Not only did Starcom Sydney have an especially small budget to work with, they took on the unusual task of, in a sense, running a political campaign for a politician that has been out of office for around 10 years already—and not currently running for office.

Network Ten’s program, Hawke, was a movie-length political drama documenting the rise and fall of Australia’s 23rd Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. In order to successfully ‘Bring Bob Back,’ Starcom sought to make Hawke #1 in share of commercial viewers and to have an average audience of 470,000 people, all while functioning under a miniscule 5-figure budget.

The faux campaign for Bob Hawke was complete with campaign street posters, bumper stickers, flyers, and badges. Radio and newspaper ads, as well as YouTube and Facebook were all used to promote Hawke—Facebook being the key. In all aspects, the results of the ‘campaign’ met or exceeded all goals and expectations.

Click “Continued” to get a better idea of how Bob Hawke was brought back into the public eye.