Telstra and Bear Meets Eagle on Fire's Christmas Fable Stars Phone-Swallowing, Carol-Singing Donkey

A donkey swallows a farmer’s phone playing ‘Have A Holly Jolly Christmas’ and becomes a travelling attraction in Telstra’s Christmas campaign.

Micah Walker told LBB the mission was to answer this question: “Can you connect to the genuine warmth of what Christmas is about, without telling a story that just feels like it's the same thing that's been done time and time again?”

The resulting campaign, ‘Together is for Christmas’ - created by Bear Meets Eagle on Fire with bespoke agency +61, produced by Revolver, and directed by Steve Rogers - is a fable-like story that connects to the telco’s new brand platform, ‘Wherever we go.’

The hero film opens on a group of farm animals - including the donkey - gathered in the farmer’s living room as he hangs Christmas lights. When he tells his phone to play ‘Have A Holly Jolly Christmas’ on repeat, he doesn’t expect it to set off a chain of events that sees ‘The Amazing Singing Donkey’ become a global hit. When the donkey sees another man hanging lights in preparation for a TV event, it returns home for Christmas.

“This is a second chapter for us. Our second big Christmas ad, following on from last year’s, that was a business success and picked up a couple of Effies,” Brent Smart, Telstra’s chief marketing officer, said of the campaign. 

“And more importantly, the second chapter in our ‘Wherever We Go’ brand platform, reminding us that no matter where we go in life, Christmas is about getting back to those who matter most.”

Micah said after the “intensive” stop motion network series and the “epic” animated film to launch the platform in September, the first piece of realistic work from +61 required a different approach.

“Steve's solution to that of creating this kind of timeless, fabled world where things are familiar but it's not just holding up a mirror to reality of the day. It's not just like, ‘Oh, out in the country right now, there's a farmer, let's just photograph him, and he has a donkey,'" Micah explained to LBB.

“[It’s] less about literal realism and more about the core of the emotion of the story, and also allows you to produce something that feels not like other people's things.”

The story originally centred on a miniature horse, but “everybody just felt like the donkey was a more unexpected choice.” It helped that donkeys are “quite expressive, actually, and sweet.”

“We knew what we wanted to avoid, and that's often very helpful,’” Micah said. “And so sometimes clearing out the things you don't want to do allows you to push it to somewhere a little bit less obvious.”

The song continued the pattern of taking the less expected path, which was critical; the pool of choices is shrunk for Christmas campaigns, and a pack of brands are fishing in it.

Despite the high stakes, Micah said it wasn’t a difficult choice - the team landed on the song quickly. Once they cut the too-obvious - the likes of ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ - ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas’ stood out. It “had some variation throughout, had a catchy enough moment.” 

“It felt a little bit like maybe what the farmer would listen to, a classic to him,” Micah said. “The more we played with it, I think everybody was like, ‘Yeah, it's got to be this.’”

Pip Smart, executive producer at Revolver, said the shoot was three days - two in a rural town in New South Wales called Carcoar around 50 kilometres south-west of Bathurst, and three on stage. 

“All of the interiors we shot on stage on those sets that we built. That's an amazing opportunity, to be able to have the time to design and build sets like that,” Pip said. (Last month, Brent said he’d pull money from media before production; “If I make something great, I need less media.”)

Post-production house Blockhead has been working on the edit for three months; it was “an enormous job.”

“I actually think that a lot of people will watch it and not know how much of it is for real. And I think that's a testament to their work and to ours,” Pip said. “The magic of how that all comes together is, I think, pretty seamless, and everyone's pretty proud.”

The team had three donkeys on set; they performed and behaved better than expected.

“It’s a lot of preparation and a tiny bit of luck, right?” Micah quipped. 

“The main donkey was really amazing. For something we thought was actually going to be the hardest part of the whole thing. We had all kinds of technological contingency built in. And then she [the donkey] turned out a star on the day.”

The integrated Christmas campaign extends into retail through two trading campaigns for the Black Friday and Christmas sales, which the brand said are centred on elevating the in-store experience and making Telstra a gifting destination.

Brent has been clear the brand’s ambition is not to not look the same, but feel the same. ‘Together is for Christmas’ and the ‘Wherever we go’ film feel the same, Micah says, because they share an “emotional centre … there's a sense of camaraderie and spirit and connection.”

“I know that's swimming up the river with the way so many folks talk, but Telstra is just too big of a brand to have one specific system that they put on repeat,” Micah argued.

“There's too many different stories to tell with too many different emotions to borrow from. There are times where you should be able to be beautiful, and there are times where you're allowed to be imaginative and playful. 

“I'm staring at a wall over here where all of our work is posted that we've done over the last year. And it's actually a really cohesive brand.”

He gives an analogy. “If you had a mate and you only ever had the same conversation every time you got together, that'd be pretty dull. I think you're just trying to be a living, breathing brand that is prepared and open to have different conversations.”