Case Study — Campaign Design
Keeping the campaign when the star walked away.
Mate signed footballer Sam Kerr as a brand ambassador and built a campaign around her — using her as the model across their plan and benefit ads. It was, in effect, a partnership play: leveraging her reputation and fanbase to drive awareness and conversions among the people who already followed her.
The ambassador creatives put Sam Kerr front and centre, in the Mate kit, carrying the plan offers ($25 / 15GB, $40 / 50GB) and the "Bank on us for your mobile data" line. Recognisable, high-energy, and tied to her personal brand.
When the ambassador contract ended, Mate chose not to renew it — but they still wanted the campaign. The task: recreate the creatives with the brand's own models in place of Sam Kerr, while keeping everything else identical — the colour, the layout, the type, the energy — so the switch would feel like continuity, not a reset.
"The brief wasn't 'redesign it' — it was 'change the face and change nothing else'."
I rebuilt the campaign around everyday models that reflected Mate's actual audience, matching the original system exactly: same green, same yellow accents, same bold plan typography, same heart-wifi motif and offer structure. Only the person in frame changed.
The result let Mate keep the equity of a campaign they'd already invested in — the recognition, the layout, the momentum — without paying to renew a celebrity contract. Because the system was matched down to the detail, the audience experienced a seamless continuation rather than a new campaign, protecting brand consistency through a change most people would never notice.