invited creativity and diverse thinking.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips.
Being fiercely independent Connecting Plots wanted to create a space where like-minded agencies and businesses could share the agency’s space and create a culture of collaboration.
We wanted the office to be somewhere where fellow indie agencies who are starting out or scaling their businesses could come, network, share a drink and swap insights, problems and experiences.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips.
Connecting Plots currently shares the space with its sister production company Infinity Squared as well as The Park, a UK-based experiential agency, and We Are Gather, a business that designs large scale consumer events.
Previously, the space was also shared with PR agency We Are Different when it was just three but it grew and has since moved.
The office includes just more than 40 open plan desks and approximately 35 people combined across the four businesses. With the agency currently on the hunt for another small indie agency to fill up those final few extra desks.
We only built our mezzanine last year and it’s been a game changer. We use the space for anything and everything – from escaping our desks to work in a comfy booth, having an impromptu meeting, doing training and company-wide presentations, client workshops or just as a space to hang out for a drink at the end of a long week.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips.
Read the full article on AdNews →.
Connecting Plots Acquires Indie Agency Two G’s
Two G’s became part of Connecting Plots on Tuesday 11 April, with their current clients including Amazon Prime Video, Mad Mex and Penguin Books Australia.
John and Matt are both highly awarded integrated Creative Directors with more than 15 years experience who both live and breathe brand, digital and social worlds to create culture-shaping, made-for-channel creative.
Matt and John are a true representation of our old meets new philosophy. They bring a unique mix of brand and creative with channel-centric thinking across social, digital and technology. We’re thrilled to have them join us.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The pair have extensive experience at both traditional and digital-centric agencies including VML where they were paired together to creatively lead the agency’s major accounts. Between them they have worked with clients from all categories, including McDonalds, Toyota and Coca-Cola, and won all the major awards – with highlights including multiple Cannes Lions and golds at One Show.
We’re thrilled to be joining Tom, Dave, Sophia and the team. They’re fantastic people making fantastic work and we believe in their vision for the agency and can’t wait to help bring to life their new ‘Imagination In Every Impression’ positioning.
Connecting Plots Creative Partners, Matt Geersen & John Gault
Sydney Royal Easter Show Says 'Find Your Happy Place' In New Creative Platform Via Connecting Plots
This new campaign follows the Royal Agricultural Society Of NSW appointment of Connecting Plots as its new creative agency of record following a competitive pitch that took place in November 2022.
In their first project for RAS, Connecting Plots have created ‘Find Your Happy Place’ a creative platform that builds upon the heritage and creative direction that the Sydney Royal Easter Show has followed since 2017 – the home of childhood wonder and joy, punctuated by the mnemonic device, ‘Happy and you know it’.
There’s a lot of nostalgia associated with the Sydney Royal Easter Show. We wanted Connecting Plots to leverage that heritage and capture the wonder and joy of childhood while also making the campaign feel new and contemporary.
RAS Head of Marketing, Frances Jewell
The new creative platform has been brought to life through the entire customer experience with a strong visual identity that builds upon the iconic elements from the Easter Show including the ribbons from the agriculture awards and hero brand colours of red and purple. Meanwhile the iconic ‘Happy and you know it’ theme song from previous campaigns has been evolved into a playful whistling device that carries throughout the different creative.
In order to understand how to evolve the existing campaign direction, we conducted research with a partner company to analyse the previous campaigns to see what we should keep, change and build upon. From these learnings, we created the organising platform ‘Find Your Happy Place’ that evolved the existing creative and showed that, with all the different experiences on offer at the showgrounds, there truly is a happy place for everyone.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
The ‘Find Your Happy Place’ creative platform has been designed to create consistency and cohesion across all of the show’s collateral. The visual identity has been applied across every single impression, from TVCs, social, radio and OOH through to media kits, selfie photo frames and the spectacular nightly drone show.
The Sydney Royal Easter Show and the ‘Find Your Happy Place’ campaign will run until Monday 17 April with pre-sales already hitting an all time high.
Connecting Plots Take On Wasted Ad Dollars Launch of New Technology Platform; a.glo
The launch of a.glo supports the agency’s new positioning, ‘Imagination In Every Impression’ which challenges the industry’s old habits and specifically targets the recurring and systematic problem of wasting advertising dollars by using creative that isn’t fit for purpose.
