At around 8am this morning on Wynyard station concourse, as I was weaving my way through the suits to work, a young hippy-esque dude shoved a bag of small bag of dried green stuff at me, murmuring “want some free stuff man?”. Tuesday mornings don’t normally start this well for me (and I’m not a man either) – so I was highly suspicious. The hippy dude was perhaps a little too clean looking to be a genuine drug peddler, it was 8am…and on closer inspection, the bag actually contained rosemary – and an advertising slogan “we love lamb in spring, man”. Aha. A short investigation proceeded, and a few googleseconds later, I had deduced that this promotion was actually part of a new advertising for Meat and Livestock Australia. You can read more about it here.

I like this campaign a lot. It’s original and a bit daring, and this particular execution is, in my opinion, especially clever, as it’s sort of experiential and sort of viral and is also just really, really cool. Well, maybe not viral in the traditional cool-video-pass-it-on sense – but the amount of talk it generated amongst my colleagues today was unbelievable…and I have not I have not stopped thinking about lamb/different ways to cook lamb/the last time I ate lamb since 8am.

I’ve seen dozens of promotional campaigns positioned on Wynyard station over the past year and a half, some of them shockers. One particularly hilarious one involved embarrassed looking staff promoting a tissue brand dressed up in puffy white parachute outfits; channeling ’tissues’ one can only suppose, giving out singular tissues to passers by. Odd. So it was a nice change to see something clever like this.

Anyway, I think that this new spring lamb campaign is terrific. One of those ones I see and think “I wish I’d thought of that” and then get a bit grouchy with campaign-envy. I am going to follow this campaign, as I’m interested is to whether it will actually be effective in terms of marketing dollars, or just a short lived gimmick. I guess time (and lamb sales) will tell. Mmmm. Lammmmmb.