Billy Birmingham tweaks Australiana for Subaru Outback TVC
2015 Subaru Outback TV commercial sees Billy Birmingham (The 12th Man) and Austen Tayshus back together to recreate their Australiana hit song.
SUBARU SAYS it approached the pair to create a new “Outback TV campaign based on their iconic comedy hit Australiana, which was written by Birmingham and performed by Austen Tayshus”.
Australiana spent13 weeks at No.1 on the Aria Singles Chart in 1983 and became Australia’s highest grossing single of all time. It was a pun-laden, spoken word comedy piece set around a typical Aussie backyard BBQ and used famous Australian place names, flora, fauna and iconography to tell the story.
According to Subaru, Disciple, its creative agency, came up with the idea of paying homage to Australiana as the creative platform for the Outback campaign. Agency partners, Tim Brown and Pete Buckley, approached Birmingham about writing the commercials with Austen performing them. The ad tells the story of the family discussing who to invite and who to dump from their annual holiday road trip.
Subaru Australia General Manager Marketing, Andrew Caie, said with Subaru Outback’s rich and proud Australian history, it was the perfect fit for the collaboration with Billy. “The original Australiana is a classic and Billy takes the TV commercial version further than we’d ever imagined with some brilliant scripts,” said Mr Caie.
Watch the Ad here: