Telstra Puts Regional Australia at the Heart of Better on a Better Mobile Network
Telstra's 'Better on a Better Mobile Network' campaign is a 26-film stop-motion series launched in Australia in June 2024, asserting the brand's position as the country's most reliable and far-reaching mobile network by naming real, geographically diverse locations — from Wagga Wagga and Warmun to Broken Hill and Barragga Bay — as places where life is simply better on a better network.
The campaign launched on 5 June 2024 across the Australian market, as confirmed by Campaign Brief. Its creative foundation rests on a deceptively simple proposition: that comprehensive, dependable mobile coverage matters everywhere — not only in capital cities, but in the regional towns, remote communities, and coastal pockets that make up much of the country's inhabited geography. By naming specific, recognisable Australian locations, Telstra converts an abstract infrastructure claim into something concrete and locally resonant. Each of the 26 films centres on a distinct place and the characters who live there, giving the campaign a cumulative breadth that a single hero commercial could not achieve.
The campaign ran during Nine's coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, as reported by Creative Review, placing it in front of a broad national audience at a moment of elevated television and streaming viewership. The scale of production — 26 individual films rather than one polished spot — signals an unusual confidence in the depth of the creative idea, and a willingness to invest in coverage, literally and figuratively, as a brand value in Australia. Clapboard rates the campaign 58 out of 100.
Telstra holds the dominant position in the Australian mobile market. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Telstra and its sub-brands held an estimated 41 percent of Australian retail mobile services revenue around 2024 to 2025, with Optus at approximately 29 percent and TPG Telecom at around 17 percent. The three operators together accounted for 87 percent of the market, per the ACCC, with mobile virtual network operators holding the remaining 13 percent.
That structural dominance creates a specific strategic challenge. Optus and TPG Telecom compete aggressively on price and metropolitan coverage, making differentiation on network reach — particularly in regional and remote Australia — Telstra's most defensible ground. In the United States, comparable carriers have used similar geographic breadth arguments; in Australia, the distances involved and the genuine connectivity gaps facing rural communities make the claim qualitatively different and more emotionally charged. The Australian Communications and Media Authority reported that Australian mobile services comprised 30.4 million prepaid and postpaid subscriptions as of June 2025, underscoring the scale of the market Telstra is defending.
The strategic insight driving 'Better on a Better Mobile Network' is that regional Australians are not a niche audience — they are a constituency whose connectivity needs have historically been underserved by all operators. By naming Wagga Wagga, Warmun, Broken Hill, and Barragga Bay in its core creative, Telstra signals that it sees these communities not as edge cases but as proof points of genuine network ambition. OMD Australia handled media planning and buying for the campaign, as reported by Campaign Brief, ensuring placement during high-viewership moments including Olympic coverage, which amplified the geographic reach argument across a nationally unified viewing event.
Director Jeff Low led the production of all 26 stop-motion films, working through production company Revolver in Australia and Biscuit Filmworks in Los Angeles, as confirmed by both Creative Review and shots.net. The creative agencies were Bear Meets Eagle On Fire and +61, with OMD Australia responsible for media. The production timeline ran to seven months, as reported by shots.net, reflecting the labour intensity of stop-motion animation at this volume and the logistical complexity of building distinct visual worlds for each featured Australian location.
Animation director Tobias Fouracre oversaw the frame-by-frame character work that gives the campaign its tactile, handmade quality, according to Creative Review and shots.net. Director of photography Jan Pawel Trzaska handled the cinematographic approach, with production design by Oliver Hogan, as documented by brandinginasia.com. Executive producer Pip Smart at Revolver shepherded the project through its extended production schedule, per shots.net. The cumulative effect of that team is a campaign that feels simultaneously intimate — each film is essentially a portrait of a place — and architecturally ambitious, given that 26 self-contained stop-motion pieces must each work individually while reinforcing a single, consistent brand message.
Andrew Macgregor, writing for David Reviews on 6 June 2024, described the campaign as a highly quotable Australian adaptation of the stop-motion tradition associated with Nick Park's Creature Comforts, noting its use of twenty-six distinct commercials as an editorial achievement in its own right. The choice of stop-motion as the production medium is itself strategic: the format's inherent warmth and crafted imperfection aligns with the authentic, non-metropolitan identity Telstra wants to project, distinguishing the campaign visually from the slick, digitally rendered aesthetic that dominates telecommunications advertising across the Australian market.
Telstra's 'Better on a Better Mobile Network' campaign generated 21,897 views and 115 likes on its primary documented video asset, as recorded by Clapboard. These figures represent a single asset within a 26-film campaign architecture, and the total audience reach across broadcast, streaming, and digital platforms — including Nine's Olympics and Paralympics coverage — is not fully captured by any single asset view count. No third-party verified aggregate performance data for the full campaign is publicly available at this time.
What the structural evidence does confirm is meaningful: a seven-month production commitment across 26 films, placement against one of Australia's highest-rating annual broadcast events, and creative recognition from industry publications including Creative Review, shots.net, Branding in Asia, and LBBonline. Telstra reported telecommunications revenue of A$23.482 billion for the twelve months to June 2024, according to telstra.com.au, a figure that contextualises the brand's capacity to invest in production-intensive campaigns at this scale. By comparison, Optus reported A$8.077 billion in telecommunications revenue for the same period, per Optus, underscoring the revenue gap that Telstra's market leadership position enables.
The Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative concept with craft and consistency but whose measurable public engagement — at least on documented digital assets — does not yet match the ambition of its production scale. The geographic naming strategy, the stop-motion format, and the 26-film volume all represent structural decisions with long-term brand equity implications rather than short-cycle performance metrics, and the campaign's value is better read across those dimensions.
Telstra's 'Better on a Better Mobile Network' is a 26-film stop-motion campaign launched in Australia in June 2024. It names real Australian locations — including Wagga Wagga, Warmun, Broken Hill, and Barragga Bay — to assert Telstra's position as the country's most reliable and geographically comprehensive mobile network provider.
Jeff Low directed the campaign. He worked through Revolver in Australia and Biscuit Filmworks in Los Angeles, with animation directed by Tobias Fouracre. The creative agencies were Bear Meets Eagle On Fire and +61, as reported by Creative Review and shots.net. Production took seven months to complete.
Stop-motion animation gave the campaign a handcrafted warmth that reinforced Telstra's authentic, non-metropolitan identity. The format visually distinguished the campaign from the polished digital aesthetic common in Australian telecommunications advertising, and its tactile character suited the community-level storytelling at the heart of the geographic naming strategy.
The campaign names Wagga Wagga, Warmun, Broken Hill, and Barragga Bay as featured locations, among others across Australia. Each of the 26 films centres on a specific place and local characters, collectively demonstrating that Telstra's network reach extends well beyond metropolitan centres into regional and remote communities.
Telstra and its sub-brands held an estimated 41 percent of Australian retail mobile services revenue around 2024 to 2025, compared to Optus at approximately 29 percent and TPG Telecom at around 17 percent, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. This dominance underpins Telstra's ability to invest in large-scale brand campaigns.
The campaign launched on 5 June 2024 in Australia, as reported by Campaign Brief. It ran during Nine's broadcast coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, per Creative Review, placing it in front of a large national audience during one of the year's most-watched sporting events across Australian television and streaming platforms.
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