Renèe Mignone

City of Adelaide

Role

Strategist

Client

City of Adelaide

Year

2024

Behind every thriving city are the people who make it possible. But in a competitive employment market, how do you convince talented people that working for their city could be one of the most rewarding career moves they'll make?

Tasked with transforming an organisational offering into a compelling employer brand, I worked as the strategist to help drive the creative direction of the project, from initial concept development and client pitching through to final delivery.

Blood, phlegm
and Beethoven

To more meaningfully represent the diversity of people within City of Adelaide, we looked beyond traditional corporate cues and instead turned to the aspirations of children as a source of inspiration.

Their perspective offered a sense of optimism, imagination and possibility that felt deeply aligned to the project.

Research conducted with the target audience for the campaign showed that 94% understood that emergency departments are just for emergencies. But they were showing up anyway.

Our insight, drawn from the campaign research, was that uncertainty drives this behaviour. Most people aren’t health professionals, and just aren’t sure what constitutes an emergency.

For many people, when you —or a loved one— are unwell or injured, it can be hard to know what to do.

This informed a crafted, hand-built creative world — one that made the work feel tangible, human and full of intent.

Through this lens, the EVP became an invitation for people to imagine their own contribution, and to dream about the real impact they could have on the city around them.

The opportunity was to move beyond standard recruitment language and create something more emotionally resonant — a proposition that reflected the purpose, imagination and impact behind the work.

This all led

to the big idea: “Umm…ergency”

We all know what to do in a true life-or-death emergency. It’s the scary in-between situations that are the problem. Our strategy was to identify that feeling of uncertainty; being unwell and unsure what to do. We branded it, and then showed people exactly what to do next: call Healthdirect, where a registered nurse triages symptoms and can direct you to the most appropriate care, whether that’s an emergency department, urgent care service, 24/7 pharmacy, GP, or simply your own bed for a good night’s sleep.

For the campaign’s hero TVC and digital video executions (including for social media), we produced fast-paced ads with “Umm-umm-umm-umm” set to the tune of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. These showed quick-cut scenes of common ‘Umm… ergency’ situations, complete with blood, phlegm and vomit. They were perfect for digital placements, with unheard of completion rates.

Locally impacting. Nationally awarded and debated.

In a world where most ads are ignored, this cut through. At launch, it led the state's news cycle, lit up talkback radio, trended on social media — and later featured on ABC’s Gruen.

It wasn’t all positive, with Ad Standards receiving over a dozen complaints about the campaign’s unashamedly graphic content (all of which were dismissed), and debate followed about the role demand management campaigns play in public health. But the results were overwhelming.

The campaign exceeded its target by 628%, with 19,742 calls made to Healthdirect in 6 weeks. It delivered a 9.55x return on investment through direct savings to the health system by reducing avoidable emergency department presentations. But more than that, it helped to save lives.

The campaign’s success was externally validated recently, too. It picked up both a Bronze Effie in the “Small Budget” category and a gold for “Best State” at the 2025 Effie Awards, which are focused on one thing and one thing only: effectiveness.