MATT CHANDLER

Meet ‘The Bags’.

Our first work for DoorDash is a new brand platform starring a ragtag bunch of delivery bags who love a little small talk between drop-offs.

Directed by Jeff Low to a steel-drum cover of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. and crafted in camera by animatronic puppeteers on location, our bags star across 13 films to promote DoorDash’s exclusive ALDI partnership, our ‘Your Door to More’ brand promise and a KFC retail deal.

Launching across film, out-of-home, audio, digital and social, this enduring platform will continue to build and show up in new and exciting ways in the future.

How an old jingle ignited a country wide, inter-generational jingle battle.

Invented in 1967 the Big Mac still has the same delicious ingredients and taste. However, in Australia it wasn’t as culturally big as it once was. Whilst four generations could still list out every ingredient thanks to a 1987 jingle, Gen Z didn’t know it at all.

So, we brought it back. The jingle that trended before trending was a thing. Sparking a country wide, inter-generational jingle battle. Giving it a modern spin with a first-of-its-kind AI powered Snapchat filter and machine learning.

Rewarding people in real time with a unique code for free McDonalds if they could say-Two-All-Beef-Patties-Special-Sauce-Lettuce-Cheese-Pickles-Onions-on-a-Sesame-Seed-Bun in 4 seconds.

Every touchpoint driving people to this unique experience and rewarding them with free food and by featuring their funniest mistakes in social and DOOH. Joining generations with the shared experience of a timeless cultural jingle and renewing its relevance and utility for a chronically online Gen Z.

Volkswagen hacked the commercial break with the first ever TV ad you can play. A massive media undertaking, we bought the commercial spot in high profile ad breaks and displayed a QR code that viewers could scan to enter the race. Each championship race ran only the length of each ad break, with players vying to beat a qualifying time for the chance to win a GTI.

Developed over three years by Volkswagen Australia and the DDB Group in consultation with the University of Melbourne and WIRES, the Volkswagen’s ‘RooBadge’ is one of a kind innovation that helps reduce vehicular collisions with kangaroos, which in Australia, make up 90% of all animal accidents.

Behold! The McMullet. A humble cheese burger with two slices of cheese, one placed as it should be and the other hanging out the back to create a beautiful, iconic and deliciously cheesy mullet. A simple adaptation that got the country and the world talking, blending global fame and local culture together in a way only Macca’s can.

Launched in social, the brought to stores by popular demand, the McMullet grew from its humble beginnings to appear on breakfast news in the USA.

Did you know pickle juice contains acetic acid, the main ingredient in vinegar, which studies say triggers a neurological response helping muscles relax? You didn’t?! Well, it’d be weird if you did.

When we stumbled across this fact, it didn’t take a genius to work out that Macca’s had a whole lot of Pickle Juice left over from the millions of burgers we make every day.

We sourced the brine and bottled it, then partnered with Auckland FC to put our little bottles of pickle juice in the hands of cramping athletes and firmly in sports culture.

Sport meets science meets silliness, what could be better?

Our next big brand moment for Volkswagen signals the beginning of their EV era in Australia.

Building on our "Let's go for a drive" platform, we're leaning into the joy of driving through the lens of three new electric vehicles: ID. 4, ID. 5, and the iconic ID. Buzz. Driving an EV unlocks a unique sense of childlike wonder and play, and the new Volkswagen ID. Range offers that in spades...with batteries included.

So...when's the last time you let your inner child drive?

Experiencing the joy of driving is the inspiration behind DDB Sydney's new brand campaign for Volkswagen Group Australia, that goes to the core truth of the experience of driving a Volkswagen. The creative concept is centred around the simple life of a lighthouse keeper working and living on an island. With little reason to drive his car around the small island, it is the mail delivery that gives him the opportunity to get behind the wheel of his Volkswagen and experience the joy of driving.

The gig economy is a huge part of how young people make a living these days. So to launch Westpac’s 3% savings rate that was exclusively available to 18-29 year olds, we celebrated the deeply weird and somewhat wonderful ways young people are earning a crust in 2020.

All the highs and lows of one day in Australia are brought to life in a spot directed by four of Australia’s most exciting young directors, under the guidance of Garth Davis. Our first brand campaign for Westpac in three years.

The third instalment of our 'help' campaign focuses on the powerful story of a migrant who builds a small business in Australia. Set to the soundtrack of Master's Apprentices classic “It's Because I Love You” remade by Amy Shark, the campaign shows the epic journey of a family who flee their war torn country to come to Australia.

Recently, Westpac improved the customer experience for people going through a divorce or separation, as part of their ongoing promise to help in life’s difficult financial moments. The launch TVC, directed by Garth Davis, is a powerful story about one child’s determination to step up for his parents when they need him most.

Meet Frank. Best bloke ever. He and his iconic mo were at the heart of our campaign introducing Westpac’s helpful resources for customers who have lost a loved one. The first of three highly-awarded spots launching helpful new services from Westpac.

Nothing pains the 9-5 workforce more than having to read or listen to soul destroying corporate buzzwords. 

The Lipton Jargon Junket allowed people to exchange the buzzwords they’re forced to endure at work for the chance to win out-of-office experiences.

