Why Australian lamb owns the only ‘big event’ in Australian advertising

Opinion piece written by Sam Walters - General Manager, Consulting and published in Mumbrella.

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Before Christmas, I was in a room with senior leaders from a broad mix of Australian agencies. The conversation drifted to a deceptively simple question: why doesn’t any brand truly own Christmas advertising in Australia?‍

There was some debate. Plenty of strong campaigns. Plenty of seasonal spend. But eventually we landed on a different conclusion.

Australia may not have a brand that owns Christmas, but it does have a brand that owns a national advertising moment. And it’s not debatable.

It’s Australian Lamb.

Each January, Meat & Livestock Australia’s (MLA) lamb campaign lands not just as another ad, but as an event. It’s discussed in agencies, dissected by marketing teams, and watched closely offshore as one of the few pieces of Australian advertising with genuine global anticipation.

That doesn’t happen by accident.

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Distance the moment, keep the meaning

Traditionally tethered to Australia Day, MLA has deliberately distanced itself from the celebration itself, while preserving the emotional pillars that made the campaign iconic in the first place: summer, togetherness, humour, and a recognisably Australian way of seeing ourselves.

That balance matters.

At Cubery, we’ve tested Australian Lamb year after year. Not occasionally. Not selectively. Every single year. The result has been remarkable consistency: these ads are perennial top-tier performers across attention, emotion, brand linkage and memorability.

This year’s execution via Droga5 ANZ, The Happiness List, which follows a fictional Team Australia attempting to lift the nation back into the global top 10 happiest countries (ultimately via lamb), is no exception. In fact, it sits in the top echelon of all advertising in Australia.

So why does this campaign keep working when so many others burn bright but quickly fade?

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Humour, but never just for laughs

The most obvious answer is humour. Australian Lamb has built its platform on comedy that grabs attention and lowers defences. But the key point is this: the humour is always in service of the brand.

Historically, lamb has been positioned as the solution to conflict. Generational divides, cultural arguments, political tension – whatever the issue, lamb is what brings everyone back to the same table.

When that balance slips, performance slips with it.

Last year’s Comments Section execution is a useful case study. It was funny. It was sharp. But the satire of online arguments briefly became the star, rather than lamb’s role as the unifier. The result was still strong, but meaningfully down on the campaign’s own very high standards.

The Happiness List avoids that trap. The humour builds, escalates, and ultimately resolves in the same place it always should: lamb as the hero that reconnects people.

Funny, yes. But never at the expense of the brand idea.

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Fresh consistency, not constant reinvention

From Make Lamb, Not Walls to The Generation Gap, to Lost Country of the Pacific, to The Comments Section, these ads look wildly different on paper.

Different casts. Different narratives. Different cultural hooks.

And yet they are instantly recognisable as Australian Lamb.

This is what true consistency looks like. Not sameness, but familiarity.

The tone is always self-deprecating. The ambition is always cinematic. The insight always taps into the national mood. And the payoff is always the same: lamb brings Australians together like nothing else can.

Agencies talk a lot about distinctive assets and brand codes. MLA has quietly built some of the strongest in the country. And while his appearances have been more sporadic in recent years, Sam Kekovich remains a potent shorthand for the brand. His larger role this year correlates with some of the strongest brand linkage (Connect) scores we’ve ever seen for Australian Lamb.

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Mental availability beats persuasion

Viewed through an Ehrenberg-Bass lens, the long-term strength of this campaign becomes even clearer.

Australian Lamb doesn’t try to persuade. It doesn’t feature a laundry list of benefits. It doesn’t talk about protein content, grass-fed credentials, or nutritional superiority. Someone, somewhere, has almost certainly suggested those things over the years. Sensibly, they’ve been left on the cutting-room floor.

Instead, the campaign does one job exceptionally well: it makes lamb easy to think of, easy to recognise, and emotionally loaded at the moment it matters.

That single-mindedness is rare. And it’s powerful.

In an industry prone to over-explaining, Australian Lamb succeeds by doing less, not more.

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The lesson for the rest of us

Australian Lamb remains the only campaign that genuinely feels like a national advertising moment. Not because of budget alone, but because of discipline.

Discipline to protect the idea. To keep humour tied to brand meaning. To stay consistent even while changing everything else.

It’s the one campaign the world waits for from Australia. And it’s a reminder that effectiveness doesn’t come from chasing novelty. It comes from committing, year after year, to a clear role in people’s lives.

Let’s make more advertising brave enough to do that.

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