Love Our Work: Lisa Fedyszyn and Jonathan McMahon on ‘Better on a Better Mobile Network’

Lisa Fedyszyn and Jonathan McMahon met when they were 19. The years since have seen them create effective, award-winning ideas in Australia, New Zealand, and North America, across agencies such as Droga5 New York, DDB Aotearoa, and Colenso BBDO.

The pair joined Special in June 2020, helping the agency land the title of Campaign UK Global Creative Agency of the Year in both 2023 and 2024. And last year, they were named Campaign UK Global Creative leaders of the year.

So many great campaigns to choose from. But so many creatives are choosing these campaigns to talk about, and the aim is to avoid double-ups. So, what we’re saying is, we couldn’t get herpes even if we tried (not a sentence we thought we’d ever write), but hats (and possibly pants) off to Motion Sickness for their two Grand Prix wins. What an outstanding result.

From one indie agency to another, the campaign we are applauding today is Telstra’s ‘Better on a Better Mobile Network’ from Bear Meets Eagle on Fire.

It’s a wonderfully entertaining and insanely beautifully crafted campaign, and on one of the biggest brands in Australia. So big that it’s way easier for audiences to hate them rather than love – but how can you not love? The message is consistent and rewarding across every piece, but it never gets old, because the executions are always so fresh, charming, really Australian and really hilarious.

It’s definitely not easy to speak to so many individual towns across OZ, while capturing the nation’s attention, but they made comms from a huge company feel so personal and human – all while using animals. As a creative team who has worked on Australian telcos we know how hard this brief would have been, but with brilliant creative and an equally brilliant client championing it, they are getting all the plaudits they deserve.

A special Special mention has to go to another talented Australian indie, Ministry of Communications & the Arts, for “ Time to Live” for the Australian Cancer Foundation. While the two other campaigns we mentioned made us laugh though humour, this made us cry through the power of an incredibly painful and emotive experience, of a terminally ill woman who auctioned off pieces of her remaining time to the public to raise awareness for cancer research.