Football Australia Bets on Grit to Rally a Nation Behind the Matildas
Football Australia's 'Til It's Done' is an integrated campaign created by Ogilvy Melbourne, launched in June 2023 across Australia to build national support for the CommBank Matildas ahead of the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia and New Zealand, using the platform line "We're not done, 'til it's done" to capture the team's relentless competitive character.
The campaign arrived at a singular moment in Australian sport. With Australia co-hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup alongside New Zealand, Football Australia needed more than a promotional push — it needed a rallying point capable of converting casual observers into committed supporters. The answer was found not in tournament logistics or ticket sales but in the lived ethos of the players themselves. The CommBank Matildas, as a squad, embody a never-quit mentality that Ogilvy Melbourne identified as the authentic emotional core of the campaign.
The campaign featured eight of the squad's most recognisable figures: captain Sam Kerr, Ellie Carpenter, Mary Fowler, Tameka Yallop, Lydia Williams, Teagan Micah, Clare Polkinghorne, and Katrina Gorry. Each player's presence reinforced the campaign's core argument — that dedication, not spectacle, defines this team. In Australia, where the World Cup had generated extraordinary public anticipation, the campaign's timing amplified its reach significantly.
Executions ran across television in 15-second, 30-second, and 60-second formats, alongside national out-of-home placements, radio, digital advertising, and player-led social media activations, according to ogilvy.com. The Clapboard Score for 'Til It's Done' stands at 69 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence and cultural resonance alongside room for deeper measurable commercial attribution.
Football Australia faced a structural challenge shared by no other code in Australia at that moment. The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup was being played on home soil, creating a compressed window of opportunity to shift the CommBank Matildas from a respected sporting entity into a genuine cultural institution. The strategic decision, as documented by Ogilvy Melbourne and reported by mumbrella.com.au, was to move the campaign's positioning away from football promotion and toward national emotional storytelling — a meaningful distinction in a crowded Australian sports landscape.
In Australia, Football Australia competes for public attention and sponsor investment against well-entrenched rivals including the AFL, the NRL, Cricket Australia, Netball Australia, and the A-League Men — the last of which sits within Football Australia's own organisational structure. Each of these codes commands deep existing loyalty bases. The strategic insight Ogilvy Melbourne applied was that the CommBank Matildas' greatest competitive advantage was not their footballing record but their demonstrated refusal to accept defeat — a quality that transcends sport and speaks directly to a broad Australian audience.
The campaign's reported budget was approximately A$500,000 inclusive of media, according to footballaustralia.com.au — a figure that placed significant pressure on creative efficiency. Rather than buying reach through volume, the strategy concentrated on building a platform sufficiently durable to sustain the team's profile beyond the tournament itself. Hilary Badger, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Melbourne, stated in B&T in August 2023 that 'Til It's Done sought to "rally Australia around the CommBank Matildas and their never-say-die attitude during the FIFA Women's World Cup" and was designed as "an ongoing platform for the team." That long-term orientation separated the campaign from conventional sports event advertising and gave it structural legs that paid dividends well after the final whistle.
Ogilvy Melbourne constructed 'Til It's Done' around a creative principle that treated player authenticity as both the message and the medium. The campaign's central line — "We're not done, 'til it's done" — was not engineered as a slogan applied to the team from the outside but as a verbal expression of what the CommBank Matildas visibly and demonstrably are, according to adsoftheworld.com. That distinction in creative intent is apparent in the execution: the campaign does not celebrate the players as icons; it documents them as workers.
Hilary Badger, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Melbourne, described the CommBank Matildas as telling "a powerful story of grit, skill and integrity," as reported by B&T in June 2023. That framing shaped every production decision. The television executions — delivered in 15-second, 30-second, and 60-second cuts — used imagery designed to convey effort and focus rather than glamour. Sam Kerr, Ellie Carpenter, Mary Fowler, Tameka Yallop, Lydia Williams, Teagan Micah, Clare Polkinghorne, and Katrina Gorry were each filmed in ways that emphasised presence and purpose, not celebrity.
The out-of-home component extended this aesthetic across national placements in Australia, ensuring that the campaign's visual language occupied public space during the weeks of highest World Cup anticipation. Radio and digital executions maintained tonal consistency, while player-led social activity gave the campaign an organic distribution layer that amplified paid media without contradicting it, according to ogilvy.com. The integration across formats was not merely a channel plan — it was a coherent creative system in which each touchpoint reinforced the same singular idea: this team does not stop. The campaign was developed by Ogilvy Australia following a competitive pitch, as reported by mumbrella.com.au, a process that itself signals the strategic weight Football Australia placed on the brief.
'Til It's Done' achieved a 61% average recall rate across all campaign activity, against a target of 13.14%, according to matildas.com.au — a result that represents performance at nearly five times the benchmark set ahead of launch. In the context of Australian sports marketing, where attention is fiercely contested across multiple major codes, that figure is structurally significant. It demonstrates that the campaign's creative approach — grounding the CommBank Matildas' identity in lived effort rather than tournament excitement — generated genuine memorability rather than ambient awareness.
The industry recognition that followed confirmed the campaign's standing. 'Til It's Done' won a Bronze Lion in the Entertainment for Sport category at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, according to The One Club. At the 2024 APAC Effie Awards, Ogilvy Melbourne won the Grand Effie, three Gold awards, and one Silver award for the campaign, according to apaceffie.com — a result that places the work among the most commercially effective advertising produced across the Asia-Pacific region in its competitive cycle. Football Australia and the Matildas were named both Marketer of the Year and Brand of the Year at those same awards, according to apaceffie.com. The campaign additionally won a Gold Award at the 2023 One Asia Creative Awards, according to oneclub.org.
Taken together, these results position 'Til It's Done' as a campaign that performed with equal distinction on creative, cultural, and commercial dimensions — an uncommon combination in sports advertising anywhere in Australia or globally.
'Til It's Done' is an integrated campaign created by Ogilvy Melbourne for Football Australia, launched in June 2023 in Australia. It used the platform line "We're not done, 'til it's done" to rally national support for the CommBank Matildas ahead of the FIFA Women's World Cup Australia and New Zealand, running across TV, out-of-home, radio, digital, and social media.
Eight CommBank Matildas players featured in the campaign. The squad members shown were Sam Kerr, Ellie Carpenter, Mary Fowler, Tameka Yallop, Lydia Williams, Teagan Micah, Clare Polkinghorne, and Katrina Gorry — each chosen to embody the team's never-say-die attitude that forms the campaign's creative foundation, as documented by Football Australia and adsoftheworld.com.
'Til It's Done' won a Bronze Lion at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and a Grand Effie plus three Gold awards at the 2024 APAC Effie Awards, according to apaceffie.com and oneclub.org. Football Australia was named both Marketer of the Year and Brand of the Year at the APAC Effies as a direct result of this campaign's performance.
The campaign achieved a 61% average recall rate across all activity, according to matildas.com.au. The pre-campaign target was 13.14%, meaning the work outperformed its recall benchmark by nearly five times. This result contributed directly to Ogilvy Melbourne winning the Grand Effie at the 2024 APAC Effie Awards for the Football Australia campaign.
Hilary Badger served as Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Melbourne on the campaign. Badger described the CommBank Matildas as telling "a powerful story of grit, skill and integrity," as reported by B&T in June 2023. She also stated the campaign was designed as an ongoing platform for the team, extending beyond the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup tournament window.
Ogilvy Melbourne shifted the campaign's positioning from football promotion to national emotional storytelling, according to mumbrella.com.au. Rather than advertising the FIFA Women's World Cup as an event, the campaign used the CommBank Matildas' genuine competitive character — their refusal to quit — as the creative platform, building a durable brand identity for the team rather than driving short-term tournament attendance.
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