Why gambling on the ‘worst job at MONA’ was a winner

Taking the top marketer job at Mona, with a founder who hates advertising and feels marketing is a” snake eating its own tail”, was always going to be a wild ride.

Museum of Old and New Art

With a boss who hates advertising and believes “marketing is a snake eating its own tail”, creative director-turned-marketer Robbie Brammall knew he had an interesting journey ahead when he accepted a job at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art.

Fearing that hiring Mr Brammall would “probably be the biggest mistake” he’s ever made, David Walsh, founder of the Hobart institution, did just that.

Now, nearly 5½ five and a half years in as director of marketing and communications at Mona, ex-ad agency exec Mr Brammall heads up another 40 brands on top of Mona, including Tassie’s biggest craft brewery, Moo Brew, has a growing team of 25 and has just launched its first ad campaign.

“The job interview was classic Mona,” Mr Brammall recalled.

“I met David for beers at Salamanca, and after about four drinks David stares me in the eye and says ‘Hiring you will probably be the biggest mistake I ever make because this could be the start of Mona’s drift to the middle. Don’t let us drift to the middle – upset people if you can, fail if you have to, just don’t let us drift to the f..king middle’. Now that’s a solid KPI.”

Robbie Brammall, director of marketing and communications at Mona

Explaining how strategy wise Mona is a “show don’t tell marketer”, preferring to put on a festival to increase visitation in the middle of winter rather than create a bunch of ads, Mr Brammall said it’s this product-led comms strategy across all its brands, combined with creative freedom, that has been key for the privately funded museum.

Examples of this include launching the Air Mofo airline to create attention around its Mofo summer festival. It hired a Qantas 747 and gave away all 147 seats to one person – earning it about $5m in media for a $70k investment.

Creating a “hugely over-engineered and impractical” Moo Brew Roulette to promote its new beers, with a one in eight chance of being vended a warm can of Fosters that you just paid $9 for, was another product-led activation that drummed up earned media.

However, as 2011-founded Mona matures as a business, and as Tassie recovers from Covid, Mr Brammall explained there was a need to get more targeted with its audience to achieve growth. This saw Mona supplement its typical marketing approach with some paid reach for its first ever brand campaign for Mona.

The museum found its most savage reviews on social media and turned them into an ad campaign called The Best of Our Worst Reviews.

“It’s fully through the line, has media spend behind it, and is grubby ads. But hopefully it feels very Mona – i.e. right on the edge of being counter-productive and getting us sued,” Mr Brammall said.

He added that creative freedom is the answer to winning in marketing for Mona and its house of creatively motivated brands, but having a founder who doesn’t avoid risk also helps.

“We have a better range of opportunities to work on than most agencies, and best of all the client describes himself as a risk psychopath,” he said.

Mr Brammall explained how professional gambler Mr Walsh has an investment strategy based on the asymmetric upside of risk.

“You make 10 investment decisions, each with a really high upside and a low downside. Then, when one of them lands it earns you more money than 10 average investments,” Mr Brammall reiterated.

“I’ve simply turned that strategy against David to justify what we do with Mona’s marketing.”

With Mr Walsh telling Mr Brammall that “marketing is a snake eating its own tail” and that he has “the worst job at Mona”, the marketer said he still lets him believe that.

“Even though back in the office we’re launching beers, designing dildos (Mona Bonas), inventing a soap brand, and working out what an analog recording studio is. Marketing sucks,” Mr Brammall joked.

The Great Wall of Vagina at Mona

So is there a secret formula to great marketing and good creative? Mr Brammall believes so, with this including distinctive assets executed with ruthless consistency across multiple channels, all backed up by a product that delivers on the promises the brand makes.

“The development of those distinctive assets lives and dies on great creative,” he said.

Mr Brammall, who worked at DDB Melbourne, The Campaign Palace, Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland and Clemenger BBDO Sydney, believes that creativity is simply just innovation and is about seeing what’s come before and trying something new.

“Maybe we just change the word creativity to innovation. Because every single CEO is leaning into that in every aspect of their business. Marketing is no different. In fact at the moment, thanks to technology, it’s the poster child for innovation,” he said.

Fortunately Mr Brammall has a boss who abhors groupthink, committees or research, and instead prefers to give one person absolute creative autonomy to realise their vision without compromise. From Mona’s architect Nonda Katsalidis to its artists, festival directors and head chef Vinny, Walsh backs talent to the full.

An installation at Mona

“He lets them do the idea, and everyone else makes it happen. It doesn’t not work,” Mr Brammall said. “One of the funnest things about Mona is being exposed to so many creative people in so many different fields – artists, chefs, horticulturalists, blacksmiths, contortionists, brewers, winemakers, entrepreneurs, gamblers. It’s not a department. It’s a philosophy.”

Creativity drives every decision at Mona, with Tasmania-born Mr Brammall adding that the marketing and comms team is one of the real creative engines within the business – not just from a promotional perspective, but also in product development and strategy.

An installation at Mona

“If we start turning out shit, or drifting to the middle, we very quickly begin to erode Mona’s brand equity,” he said.

While it’s early days for the ad campaign and is a long lead generation play, Mr Brammall said it’s been well received by industry and the public, “which is a shame”.

“It gets us into market from February to May at a time when no one else is quite brave enough to advertise. Then it’s time for Tourism Tassie’s winter campaign and Dark Mofo in June. So we’ll just attribute all that extra visitation to this campaign.”

Mona’s footprint expands each year