Magda Szubanski’s Sharon Strzelecki character is the queen of Australian comedy – self-effacing, blithely bogun, open, honest, not very smart and hugely popular. Emotive has harnessed her powers to turn a how-to video into an entertaining sales pitch for Google Ads, targeting small and medium business owners.
In the campaign, she has opened a Bowled & Beautiful hairdressing business. It specialises in the horrendous bowl cut and, like its target audience currently challenged by tough economic conditions, is struggling to get new customers. (New research from Google and Kantar has found that 61% of Australian small and medium businesses see acquiring new customers as their number one challenge.)

Her solution, which she discovered from the local “hot garbo”, is Google Ads. And Strzelecki takes the audience through the Google Ads set-up, that is so easy “even an accident prone indoor leg-spinner and small business owner from Fountain Lakes can do it”. The campaign underlines Google’s new AI powered processes, including Performance Max for 27% more conversions, and free tools that assist the quick and easy creation of ads using Generative AI.

The full mockumentary is supported by 60-, 30- and 15-second cutdowns, a demo video and, blurring the lines of reality even further, an appearance on David Koch’s Kochie’s Business Builders program on Channel 7 and Strzelecki’s very own Bowled & Beautiful website.
Zane Pearson, director at Emotive Production, commented, “It’s been a thrill working with a comedic genius like Magda. When we set out to create the ad, we knew it was critical that building an authentic world for Sharon would mean that the audience would engage deeply with the story we were presenting. Plus, since we knew this would be a YouTube led campaign, we weren’t timeboxed to a classic 15 or 30 second Ad. This meant we had the creative licence to tell the story in the most engaging way and not squeeze it into a specific time frame.”
The full campaign covers digital ATL, social and select media integrations.


Credits:
Client: Google Australia
Client Team: Mark Wheeler, Duncan McGrath, Martin Dowling Dana Markovic
Creative & Production: Emotive
Creative & Production Team: Ben Keep, Ben Sampson, Hayley Ritz-Pelling, Jess Ameduri, Michael Dawson, Michael Hogg, Monika Vidovic, Rebecca Love-Williams, Rory Pearson, Sam Gadsden, Simon Joyce, Sophia Delimihalis, Tyler Ronaldson & Zane Pearson
Research & Insights: Pollinate & Kantar