An older white man rides a bicycle with a basket through a suburban neighborhood.

Never in a Million Years Could I Have Guessed What This Australian Ad Was Selling

If an ad comes into your social media feeds enough times with captions like “i’ve seen crazy ads in my life but NOTHING compares to this,” it’s only a matter of time before most of us click—such is the nature of advertising. That was the case with an Australian ad I kept seeing pop up this week and I have to admit, those captions weren’t exaggerating by much.

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The ad in question is a cheeky, satirical look at various generations and the ways they view and judge and interact with each other. It opens in a neighborhood populated entirely by Boomers, where print media is alive and well and two-story homes are just handed out for free.

From across a divide, Gen Z begs for those Boomers to be less judgemental while also acknowledging their penchant for technology may have affected their in-person social skills. Meanwhile, Millennials are cringe incarnate and Gex X … is also there.

The ad is beautifully shot and genuinely pretty funny, comedically simplifying the issues at hand to issue some gentle ribbing and light social commentary. So what could this possibly be an ad for? Something related to the economy? Some kind of institution for social unity?

Nope.

It’s an ad for lamb.

Being a non-Australian, I was unaware of Australian Lamb and its history of producing these sorts of ads. Each is different in tone and genre but they all fall under the general theme of lamb bringing people together due to its deliciousness, and they’re all served by the gap in expectations between the cinematic quality of the ads and the product being pushed.

I simultaneously appreciate these fun, cinema-quality ads and also deeply appreciate this YouTube commenter specifically:

A YouTube comment reading "Great ad and very enjoyable and now I know why I can’t afford lamb whilst the farmers are getting paid $4.70 a kilo"
(YouTube)

(featured image: YouTube)


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Image of Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.