Australia Post’s Latest Brand Asset Was Hiding in Plain Sight

Australia Post’s biggest-ever brand campaign turns postcode boxes, a simple, administrative tool, into a distinctive brand asset.

Four numbers in a box, designed to sort mail efficiently, take on a deeper cultural resonance in this Droga5 work, using a sense of place to signal belonging.

Rather than a single, unified message, the work fragments into countless local stories that capture authentic moments in real communities -- from the remote outback to urban jungles.

Droga5 AUNZ creative director Connor Beaver told LBB how the campaign reflects the nation back to itself, postcode by postcode. He explains how the campaign recognises the cultural significance of 2,655 postcodes by recontextualising the iconic squares in a recurring sculptural execution.

LBB> For a brand as old as Australia Post, the insight of the postcode boxes feels like a brand idea that was hidden in plain sight. How did the idea come around, and was it obvious or unexpected?

Connor> It’s amazing how often we’re asked to fill in our postcode -- we do it so much that those four numbers come to define much more than where we live. They become a source of pride for entire towns, cities and suburbs.

Our creative team Jake Rusznyak and Dennis Koutoulogenis (DK), came up with taking the four postcode boxes, an unassuming symbol that’s found in newsagents, on kitchen benches and of course, in post offices around the country, and elevating it into something quite sculptural and striking.

We played around with putting numbers in the boxes too, but there was something really elegant about leaving them blank, letting them be part of the scene, and having local life unfold around them. They’re a visual reminder of how much our postcode, and by extension Australia Post, is part of our lives.

The simplicity of the idea is its power -- it can be executed at scale across any community in Australia. Plus, it becomes instantly recognisable as a brand asset for Australia Post.

LBB> How did the different components of the agency village come together on this one?

Connor> Quite seamlessly. We have great working relationships across the agencies (some of us have even worked together in past lives).

Pretty soon after the initial concept presentation, we connected with the other agency leads and explained our vision for the campaign. Thinkerbell was initially tasked with the social elements of the campaign and later expanded to business executions.

​BRX was instrumental in the rollout of OOH and bespoke POS [point-of-sale] (which ended up being close to 1,900 pieces of creative), while Wavemaker was responsible for media strategy and the rollout of digital assets ensured a truly national campaign.

LBB> Will this creative have life in the future, in the form of new iterations of this campaign?

Connor> We hope so! We’ve crossed 1,000s of postcodes off our list, but we haven’t got to all of them quite yet.

LBB> How difficult was it to develop hundreds of executions? What did this process look like?

Connor> Administratively, there is a very large spreadsheet with every postcode in Australia on it. When we create an execution, it gets a tick. It’s not very scientific.

In terms of actually making the individual pieces, it gets a bit more complicated. The first step was finding a way to stretch the budget across as many postcodes as possible. This informed how many films, stills and digital executions we were able to create.

The challenge then was how to achieve scale without compromising craft. There’s no point doing 1,000 pieces of work if people don’t want to look at them.

For the films, it would have been really easy to make the boxes with VFX, but we loved the idea of them being physically in the environments. We were really strong on this from the very beginning, and it really pays off in the end.

​Sarah Adamson and the whole Photoplay crew were incredible, finding a way to transport the boxes across Australia and install them at each location, which was often a muddy creek bed, an uneven country road, or a busy, slanted street.

​Cory White, our stills photographer, was another huge piece of the puzzle. He travelled around Australia for weeks on end, armed with a camera and a list of over 100 postcodes to cover off. He is an amazing photographer with great instincts and had our full trust to find the moments he thought best reflected each postcode. Cory and his team at Hart & Co delivered some truly incredible imagery, and we’re very thankful to have them on board.

LBB> The campaign seeks to represent all of Australia -- how did you achieve this?

Connor> Australia Post was very clear that they didn’t want a tourism campaign; they wanted the real people and places that a postie might see on their route.

The end result is a collection of bowls clubs. swimming pools, pubs, cafes, beaches, bakeries, Banh Mi shops, Queenslanders, terraced homes, and brick veneers that combine to reflect the diversity, eccentricity and history of Australian postcodes.