Designed for Pacific Brands’ iconic Bonds label by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, the Birthday Project campaign set the ambitious task of finding one person born on each day of Bond’s entire 97-year existence; a staggering 35,301 people.

Driven by individual advertisements featuring Facebook-sourced “real Aussies”, the campaign calls for people to lay claim to their unique birthday by visiting the campaign website, finding their birthday on a big scrolling picture wall and uploading photo of themselves. 

The first acceptable submission for each date (photos are vetted by campaign staff) claims the day as their own and wins the user a personalised, one-off Bonds t-shirt emblazoned with their birthday.

Key Resources

The campaign was conceived and executed for Pacific Brands (Bond’s parent company) by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, with campaign PR handled by Sydney-based firm, Baker Brand and Mediacom Melbourne as media agency.

Demographics

As the birthdates extend back a full 97 years, the campaign is aimed at consumers with an emotional attachment to the iconic Aussie brand.

A survey of claimed dates attests to its appeal across the full range of age and gender demographics.

Channels Used

The campaign began with a Facebook casting call for “real” faces to represent a decidedly human campaign. 

Driving interest in the campaign before the launch proper, Bonds sought 63 regular Aussies to use in individual outdoor ads boasting more than thirty unique executions—all driving traffic to the We Are Bonds website.

To launch the campaign, a YouTube spot featuring brand ambassador Rachael Taylor was released and a PR event was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney featuring a number of well-known Aussies across a range of generations (including Pat Rafter, Gurrumul, Dame Edna, Michael Caton, Jessica Watson, Sarah Murdoch and Margaret Fulton).  A portrait by artist Darren Sylvester was commissioned to commemorate the event. 

Following its official launch, the campaign has revolved around the We Are Bonds website.  Users can log on, search for their birthday and try and claim it before someone else does.  They can also flip through and browse photos of all the claimed dates so far.

The campaign incorporates a further social media twist by giving people the ability to use their Facebook friends list to automatically enter their birthdays and let them know which, if any of them, can still claim their day.

Envious outcomes

Beautiful in its simplicity, the campaign has struck the desired chord with its wide-ranging audience.  In fact, coverage through outlets like mX and Today Tonight drove demand to the point that an excess of simultaneous access requests caused the We Are Bonds website to temporarily crash. 

Such has been the campaign’s popular success that Bonds has even decided to increase the number of personalised shirts delivered to successful participants.

At the campaign launch, they had promised to give shirts to only the first 15,000 successful entrants.  That has been since increased so that every single successful entrant will receive their own unique t-shirt.  At present there have been an incredible 22,000 dates claimed— fully two thirds of the ambitious 30,000+ target.