Travelling Shoemaker Stars in “Rural Australian Fairytale” For Telstra

Telstra has launched the next chapter of its ‘Wherever We Go’ brand platform with a cinematic campaign starring a wandering shoemaker who repairs all kinds of footwear, from clown shoes and silver sneakers to crystal heels.

Set in a storybook world of eccentric characters and created by Bear Meets Eagle on Fire with +61, the campaign aims to reposition Telstra as the go-to connectivity partner for Australian businesses, and follows the recent spot featuring 20,000 dominos.

Bear Meets Eagle on Fire chief creative officer Micah Walker told LBB the campaign builds on the existing ‘Wherever We Go’ positioning, launched last year with an animated film and sprawling out-of-home campaign.

“It builds on the brand idea pretty seamlessly,” he told LBB, “but just as importantly, it also starts to elevate Telstra Business to a place that’s much more distinctive than the rest of the category.”

The regional Australian setting was also important for the campaign message, tying in with BMEOF and +61’s stated objective to make the telco feel “warm and personable.”​

“Regional Australia is both familiar and timeless, so you can create a world that’s less literal and more imaginative,” Micah said.

“It’s also full of lovely details that make for cinematic stories. That and, of course, the scale of Telstra’s network.

“We just thought shoes and the story of a shoemaker worked with both the idea of a business journey and ‘Wherever We Go’, conceptually.”

Brought to life by Revolver director Steve Rogers in the Flinders Ranges across a three-day shoot, the production obsessed over making the shoemaker’s traveling store feel like a real piece of living history.

Speaking to LBB, Steve said it was designed to “feel like it first existed in the 1880s, got renovated in the 30s, then again in the 70s. Every tool and handmade shoe inside needed to sell that backstory."

Unlike typical mobile food carts, the cart was designed as a substantial structure – made from heavy cement, tiles and bricks – that appear to have organically broken free from a row of rural shops. The team layered in decades of imagined renovations to create palpable authenticity.

"The intention was for it to look like a very real store that had once been part of a small town’s main street, serving locals for generations,” Steve said.

The physical build was so detailed that transporting the massive structure between remote locations became a major challenge.

“The structure was constructed on a heavy gauge trailer that had the ability to be either towed or pushed depending on the scene and the camera placement. The only real difficulty was the time that it took to transport the shop between locations, given that none of the locations were close to each other and there were speed restrictions on a vehicle of that size on public roads.”

He added of the film’s regional setting, “We wanted to tell a rural Australian fairytale, but we didn’t want it to become mawkish or sentimental. We wanted to ground the story so it felt tethered to reality, but we also wanted to include moments where we could stretch that relationship without breaking it.

“The key was to try and find moments where unbelievable things transpired in very believable, ordinary ways. We wanted to borrow from fairytale tropes, but look at them through a rural Australian lens and in particular, a rural Australian nonchalance, whereby remarkable things are sort of thrown away.

“The primary reason we decided to shoot in that particular part of South Australia is that the small-town landscape is incredibly unfucked with. The locations only required very minimal augmentation, other than the circus, which we designed based around old travelling shows and tent boxing signage.”

The integrated campaign extends beyond the film with a handcrafted, illustrated out-of-home experience – featuring playful murals and bespoke installations by artist Ben Hasler and paper sculptor Kyle Bean.

The campaign also highlights Telstra Business’s practical benefits — like dedicated Business Internet and in-person expert support at Telstra Technology Centres — showcased across social, digital, and retail touchpoints.

Telstra Business group executive Amanda Hutton explained the brand’s ambition is to be a safe and reliable connectivity partner for all Australian businesses.

“We know how critical [reliable connectivity] is for any business and the message we want to share with this campaign is that we promise to support you, wherever your business may go,” Amanda said.

Micah added, “This is a story about what’s possible when you have the right support and partnership behind you.”

Blake Crosbie, +61 managing director, said, “Business owners are inherently imaginative people. They have a vision of where they want to go. We wanted to create a campaign that reflects that ideal, without holding up a mirror to the audience.”

The campaign is a part of a string of ambitious campaigns from Telstra, including the out of home ‘From Space to Your Place’, and the tonally-similar Christmas ad featuring another traveler: a singing donkey.

“We all agreed that it should build on the work that we made with the Christmas film, but to also have its own flavour and tone,” Steve said.

“Essentially, we wanted to try and tell another Australian fable in a grounded, believable way.”