In the current economy, proving a greater ROI has never been more important. This point has been further highlighted by the recent Next&Co Annual Digital Media Wastage Report which showed that approximately 41% of digital ad spend in the last year was “wasted”. Increasingly complex channel requirements means that clients need more tailored creative to ensure they are performing in these channels to achieve stronger results.
If you think about Meta’s ecosystem alone there are upwards of 20 ad formats. And against those formats, there are 6 different strategic objectives you can buy against that each require tailored creative solutions. Anything from different messaging, allowances for sounds, moving image, different calls-to action and more. Multiply that again by Snap, TikTok and YouTube, and this number goes to well above 40. So a ‘matching luggage’ approach of creating a 30” TVC and a 15” and 6” cutdown simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Phillips believes the siloed approach of how advertising, media and production agencies are set up is to blame and is leaving money on the table.
Clients are approaching us directly or via our platform partnerships to fix the same problem – their creative for these channels isn’t performing and is often an afterthought.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The new platform a.glo combines creative, brand, media and production thinking to deliver full-funnel, fit-for-channel and fit-for-purpose creative solutions that are proven to work.
But this specialist service is not new. The team behind a.glo have been doing this in partnership with Meta, Snap and other platforms for over 5 years across a variety of verticals including Financial Services, Consumer Tech, FMCG, Retail and Automotive.
The service utilises best practice marketing diagnostics to help unearth where the wastage is and what the opportunities are in order to devise a strategic roadmap based on the nuances of achieving the business objectives within different channels. Clients’ existing creative and assets can then be re-engineered to create optimised best practice creative that deliver to the varying strategic objectives without the need for extensive production requirements.
And the return far outweighs the investment.
A great example of a.glo in motion is where we worked with Meta across 12 auto brands to test platform optimised content vs. non-optimised content. Meta found that the majority of adverts uploaded to Facebook and Instagram weren’t created social-first, resulting in huge inefficiencies and poor performance. By putting it through the a.glo process, we were able to increase reach by 200% for the same budget, reduce cost per lead by 50%, reduce cost per finance conversion by 45% and reduce cost per model page visit by 54%.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
a.glo can be extended to platform partners, direct clients and agencies to ensure best-practice social and digital can be easily accessible for brands across Asia Pacific.
Read the full interview with Co-Founder Tom Phillips on Mediaweek →.
30 SECONDS Outdoor Cleaner Launch New Potty-Mouthed Creative Platform Via Connecting Plots
Tasked with creating an enduring creative platform and through-the-line brand experience, the activity has been developed by Connecting Plots to bring a unique and relatable identity to the New Zealand brand within the Australian market.
30 SECONDS has experienced strong growth and category-leadership in recent years, in part due to back-to-back La Niña events causing exponential growth in mould and mildew.
While we’ve established a strong footprint within hardware retailers, the task has now turned to cementing 30 SECONDS as the go-to outdoor cleaner in the minds of Aussie consumers. That’s why we turned to Connecting Plots to build the brand and create consistency across our entire brand experience.
30 SECONDS Chief Executive Officer, James Pearson
The new creative platform ‘Let’s Clean Things Up’ champions the satisfaction of seeing a specialist cleaner at work, bringing a fun and unashamedly Aussie spin to an otherwise low-interest category.
At the heart of the campaign are the loveable, stubby-wearing and house-proud gnomes Gneil and Gnoelene, two no-nonsense ‘Spokes-Gnomes’ on a mission to show home loving Aussies how to clean things up – in their own inimitable way.
Knowing that 30 SECONDS operates in a low-interest category, we needed to get people’s attention and stand apart from competitors in every single impression, from radio through to pallet wraps. Gneil and Gnoelene are already doing just that with their colourful turn of phrase.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Giving the brand a distinctive, slightly potty-mouthed tone of voice, Gneil and Gnoelene act as a cohesive branding device throughout the 30 SECONDS brand and customer experience ranging from video, OOH, radio, social, digital and website through to in-store activations, sales collateral and internal communications.
