An honest-to-God salute to ordinary Aussies: VB "The Regulars"

The best advertising is said to be that which enters popular culture: think the Skittles "Little Lad" or the Cadbury "Gorilla". Australian beer brand VB recently launched The Regulars campaign, which sees a giant parade of authentic Aussies marching under banners representing their tribes, including The Manscapers, The Men Who've Had Their Arm In A Cow, The Men Who Won't Eat Quiche.

In fact, the creatives at VB's agency droga5, Sydney say the campaign has gained enough cultural traction that it may become an fixture at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

"There's already talk of the gay community here adopting The VB Regulars for next year's Mardi Gras in Sydney," explains droga5, Sydney ECD David Nobay. "VB is a popular brand in their macho community. Just think of the groups: The Bears, The Sugar Daddies, The Rice Queens. I can't wait. That to me would prove this idea has real legs!"

The Regulars campaign follows droga5's emotionally-charged campaign for ANZAC day, Raise a Glass, which filmed moving recollections of fallen friends from their fellow veteran soldiers. Looking to reach both seasoned drinkers who have drunk VB all their lives but also target new ones, Cam Blackley and Matty Burton, creative heads on VB, dreamt up a new campaign with a more light-hearted edge: a parade saluting classic Australian types.

"Right from the start, we knew the success of The Regulars would be down to authenticity," explains Nobay. "Crowds have been done before. Parades have been done before. But no one's done it on this scale with real people. It was random, and fraught with danger, but the clients got it, and kept the brief open to change. Our initial reference to them was Dave Chapelle's Block Party documentary."

For a location, droga5 and production company @radical.media, chose Ballarat in, naturally, the state of Victoria for the three day shoot, and Australian director Gary Freedman, part of creative collective The Glue Society. Most of the 1,500-strong cast members were non-professional and recruited during several weeks of street casting. A smattering of celebs, including the Australian cricket team, also mingled with the crowd.

"There are some amazing celebrities in the shoot, but we made sure to treat them just like the rest of The Regulars, filmically," says Nobay. "Often they're way back in the background. I like that. I think it's very Aussie. A Navy diver called Paul De Gelder had recently lost an arm and a leg in a fight with a shark in Sydney. We got him to lead out a group called Blokes Who Claim To Have Punched A Shark. That bloke was the real celebrity. Again, very Aussie."

On set, director Freedman recalls that organizing the disparate tribes proved surprisingly simple: "A lot of people came in [to casting] so we could meet them in the flesh but there were a huge number that we didn't meet until the day. And when I first arrived at the set they were all already in their groups and without seeing the banners you just knew straight away who each group was - it was funny - all these massive blokes were standing together who were obvious the Blokes Built Like A Brick Shithouse, a bunch of ugly blokes with good looking girls who were the Guys Punching Above Their Weight and it went on and on like that. It was hilarious to look at them gathered like that as if they were different tribes."

Although the sheer number of participants could have been unwieldy, Freedman insists that the scale of the spot - the largest he's ever done - helped for a number of reasons: "We really felt it was important to have that kind of number marching to create a real feel and be less reliant on post. Apart from that giving us much more freedom with the camera to find things naturally, it just creates an energy when you have that many people on a set all doing something together. People were really having a good time and there was a lot of genuine camaraderie even though they were walking for ten hours or so."

The public reaction has been great, claims Nobay, and apart from the possibility of a Mardis Gras moment, the campaign has tapped into something bigger. "National radio stations have picked it up and the public seem to love it. Loads of them have been turning up at Fosters (the main client) HQ to beg for t-shirts, which sounds like a good thing to me."

www.droga5.com.au
www.radicalmedia.com
www.gluesociety.com.au