Budget Direct’s Jonathan Kerr Praises Telstra’s Brent Smart for “Trying Everything at the Moment”

Australia is one of the best markets to test out branding strategies, according to top brands like Budget Direct, Uber Eats, and ALDI. Budget Direct’s chief growth officer, Jonathan Kerr says, ensures his brand strategy is working by asking, “If we were to change this, would it suit us better?” every three years. 

Speaking at an Ad Council event exploring the effectiveness of work from Budget Direct, Uber Eats, and ALDI, Jonathan said he admires brands that try everything. 

“Telstra is trying everything at the moment. What I love about what he's [Brent Smart, CMO] been doing recently is showing ambition. Ambition is a pretty pumped thing to have, but at the same time, we are long players.

“We invested. We didn’t even really put the brand into the first ad because we knew we'd play the long game. We'd learnt that from ‘Captain Risky’. We learned that from other things. So we keep compounding the knowledge and play the long game.” 

303 MullenLowe’s CSO, Jody Elston, and Jonathan had a long-standing brand platform that was working but wasn’t working to their ultimate advantage. 

‘Captain Risky’ predated the renditions of Sarge and his sidekick exploring moments of chaos, only to be saved by the reassurance of Budget Direct's home and car insurance deals.

He performed great as his own character, however, more and more people were associating Captain Risky as a brand itself, rather than one connected to Budget Direct. 

“A shake up was needed,” said Jonathan. “We had to deal with the word ‘budget’ being a negative word. We had to turn it into a positive. It should be simple, it’s just hard getting there.” 

Getting to Sarge and his adventure involved ‘the pub test’ - the notion that the idea can be understood by all who see and hear it. According to Jonathan, the pub test worked wonders for Budget Direct. 

Similarly, Uber Eats realised it had to refresh its brand platform when its strategy shifted to include grocery delivery. This presented a challenge with its current brand platform, ‘Tonight I’ll Be Eating.’ The identity of the branding was strong, however, the idea no longer served the brand's purpose. 

Special’s Celia Garforth, head of strategy, and Kellie Box, strategy director, knew that the brand performed at its best because it allowed for indulgence. This was something that they had to keep in mind during the creation of the platform to replace ‘Tonight I’ll Be Eating’: ‘Almost, Almost Anything.’

The second idea was ‘Get Anything’, “which the creatives immediately called bullshit on … They said, ‘Really? Anything?’” said Celia. 

“I know a lot of people here [Special] have lost a lot of sleep trying to crack this nug [nugget],” said Andy Morley, senior director of marketing, Uber and Uber Eats, APAC, of the new platform. “But now this campaign has been scaled out to 10 or 11 countries globally and it continues to perform as our global platform. [That] is a real sense of pride for us.” 

The teams at ALDI and BMF told a different story: one of giving into the truth of your brand and exploring ways to engage audiences. ALDI knows it isn’t going to be everyone’s “big shop.”

BMF’s Hannah McHard, head of effectiveness, and Anna Bollinger, executive planning director, talked about the supermarket’s limited product range and how to turn it into a successful aspect of the brand. 

“It came to the point where we couldn’t keep doing more of the same,” said Hannah. 

During their customer research, BMF found many people felt like “they were cheating on ALDI and felt embarrassed to admit it”, which translated into the idea, ‘Shop ALDI First.’

Anna added, “Aussies were feeling a pinch so we wanted to encourage them to switch up their shopping habits.”

They shared that there was nearly a quarter of an increase of Aussies shopping at ALDI first before going to the bigger supermarkets to get “more specific things” as a result of the platform. This year, the agency and brand won Effective Agency and Advertiser of the Year, respectively, at the Effies.

“We wanted to give Aussie permission to shop elsewhere but come to ALDI first. So that’s what we did.”