The campaign has been developed in collaboration with media agency, Co.gency, with client, creative and media working closely together since the onset of the campaign.
It has been a pleasure to work hand-in-glove with both 30 SECONDS and Connecting Plots from the initial brief. We explored a range of media options to find the right balance of reach and impact for the creative platform. I’m excited to see Gneil and Gnoelene come to life in different ways across each of these channels.
Co.gency Managing Partner, James Currah.
The new campaign launches this week with a series of extensions and innovations planned for the loveable characters into 2024 and beyond.
Royal Agricultural Society of NSW Appoints Connecting Plots as Agency of Record Following Competitive Pitch
The Royal Agricultural Society Of NSW has been an influential force in the establishment and progression of Australian agriculture since its foundation in 1822. The first project, which is currently in development with Connecting Plots, will be the iconic Sydney Royal Easter Show.
We were really impressed with the way Connecting Plots used research and data to inform their creative approach and their design and production thinking to crack our brief. They showed a great deal of care and insight in how to bring their thinking to life perfectly in every channel and every touchpoint.
RAS Head of Marketing, Frances Jewell
Connecting Plots has been tasked with the branding and development of a creative platform that encapsulates the spirit of the Sydney Royal Easter Show and celebrates everything that makes it an event everyone can enjoy.
It’s a real privilege to partner with such an important non-for-profit organisation. Many of us in the agency are from rural communities and some have agricultural backgrounds, so it’s good for the soul to be helping promote the great work of the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW and its pinnacle event, the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The Sydney Royal Easter Show will run from Thursday 6 April to Monday 17 April.
Menulog Is Giving Aussie's a Chance To Win Custom Katy Perry Inspired 'Sushi Sneakers'
Developed by Connecting Plots, the campaign extends the global brand platform in Australia by having some fun with the eclectic and indulgent iconography from Katy Perry’s larger-than-life ‘Did Somebody Say’ campaign, paying homage to her iconic sushi dress worn in the video.
To secure a pair of the coveted custom ‘Sushi Sneakers’ and a year’s supply of sushi, Menulog has partnered with TikTok to create a category-first branded lens and interactive game feature called ‘Menulog Run’, a way to enhance the delivery experience by giving customers game play during wait-time. Players must dodge bins and catch Aussie food favourites while navigating a Menulog courier as they race to complete a delivery on time.
The custom sneaker designs are modelled on the classic Nike Air Force 1s and feature a salmon maki roll inspired colour palette, complemented with striking rice prints, fishtail loops, emergency soy sauce pouch and a pair of chopsticks.
To bring the shoes to life, Menulog has collaborated with iconic Melbourne-based sneaker creator, Damian Sim “BespokeIND” who has designed custom shoes for celebrities and designers including Drake, French Montana, Dior and Louis Vuitton.
We partnered with one of the world’s top shoe customisers to create the first ever sushi sneakers, bringing to life the excessive and indulgent world of Katy Perry who we know our fans love. At Menulog we seek to bring the best possible delivery experience to our customers, and our TikTok game delivers joy to hungry Aussie’s while they wait for their food. We’re excited for the three lucky winners who will get their hands on these one-of-a-kind sneakers!
Menulog Marketing Director, Simon Cheng
The Menulog Run game has achieved over 30,000 plays and 1,000+ entries within the first five days, with the TopView takeover reaching over 2.8 million people.
The abstract world of Katy Perry has given us something very iconic and visual to play with. Sneaker culture is no longer niche and so what better way to create local relevance for the Katy Perry campaign than by combining these two worlds and having some fun along the way.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
Menulog Run will be available for TikTok users to play until 1 February 2023.
Schwarzkopf Launch New Sustainable Hair Care Range Via Connecting Plots
The creative platform ‘Great hair makes a world of difference’ deliberately talks to the eco-conscious consumer who won’t compromise on the quality hair products that Schwarzkopf is renowned for.
Schwarzkopf are leaders in high performance hair care products the world over and we’re excited to be able to use our influence in the category to now also be more sustainable. Our goal is to be the go-to hair care product for those looking to do their small part in minimising wasteful packaging.
