INTEREST in what is or isn’t ‘unAustralian’ is proving so popular it is driving Meat and Livestock Australia’s 2023 Summer Lamb campaign into becoming possibly its most watched lamb campaign of all time.

MLA said the campaign has reached the incredible milestone of one million views in just three days since its launch on January 6.

The campaign that takes a light-hearted poke at what is ‘unAustralian’ while pointing out that Australia’s love for lamb can transcend all that has collected a total of 5.7m views across all social channels.

MLA attributes the ad’s success to leveraging the highly topical subject of ‘what makes us all Australian’ – or in this case, ‘un-Australian’, while it places Australian lamb as a uniting force in our minds as the nation redefines itself in a post-COVID and post-election world.

MLA domestic marketing manager Graeme Yardy said since the launch on Channel 7 during the Australia vs South Africa Cricket Test match, the ad has collected 2.7m views on YouTube alone and surpassed the success of the 2021 campaign (nine days to 1m views) and the 2022 campaign (21 days to 1m views).

“This time we’ve done it in three days,” he said.

The success of the campaign has not been limited to social media platforms, with an additional 987 pieces of media coverage across major metro and regional online, broadcast and print mastheads.

A total of 1m people tuned into the campaign’s premiere – 600,000 during the Test and 400,000 during the 7am Sunrise launch with Lambassador Sam Kekovich.

Mr Yardy said the community has always had an interest in what is ‘unAustralian’, but the reaction to the campaign has probably been a bit surprising.

“And it is just getting more ridiculous so we thought this is worth pointing a finger at and making fun of.

“It has obviously hit a nerve and we always think of something that is going to be topical and relevant,” he said.

Mr Yardy said the ad is timely now that there is plenty of lamb available, as distinct from other years when there were issues such as Covid interrupting supply chains.

“This year we feel like we’ve got plenty of stock, we’ve got a great ad and the retails are looking to make sure the product is there when people come looking for it, so we are really hoping for a good pull through of sales results.”

Mr Yardy said it will be another month before an indication of the sales response will be assessed, but retailers and butchers love the ad. Butchers have reported that lamb is selling well, especially on the eastern seaboard while the weather holds for barbecues.

“The face of Australia has changed …. our younger cohort is much more diverse.

“I think there are always questions about who are we in the country now and this (campaign) is a bit of a light-hearted way to get people to think about that,” he said.

“Our job is to put something in front of people that gets us to think a little bit, and more importantly entertain people and we’ve got them, they’re thinking about lamb when they go to the supermarket or the butcher or the pub or whatever to order some lamb.”