We love this brand and are very proud of the Murdoch campaign for 3 key reasons:
- It was the first major brand reinvention we did at Meerkats, coming just 2 years into our little agency’s existence.
- It started with an idea that excited every person we presented it to at Murdoch, and yet it wasn’t an advertising idea.
- The Motivating Brand Idea we uncovered was embraced by this client in a way that stills stuns and inspires us.
The idea we’re talking about is Discoverers Welcome; the inspiring notion that open-minded people will make the world a better place if they can work together in an environment of curiosity and free thought.
This has always been the DNA of Murdoch but once Meerkats expressed it in this way, the potential for stimulating new ideas was suddenly endless, and it changed the way an entire organisation expressed itself.
Suddenly, a TV commercial was the chance to ask people what issues they felt the world most needed to solve (as opposed to the chance to show hip uni students getting cool jobs). Suddenly, a full page press ad was the chance to explore how different thinkers would solve similar problems (as opposed to listing courses). Suddenly, a university’s website was the chance to engage people in a motivating two-way dialogue about life (as opposed to only striving for “online brochure”).
The message of discovery found its way into the student cafeteria with thought-provoking posters covering whole walls, led to a redesign of the student magazine under the new title Explore, resulted in recruitment postcards that grew plants when buried in soil, triggered new interactive online tools that helped students figure out their life, led to the renaming of the Murdoch open day as the Open Your Mind Day, and changed the way Murdoch advertised for senior staff (one ad showed a photo of Scandinavian Geese flying in a vee formation with the headline “Wanted: senior managers who know why geese do this”).
Indeed, for every one TV or radio ad Meerkats made around this potent brand idea, Murdoch themselves created ten brand engagements internally. This, we strongly believe, is the true test of a brand idea in the 21st century: how well can it “live” in the real world, how well can it lead to inspiring brand behaviours, not just communications.
Together, Murdoch and Meerkats delivered extraordinary results from the Discoverers Welcome campaign:
- Brand awareness doubled.
- Attendance at Murdoch’s open day rose from 2,000 to well over 10,000 in one year.
- Student enquiries increased at double figure rates year on year.
- And crucially, brand affinity among staff dramatically increased.
Meerkats’ ultimate promise is to help our client brands gain a greater share of the future. The Murdoch campaign is still among our most convincing case studies of how we are achieving that.
