The hook: what the first three seconds do
The film doesn’t open on a quad, a logo or a ranking. It opens inside one of the campaign’s real environments—a farm, a defence setting, a medical space—and lets the location say what a voiceover hasn’t yet. The first three seconds are a promise: this is documentary, not a university brochure. You’re about to meet people, not archetypes.
The structure of the film
UNE and dentsu built the campaign around a long-form hero and more than ten student stories, instead of one tidy narrative. Each portrait follows a person through the places that shaped them. A recurring creative device inspired by aerial road maps visualises the different routes people take toward education and whatever comes after it.
The people are specific. Jennifer finished a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours while serving in the Navy and is now an internationally recognised national security advisor. Ethan went from his family’s cotton farm in regional New South Wales to zoologist, artist and local politician. Tobi is working through a Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine with a goal of joining Doctors Without Borders.
Tag’s production team travelled across Australia to capture participants in their own worlds—regional properties, medical settings, workplaces, campuses, military contexts. The result mixes documentary authenticity with cinematic sound design, original composition and portrait-led imagery.
The idea and the brief behind it
UNE’s Director of Marketing, Michaela Lobb, says her challenge to dentsu was:
‘If people knew it was possible, would we have more people educated, retrained or learning in different ways?’
The platform answers by celebrating education that fits around life, rather than asking life to fit around education.
That sits inside UNE’s ‘Education Without Convention’ strategic pillar, which challenges traditional student archetypes and assumptions about where education can lead. The team combined dentsu’s Consumer Connection System audience intelligence with UNE application data to find growth markets and a shared truth: there is no typical UNE student.
Joe Gannon, Client Partner at dentsu, says the analysis surfaced a common desire for flexible education pathways, and ‘we all start somewhere’ became the organising idea. Claire Hoyles, Client Service Director at Tag, adds that the work was designed to move beyond traditional portrayals of university students and stay grounded in lived experience.
Where it is running
The platform soft-launched in February 2026 across digital and audio, and is now fully realised as a national through-the-line push. It runs across video, social, audio, out-of-home, digital and content channels, using adaptive creative formats to meet prospective students at different stages.
As a full-funnel growth platform, it balances broad-reach brand activity with targeted communications for school leavers, lifelong learners, regional communities and online-first prospective students. A DigiPR survey and content program supports earned media by exploring Australian attitudes toward higher education and unconventional learning.
This is UNE’s first fully integrated delivery under its expanded dentsu partnership. Tag leads creative, social and production; Dentsu Creative PR handles earned; Dentsu Digital handles digital experience; Dentsu Media runs media strategy and buying.
Steal this: three moves for a smaller brand
- Start with the environment, not the set. Film customers on their own turf. Location carries credibility that a studio can’t fake.
- Mine your own data for the messy pattern. UNE paired audience intelligence with application data to find there’s no single student type. Your CRM, application or order data likely holds a similar tension.
- Give a series one visual device. Aerial road maps unify very different stories. One simple recurring graphic can do the same for your testimonials or case studies.
Watch the original: UNE on YouTube
Source: Campaign Brief
