The Sam Kekovich Australia Day campaign was longstanding, with high recall and great success. The campaign which focused on ‘Unaustralianism’ needed to continue to make an impact with Australians by positioning lamb as the national dish on Australia Day.

• Continue to position lamb as the national dish on Australia Day.
• Make lamb the talk of the nation in January.
• Mimic a major music release with Sam Kekovich’s rendition of Barbie Girl.
• Infiltrate popular culture ‘music-star’ style.
• Drive reach against broad audience.

“The Nova Australia Day Countdown with ‘Lambassador’ Sam Kekovich”

The Nova Network built a campaign designed to integrate Sam Kekovich and his ‘Barbie Girl’ song release throughout the programming of the radio station. As part of the campaign, Nova – for the first time built an ‘Australia Day Top 100 downloaded songs’ countdown hosted by Sam Kekovich.

In the lead up to this campaign, the Nova Drive team ‘Mishel, Tim & Marty’ interviewed Sam Kekovich and threw out the challenge – if Sam received 100,000 views on his YouTube music video ‘Barbie Girl’, then Sam could introduce his song as number 1 in the countdown on Australia Day. On-air, Sam directed listeners to the Nova website to watch his clip and answer simple questions for the chance to win an Australia Day BBQ and lamb prize pack.

Within 24 hours, views reached 100,000 so Nova FM upped the ante with a new target of 500,000 views. The final target reached was an impressive 620,442.

• 31.7% sales uplift during the Australia Day week.
• 13% sales uplift for the 4 week period – a record for retail lamb sales.
• Increase in lamb’s value share of 6% compared with the year previous.