We created an in browser jargon scanner that, during the hours of 9-5, listened out for over180 mind-numbing corporate buzzwords. With every detected piece of jargon detected came an extra entry to win one of five work-cleansing escapes, meaning the more jargon you were forced to endure, the more chances you had to escape work altogether.

As for the junkets themselves, we took Australia's top 5 most loathed buzzwords, then scoured the globe to craft experiences that turned each of them on their heads.

Things can get out of hand when McDonald’s brings out limited release products. Scalpers swoop in, re-sales skyrocket and real fans tend to miss out.

When it came time to do a drop of four limited edition McNugget sauces in Australia, we wanted to keep the peace and find a way to make sure only our real fans got their hands on them. While most brands run campaigns that aim to retain their audience we did the opposite and created a truly terrible user experience. We made the process of claiming our sauce so arduous, annoying and downright painful that only our real fans would have the willpower to make it to the end. Meaning, as planned, we scared off the fair-weather fans and shady scalpers, and got our sauce to people who wanted it most.

In December, the bushfires across Australia cast a shadow on what should be the most festive time of year. To help, we created The Burnt Christmas tree, an installation made with materials from fire-stricken areas, driving donations to help people rebuild their lives.

A giant 4 month campaign that needed to launch 13 new limited edition products + turn around a sales slump. So we took two little words and put them everywhere around the country all summer long.

Introducing the all-new, 7-seat Volkswagen Tayron. This is the first of a series of ‘bretail’ films that pay homage to the beloved Volkswagen print work of the 1960s. Each spot opens resembling a classic print ad before the camera breaks the illusion and VO unpacks the vehicle’s emotional benefit, like an extra two seats that can unfold whenever you might unexpectedly need them. It’s the kind of feature you might not think about every day, until the day you do. And when that day comes, you’ll be glad we made the Tayron a little longer.

Credit 24 are a more trustworthy option when it comes to cash lending. To introduce them to the Australian market we created some genuinely odd characters, showing the villainous tactics other brands use to trick you into a bad deal. 

The feelings of two much-maligned professional figures come to life for a TV spot celebrating Australian bank Westpac's sponsorship of the National Rugby League. Through their shared anguish, the banker and referee find both solace and strength, proving the partnership between Westpac and the NRL is a beautiful one.

To coincide with the 2021 State Of Origin (Australia's version of the Superbowl) McDonald's celebrated a part of the big game that's seldom shown the period several hours after the match. We follow a street sweeper driving around the city late at night as fans, revellers, commentators and players make their way home with one thing in common: a hunger for Macca's.

This epic tour through Australian history was created to celebrate both Westpac’s 200th birthday and the resilient Australian spirit of mateship.

Aussies are some of the toughest critics. ​Brutally honest and unapologetic. ​Especially when it comes to utes. ​As the most fiery and proud ute lovers in the world, ​no audience is more vocal.

Volkswagen responded to the critics head on in a fully-integrated campaign that proved the all-new Amarok was the answer to the brutally honest criticism of the ute category.

To live their brand ethos, 'help in the moments that matter', Westpac created an innovative print series, subverting the picture-perfect postcard with bushfire affected landscapes. Each was affixed with a pop-out debit card pre-loaded with money, which using innovative geo-fencing technology, could only be activated within the region depicted. A little act of help to encourage tourism dollars into vulnerable towns.

Every day in Australia, 18,000 tip trucks worth of waste is dumped into landfill. That’s over 20 million tonnes, year in, year out. What’s worse is that a huge percentage of that is 100% recyclable.

Heading into the Christmas period where the waste we create increases by 40%, 1800 Tequila wanted to find a way to show off the creative potential of the waste we are wasting. Working with 21 sustainable Australian innovators, artists and designers, every single element of this bar was handcrafted from reusable waste that would have otherwise ended up in the ground. So instead of pouring out trash, this repurposed tip truck poured out what that trash can become.

It makes you wonder, if this is what we can do with our waste, what are we doing putting in the ground?

You’ve probably never noticed that McChicken forgotten about by Macca’s. No special days, no big campaigns, not even a Happy Meal mention. But why would you? Middle children are always forgotten about. It’s a national epidemic. And we’re all assholes for contributing to it.

So obviously it was our job, nay, duty, to fight for this important social cause and make a campaign that put mid kids everywhere in the spotlight, including Macca’s very own McChicken.

The Volkswagen Golf is full of advanced features perfect for city driving. Which is great if you need them, but what if you don’t? To see just how impressive the Golf is, we tried to sell one in a spot with no use for it. Blinman is a remote town with no corners, no traffic and no need for reverse parking. We asked real locals to test drive the Golf and filmed the content.

The results were terrible – in Blinman, that is. Back in the city the content has been watched by millions, with positive sentiment and consideration for purchase up in just 6 weeks since launch. Proving the Volkswagen Golf is truly impressive almost anywhere.

Whether it be parallel parking, merging on a four-lane highway, a giant roundabout, or distracted pedestrians, research showed that 79 percent of all road users had some kind of driving anxiety. So, to launch the Volkswagen Tiguan and its range of new safety features DDB created a suite of tongue-in-cheek horror film posters, dramatising the fears and how the Tiguan’s tech can solve for them. Helping us say 'goodbye' road fears and 'hello confidence'