Embrace the hunt - Hawthorn Football Club | Clapboard Ad Archive

Embrace the hunt, the digital campaign launched by The Woolshed Company for Hawthorn Football Club in the Sports category in 2016, distills the ferocity and spirit of its namesake into a single, unforgettable moment: a hawk descending on a family barbecue and dropping a snake onto an unsuspecting relative, a visual as audacious as it is instantly memorable. Crafted for an audience steeped in the rituals of Australian sport and elevated by a uniquely local sense of humor, the campaign’s central asset became a viral phenomenon, racking up nearly three million views and igniting comment threads with its blend of shock, laughter, and suspense—qualities intrinsic not just to the wild encounter it captured but to the brand identity it sought to reinforce. Hawthorn Football Club appears here not as a club defined by what happens inside the stadium but as an emblem of unpredictability, dominance, and raw competitive edge, the hawk’s act on the suburban lawn mirroring the aggression and resourcefulness expected on the field. Rather than rely on testimonials or overt product benefits, the campaign leverages the irresistible draw of real-life absurdity and symbolic storytelling, inviting fans to see themselves reflected in the unpredictability and adrenaline of the scene, an approach that sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#9—Symbolize the Benefit classification. Agency The Woolshed Company anchors the narrative firmly in informal, conversational English—irreverent, shareable, and unmistakably Australian—lowering the barrier for viewer involvement and enabling the piece to spread organically across digital channels, ultimately drawing thousands of engagements from a fiercely loyal fanbase. In contextualizing the hawk as both a literal agent of chaos and a metaphor for Hawthorn Football Club’s on-field dominance, the campaign blurs the line between real sport and mythologized spectacle, using spontaneous spectacle as a rallying cry for courage and collective appetite for challenge. The campaign earns 76/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This campaign matters for the industry because it reasserts the power of metaphor-driven storytelling in sports marketing at a time when authenticity and surprise drive audience connection.