Fat Yak: Grooming & Adornment

Craft brewer Matilda Bay, via Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne, is launching a new campaign for its increasingly popular pale ale brand, Fat Yak.

Thinking it was high time they got involved with elite sport, Matilda Bay is proud to announce the first season of the 2011 Fat Yak Racing Cup.

In Mongolia.

On yaks.

The campaign will include a website, TV ads, outdoor and a massive consumer promotion. So massive in fact, this small brewery is investing its ENTIRE GLOBAL SPONSORSHIP BUDGET into Mongolian yak racing and sending one lucky Fat Yak drinker to Mongolia to race a yak and meet the superstars of yak racing (like Naransteg, also known as ‘the hoof master’). The race will take place in July in Mongolia where guests will be entertained in the Fat Yak corporate marquee.

Says Clemenger BBDO Melbourne creative director Damian Royce: "We initially thought we'd go to Mongolia, set up one of those corporate marquees at a yak racing event and fly in some dignitaries. After discovering there were no race meets to sponsor, we decided to create our own, the Fat Yak Cup.

"As for the race itself, all I can say is good luck to the promo winner, as going by the Yak riders we met while shooting, the local competition will be fierce."

Supporting the promotion will be a new Matilda Bay Facebook fan page and branded materials for both on- and off-premise that will include Lords of the Gobi collectable rider-cards, posters, coasters, table cards, fridge decals and header cards all designed to get people ready for some yaktion.

The six TVCs were shot over two weeks in an extremely remote area of Mongolia inhabited only by nomads. In a break from the traditional production model, the team at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne used a skeleton crew consisting of only the creative team, DOP Jody Muston and two agency producers.

With no access to electricity or hot water, the crew slept in traditional Mongolian tents, bathed in mountain streams and ate barbequed goat for dinner. Extra content was created and filmed on the fly with the help of the friendly nomadic yak herders and the translation skills of a local fixer, Bat-Amgalan Lkha.

The TVCs are due to run on FTA and pay TV.

The competition will run until 21st March, 2011.

As they say in Mongolian yak racing circles – 'Gentlemen, start your yaks'.