Brent Smart: Telstra’s Cannes Wins Show Big Brands Can Be Most Creative

​Telstra CMO Brent Smart says the telco’s Cannes Grand Prix shows “the biggest brands can be the most creative.”

The brand won a Grand Prix among a fistful of Lions last week, with agency partner Bear Meets Eagle on Fire being named third best independent agency, and production partners Revolver taking out the Palme ‘Or.

Brent tells LBB he hopes the win can impact Aussie brands’ approach to creativity.

“I hope it shows that even the biggest brands can be the most creative,” Brent says.

“We often use scale and complexity as an excuse to do average work, but it doesn’t get bigger or more complex than Telstra -- and look at the work we are creating. I think it’s so important that we celebrate work like this that builds brands and the whole country sees, not just one-offs made for award shows.”

Most award wins at the 2025 festival came off the back of the 2024 stop-motion platform ‘Better on a Better Mobile Network’.

The CMO explains that the work affected Telstra’s market position, moving “the hardest metric to shift: our reputation with non-customers.”

“This campaign was the biggest improvement in non-customer reputation of any campaign we have run.

“We set out to not look like all the other big brands … [and] stop motion puppets would obviously be distinctive,” Brent says.

“They brought a level of charm and humility to a message about how big our network was, and that felt like a very different voice for us. We maintained consistency and quality across all 26 films by working with brilliant production partners, giving them the time to craft these properly -- they took seven months to make -- but mostly by really caring about every detail and that’s what Micah and Bear always do.”

Australian independent agency Bear Meets Eagle on Fire CCO Micah Walker called the global attention to the campaign “humbling”, and told LBB the ambition was always to make each TVC distinctive.

“Part of that was about bringing things to life with humanity and tactility,” Micah says.

“It was also just about finding a way to make each spot feel genuinely considered and cared for. We believe people can sense that kind of care, even if it’s hard to quantify.

“Brent and the Telstra team have always given us room to colour outside the lines and surprise them. We still have to deliver ideas that live up to that ambition, but that’s good pressure.

“When they buy something, they’re all in. There are lots of chats along the way on everything, so I’d say it’s less about control and more about shared ambition and trust.”

While Micah admits the Cannes result is “huge”, he doesn’t think it will change the agency’s approach to work.

“If anything, it just puts more pressure on us to keep pushing ourselves. The global attention has been humbling, and we’ve already had a few brands from outside Australia reach out in the last few days.”

As Telstra’s creative is recognised for its 2024 campaigns, its 2025 work has also turned heads, with an elaborate TVC featuring a travelling shoemaker, a trio of silent short-films, innovative OOH, 20,000 real dominoes, and artistic sculptures.

And Brent is excited to continue the brand’s varied stylistic approach.

“I think we have become too slavish to consistency in marketing,” Brent says.

“It doesn’t mean that everything has to look literally the same -- how boring is that? We focus more on things feeling the same, finding the most interesting way to solve the problem and telling the story within our brand world.

“Sometimes that means animation, sometimes 20,000 dominoes, sometimes a singing donkey. The executions are surprising, but the brand voice is clear and coherent. We also don’t believe in matching luggage, working hard to reduce our out-of-home down to the simplest form with strong codes, which we call brand fabric. It all adds up to our brand strength increasing whilst the other brands in our category are decreasing.

“We trust our creative partners and always give them the room to do something great – I try to get out of the way when it comes to making. On this one, that was even more extreme as the stop motion process is painstaking and was happening in Poland – we basically saw nothing for months between storyboards and the first edits, we just trusted that we had the best people working on it and they would do everything they could to make it the best it could be. They certainly delivered on that.

“Bear Meets Eagle on Fire put so much craft and care into this work.They are always so ambitious with how we can make work and who we can make it with. The idea to combine animation director Tobias Fouracre, who works with Wes Anderson, with comedy director Jeff Low, was a master stroke, because the work looked beautiful and was also funny, which is a rare combination.

“We went through so many scripts, so many versions of dialogue, so many local voices, Bear just kept pushing to make these as great as they could be.”

Looking ahead, Micah can’t say for sure how the Cannes results will redefine how Australian agencies and brands approach creativity. But he is eager to get back to work and continue shaking up Telstra’s output.

“I’d love to make something longer form, or a physical product, but it all just comes down to what the right idea is for the project,” Micah says. “We rarely, if ever, walk in with a predetermined shape in mind.”

“I’ve always believed the more there is better work out there, the better it is for everyone, as it just pushes the bar forward. I think it’d be presumptuous to assume people will start doing something differently because of what we’ve done