National Tiles · Sunday Gravy · September 2026
Most brands would quietly retire advertising people call annoying. National Tiles has given it a television career. Its new platform takes Frank Walker’s famously hard-to-ignore voice, accepts exactly what Australians think about it and turns the complaint into the promise: Annoyingly Good.
The challenge
Frank Walker’s “Hellooooo” has been bouncing around Australian radios for more than 40 years. It is instantly recognisable. It is also, depending on whom you ask, intensely irritating. How do you modernise an asset like that without throwing away the reason everybody remembers it?
The strategy
Take the insult as a compliment. Research found that Australians might call the advertising annoying, but they certainly did not forget it. That made the irritation less of a problem than proof that the advertising had done its job. So Sunday Gravy did not soften Frank, replace him or confine him to radio. It promoted his ability to interrupt into the campaign idea.
The execution
The films begin inside the familiar worlds of television advertising: mates drinking beer, retirees enjoying the good life and beautifully designed homes waiting to be admired. Then Frank smashes through the scenery. Suddenly, the polished commercial turns out to have been a National Tiles ad all along. Frank has not simply moved from radio to television. He's found a new job: interrupting everybody else’s ads.
The tactics behind the work
Flaws, Fails & Insults → Turn the Irritation Into the Entertainment: Take the thing people find annoying and make their reaction part of the fun.
The Horror of the Slurp · Pot Noodle · adam&eve\TBWA · 2026
After viewers complained about Pot Noodle’s deliberately loud slurping, the brand brought the noise back as the monster in a horror film. Cinema-goers flee not from what is happening on screen, but from someone noisily eating a Pot Noodle behind them. Like National Tiles, the campaign turns an irritating but unmistakable brand cue into the entertainment.
Flaws, Fails & Insults → Turn the Flaw Into Proof: Take an unattractive or unfashionable quality and make it evidence of something better.
Deliciously Ugly · Quaker · Uncommon Creative Studio · 2025
Quaker stopped trying to make porridge look beautiful. It celebrated the beige, sloppy reality through deliberately ugly posters and a grotesque porridge dress unveiled during London Fashion Week. The ugliness became proof that Quaker was real, unfiltered food. Like National Tiles, it found the positive promise hiding inside the criticism.
The question that could get you there
What do people complain about but instantly associate with us?
