Australia’s favourite ads for June 2025

The Research Agency (TRA) has announced the results of its eagerly awaited list of Australia’s favourite ads for June 2025. Once again, emotional storytelling has proven to be the winner, with ‘Care you can count on’ by Allianz topping the list. 

The bi-annual representative survey of more than 1000 Australians provides valuable insight into the advertising strategies that most resonate with audiences. Asked to name their favourite ad from the last 12 months, respondents overwhelmingly chose ads that leveraged character-driven stories, sentiment and humour to capture hearts and minds. 

Brand attribution is a critical challenge

The Allianz ad tells the story of a soaring eagle swooping in to save a struggling finch, a visual metaphor for the brand’s promise to provide unwavering support through life’s journey. Interestingly, nearly half of the respondents could vividly describe the ad, but didn’t mention the brand behind it.

“This disconnect between emotional engagement and brand recognition presents an important and nuanced takeaway for brand marketers,” said Alex Forrester, business director at TRA. “It takes time to build connection and recall, but this campaign has overcome the biggest hurdle – it has captured attention. And we can already see the makings of distinctive assets with the eagle being cast as the ‘hero’ and bringing the logo to life. Providing Allianz commit to the creative idea, we can see this campaign only getting stronger with the benefit of time.”

Forrester continued, “The challenge of attribution wasn’t unique to Allianz. Despite having distinctive platforms, brands such as AAMI, Youi and Budget Direct were frequently misattributed – often to one another.”

“The storytelling format of accidents, errors and insurance-type scenarios appears to confuse audiences. Allianz’s strategy to diverge from category norms may well work in their favour while building something unique.”

Marketers have long faced the challenge of balancing creativity with commerciality, and this survey’s respondent feedback shows brand attribution needs to remain an important component of any campaign.

Warm humour wins hearts and minds 

Telstra secured second place with ‘Wherever we go’, a story celebrating the warmth of human connection. Telstra have had many advertising wins over the years, with ‘Great Wall of China’ for Telstra Bigpond being one of the most famous Australian ads of all time. 

Budget Direct was third with their action-movie styled ‘Sarge, Jacs and Chief’, with Youi coming up next with a mullet haircut taking centre stage in ‘Shop around’. RACQ hit the mark with a lizard conversation in ‘You with RACQ’, Aldi resonated with the trolley dance in ‘Good different’ and KFC re-imagined an old tag line with ‘FLG’.

Rounding out the top ten are HBF’s ‘Quokkas’, AAMI’s ‘Lucky you’re with AAMI’ and Specsavers with ‘You should have gone to Specsavers’.  

Interestingly, ads featuring catchy jingles did not feature in the current list. Traditionally, the most popular Australian ads tapped into audience recall with repetitive tunes such as Mortein’s ‘Louie the Fly’, the Cancer Council’s ‘Slip Slop Slap’ and Vegemite’s ‘Happy Little Vegemite’.  

Taglines that enter the common vernacular are the ultimate advertising win, and the all-time success story would arguably be Yellow Pages’ ‘Not happy, Jan’. We may see a return to these tried and tested methods of recall if brand recognition continues to be a challenge. 

Spend vs strategy – big budgets don’t always deliver

Despite ranking seventh in Nielsen’s 2024 Advertising Spend Report, the insurance category dominated this latest list of favourite ads, proving the best ads rarely boast the biggest budgets. 

“Media spend isn’t everything,” Forrester said. “Creating a favourite ad means tapping into emotion, while sustaining brand impact over time requires consistency and strategic use of brand assets. Brand marketers who balance these elements will drive long-term effectiveness.” 

Read more: Overly cautious brands risk being late to the streaming TV ad party