Schwarzkopf ANZ Marketing Manager, Anne-Marie Viguier
The campaign, developed by Connecting Plots, takes into account research by University of Leeds showing that people are still unwilling to buy green products because of doubts over the products performance ability, with most consumers perceiving them to be less effective.
Harvard Business Review says 65% of consumers want sustainable products, but only 26% will prioritise them when buying. So while sustainability is key, we need to think about what’s actually going to make this product a commercial success. Appealing to category cues, speaking to the audience’s needs, creating a lasting impression, that’s what will drive success. This campaign shows the audience this product is the quality and standard you would expect from Schwarzkopf but delivered in an eco-friendly and new way.
Integrated Strategy & Planning Partner, Tim Collier
The campaign is rolling out across Video on Demand, YouTube and OOH.
Connecting Plots has been working with Schwarzkopf for two years and last year developed the hugely successful LIVE Colour hashtag challenge campaign on TikTok which achieved over 34 million total views and grew LIVE Colour loyalists by 113%.
Connecting Plots Challenges Old Industry Habits With New Positioning
The new positioning, ‘Imagination in every impression’ addresses the issue at the heart of the industry’s current struggles – that a great idea, although fundamental, isn’t enough in isolation. Both brands and agencies now need a relentless focus and the expertise to bring ideas to life perfectly in all of the channels consumers are actually spending time.
The agency’s founders, Dave Jansen and Tom Phillips, believe that everything a brand does tells its story. And without connecting these stories through all touch points of a brands ecosystem, brands are leaving money on the table with inefficient and ineffective creative.
The two are taking cues from the global decline of creative effectiveness (which has been steadily happening over the past 10+ years), which coincides with the growth of the major platforms, gaming and digital communities – the places which command the lion’s share of consumer screen attention. But rather than reject this trend, Connecting Plots has embraced it to better deliver on its clients’ needs.
We’re hearing marketers say the same thing time and time again. Their agency presents interesting thinking but then they only create a TV ad and matching-luggage or cut-downs. This isn’t an approach that is fit for purpose in 2022, and it highlights how many agencies are unable to adapt to modern media. It’s essential that creative ideas are built to stretch and adapt across screens and platforms.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Both founders firmly believe that the path forward isn’t just about trying something new. Instead, they’re taking an old-school meets new approach to business and fusing the proven and timeless principles of creative effectiveness with a healthy obsession with modern day channels.
This isn’t just big claims – we’ve been pioneering this approach for a decade and the proof is in the results we are getting for clients. TV is still important, however the focus from a creative perspective needs to mirror that of where the audience is spending most of their time and where the client is spending the majority of their media budget. It’s essential we no longer match luggage, but adapt to the core delivery mechanism for the majority of creative campaigns.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
And they’re proving their approach works with clients like Fantastic Furniture (winner of an APAC Effie Award in Retail), which reduced negative perceptions of cheap and increased consideration by +5% and Tourism Australia, whose immersive 18-month long content platform ‘Australia in 8D’ reached over 226+ million people and contributed to the government agency’s $300+ million in earned media while international borders were closed, fuelling later demand for an Aussie holiday.
Whether it’s activated on Fortnight, YouTube or in an eDM, the experience needs to earn attention, make you feel something and be consistent in the way it shows up across all nooks and crannies and channels that the brand is playing in. As an agency founded out of a production company we have a deep love and understanding for TV, film and ads and their role in signaling to customers that a brand is legit. We just want brands to look beyond that to find a different starting point for building campaigns, so they can work harder.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
Both partners come from backgrounds in media and social, entertainment and production, together winning a International Emmy Award™ for #7 Days Later where the story was told in different ways across TV, social, radio and digital and proving a sum-of-the-parts approach in storytelling worked. This is where the name Connecting Plots came from.
Having the media, creative and production thinking all working together from the start has given us something unique. It means it’s easier to be inventive with what we need to say, who we want to say it to, where we want it to go and how we are going to make it
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Since the agency opened its doors in late 2018, Connecting plots has earned itself an enviable client portfolio including Fantastic Furniture, Tourism Australia, Menulog, Lendlease, Westinghouse, Nestlé, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Brown-Forman.
Read the full interview with Co-Founders Tom Phillips and Dave Jansen on Mumbrella →.