MLA Marketer Aiming to Convert Young Australians into Sunday Roast Eaters

To keep Australian lamb at the centre of summer dining, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) is focusing on engaging younger audiences and leveraging cultural trends.

The 2025 Summer Lamb campaign, created by the organisation’s creative agency Droga5 ANZ, blends tradition with innovation, using humour, topical issues, and a shift to digital-first advertising to bring the lamb roast back to the hearts — and tables — of the next generation.

Speaking to LBB, MLA marketing and insights GM Nathan Low said the sentiment for Australian Lamb has managed to stay “stable” despite lamb becoming a more premium protein.

“What has changed is the frequency with which Australian households eat lamb, whether dining out or on the dinner table at home,” Nathan says.

“Many Australians under the age of 30 have never experienced the weekly family Sunday lamb roast – so while we always aim for the broad appeal of the campaign, we need to strengthen the cultural tradition of eating lamb in summer with younger Australians.

Nathan says the core of the Summer Lamb creative brief remains the same every year: engage as many Aussies as possible with the idea that nothing brings us together like sharing Australian Lamb.

What has changed in the last couple of campaigns, Nathan says, is a specific focus on engaging a younger audience as the next generation of lamb consumers.

“We know their affinity for lamb is not as strong as it was for their parent’s generation.”

One of the main reasons the Australian lamb ad is so talked about, Nathan believes, is its cultural relevance.

“The campaign has evolved now that it partially functions as a cultural barometer of what’s happening in Australia, albeit importantly focusing on things dividing the nation and light-heartedly positioning lamb as the protein that brings everyone back together.

“If we don’t capture the cultural zeitgeist authentically every year, then we know it won’t resonate, it won’t go viral, and we’ll miss our reach targets.”

For Nathan, understanding what works and what doesn’t comes down to having great strategic and creative agency partners, a healthy appetite to take risks, and at least a little good luck.

“The biggest challenge for Droga5 ANZ every year is to forecast in August what will feel topical and culturally relevant the following January, and they do a great job identifying territories that lamb can lean into and poke fun at.

“The entire agency village on this project is really important, and we engage everyone very early in the creative development process, which requires a lot of trust.

“The leap of faith we then need to take with the whole agency village is to pick which territory will resonate the most and has the greatest scope for going viral. That shared culture of risk-taking underpinned by a deep trust is very empowering and is one of the reasons we all love working on this campaign every year.”

The annual ambition – to reach as many Aussies as possible – is all part of growing lamb consumption, and every year, the MLA tries to set new records.

With the rise of TikTok and an increasing focus on short-form content, MLA is betting on fresh strategies to ensure lamb remains a beloved Australian staple.

“The ‘Generation Gap’ campaign last year went viral globally and rode the TikTok algorithm wave of success, so we’re not necessarily chasing some of those big international numbers,” he says.

“We’re aiming to reach more Australians than ever with the 2025 lamb ad and after the first week, we’re on track to achieve that.

“This time around, we’ve been more focused on the role of the shorter executions, and rather than treating them like standalone ads, we’ve deliberately used them as teasers or like a movie trailer to drive consumers to seek out the full long form execution.”