Such occasions as this are rare and mean a lot to me.
You have awakened a flame that had nearly gone out.
-Sir Michael Hill
It’s a daunting thing to tell a business their brand is outdated and unfashionable.
To have the hard conversations about things that people have grown with passion and persistence. And it’s hard for a business to admit when its brand isn’t what it once was. Especially when the founder’s name is on the door.
Michael Hill began as a small, family-run jeweller, growing for almost 40 years to become a global retailer. With its knockout deals and more-for-less commercials, the business wrote the book on mass-market jewellery in Australia, with a brand that became famous for one thing: discounting.
By 2022, this positioning was running low on potential. The category was in decline and Michael Hill’s value-focused customer base was thinning out, while shoppers with the means and desire to spend more showed little love for the brand. Sales had flat-lined and long-term growth was languishing.
The businesses could have ignored stagnation until it was too late, or worse, kept doing the same thing expecting a different outcome. As anyone in retail knows, the stress of hitting sales targets means defaulting to what they know best – retail advertising, at the expense of long-term profit.
Michael Hill decided it was not one of those businesses. They set in motion a plan to transform the brand from the inside out, with a renewed mission to build the value required to attract the customers that would drive growth.
Together, we signalled the start of this new direction for Michael Hill with a campaign called ‘The Jewellers’, bringing to life the untold love story of the brand’s founders in a way that persuaded people to start seeing it as more than a discount brand.
This entry celebrates the marriage of decisive strategic thinking that opened the door to a powerful and compelling creative idea. A story of rekindled love that won thousands of hearts, millions of dollars, and a 349% ROI. A gratifying example of a brand that realised it needed to change, employing creative firepower to keep the spark alive, and it did.
