Vodafone told Australia there’s nothing out here. Australia replied in the comments.
The telco’s latest national campaign – conceived by Howatson+Company and featuring comedian Ali Wong alongside an emu in the South Australian outback – positions Vodafone as the rational alternative to competitors who waste money building towers where “clearly, nothing’s out here.” The campaign’s central claim: coverage where 98.5% of Australians actually live. The unspoken implication: the other 1.5% can take it up with the bird.
It is, by the agency’s own measurement, emotionally activating. Moment-by-moment emotional response data shared by creative effectiveness platform Cubery shows the ad spending most of its runtime in the “Active Negative” band. In the language of challenger brand strategy, this is a feature. The ad is designed to create discomfort. It is designed to make you feel something.
It succeeded. Just not in the direction Vodafone’s media budget anticipated.
The Brief, As Published
Before examining how the campaign landed, it is worth understanding how it was sold.
TPG’s chief marketing officer Bec Darley, who joined from Domain twelve months prior and appointed Howatson+Company to the account, described the campaign’s purpose to The Australian in unambiguous terms. “Network was the issue, it is no longer the issue and it’s off the table,” she said. “By population, we are now within 1 per cent of Telstra, and on par with Optus. Any previous network issues no longer exist.”
The campaign, she said, was about “waking the sleeping giant that is Vodafone” – positioning the brand as a “pragmatic, customer-centric” challenger in a category she described as “ripe for disruption.”
The timing was deliberate. Six months after Optus’s fatal outage led that telco to abandon its own marketing offensive, and with Telstra having dominated share of voice during the silence, Vodafone was launching into what its CMO described as a hole in the market.
“There is a hole in the market right now for a very pragmatic, customer-centric brand to really combat empty promises, lack of trust and the fanciful,” Ms Darley said.
The irony of a telco positioning itself against empty promises will not be lost on the customers who responded to that positioning in the comments section of the very campaign it launched.
What the Comments Section Knew
Within days of the campaign appearing on bus shelters, TikTok feeds, and Instagram across Australia, Vodafone’s own social media channels became a highly visible public response to the campaign’s premise.
The responses arrived from every platform simultaneously and said the same thing.
“Last time I checked, giant chickens don’t live in certain areas in Sydney – yet I still have no coverage.”
“Lots of black spots in Sydney.”
“I never get a proper signal in Melbourne. Always SOS when you really want to use the internet.”
“Service is shocking in the Southern Highlands.”
“No giant chickens near me, no Vodafone coverage either.”
“Not in Northcote.”
“First cover city. No network in own home.”
“They must think I’m a giant chicken. Service sucks in Sydney.”
“Vodafone doesn’t have good reception in rural towns where people live. I’m not a chicken.”
“I live inner north Brisbane and the reception is very poor. How about improving that?”
One customer from regional Queensland was more direct: “Would you mind making a comment on your little statement saying there’s ‘nothing out here’ while referring to regional and remote Queensland? All the money in this state is made up here. What a slap in the face.”
Another captured the campaign’s fundamental miscalculation with accidental precision: “Cool idea for marketing but honestly, it’s the whole reason I don’t use you guys. I roam with the giant chickens.”
On Facebook, a loyal customer offered the kind of testimonial no agency wants to read: “I live semi rural – loyal Vodafone user. 4G hardly works for me where I live. I was hoping it would improve with the marrying with Optus but no.”
And one observer identified the cultural assumption buried in the creative: “I was disgusted when I saw the ad. It is aimed at their target consumer and probably accurately portrays their target consumer’s attitude to everywhere west of the divide.”
These are not complaints from people in the Simpson Desert. These are complaints from customers in inner-north Brisbane, the Southern Highlands, suburban Melbourne, Northcote, and central Sydney – the precise demographic the campaign claims to serve. The 98.5%. The people Vodafone built the campaign around. Customers posting comments that contradicted the campaign’s premise.
Vodafone’s social media team responded to each complaint with the same choreographed deflection.
“Flick us a DM so we can follow up for you, Rod.”
“Send us a DM and we’ll follow up from there, Sandy.”
“We’ll make sure your phone is picking up our 5G signal wherever it’s available, Tyrone.”
The DM, apparently, is where coverage complaints go to retire.
The Industry Knew Too
The consumer verdict in Vodafone’s comments section was not the only unflattering review. Across online forums and telecommunications communities, the response from technically literate observers was similarly unimpressed.
“Terrible ad. It’s regression to the 90s-00s, where a phone is used to just make a call/send a text.”
“They’ve done a terrible job at promoting their MOCN coverage, that’s the real problem here.”
“It’s a pretty negative, confused message. If you watch it with the sound off it visually communicates the exact opposite of the tagline.”
One observer noted the structural problem with the premise directly: “Selling coverage at 98.5% has no immediate or measurable perceived benefit. Don’t tell people, show them. People want to know that the network will work in areas they play and work.”
The broader verdict from those who follow the industry closely was damning: “$40 million spent on MOCN advertising and they didn’t grow any postpaid customers – they lost 15,000 in the second half. The ad throws shade at Telstra for building towers where there’s limited population. The ad seems to highlight and reinforce Vodafone’s negative perception that they don’t have rural coverage, instead of selling the benefits of what they do have. Talk to your strengths, not your weaknesses.”
One observer put it simply: “Oh wow. I’d be embarrassed.”
The RRRCC Didn’t Find It Clever Either
If the comments section represented the consumer verdict, the Rural, Regional and Remote Communications Coalition delivered the institutional one.
The RRRCC described the campaign as missing the mark – dismissive of regional Australians and the economic contribution of rural industries. RRRCC chair Wendy Hick was direct: “Celebrating service for the 98% while ridiculing the remaining Australians is not clever. It is exclusionary.”
Country Women’s Association national president Danica Leys called the messaging “disrespectful and deeply out of touch,” noting that regional Australia generates 70-80% of export income, nearly half of tourism revenue, and around 90% of the nation’s food production.
National Rural Health Alliance CEO Susi Tegen connected the campaign to something rather more serious than brand perception: “Rural and remote Australians still struggle to reliably access emergency services like triple zero, which is fundamental to health and safety. What they need from telecommunications companies is not mockery. They need investment, reliability and respect.”
The triple zero observation carries particular weight in 2026. Two Vodafone customers have died in incidents where emergency call connectivity issues have been raised, and are under investigation. The CEO has testified before a Senate inquiry that the problem is “ongoing.” The campaign’s suggestion that rural infrastructure is an unnecessary expense lands differently when the absence of that infrastructure has been raised in connection with incidents currently under investigation.
TPG’s spokesperson responded that Vodafone “respects the vital role regional and remote Australia plays.” The ad, presumably, was filmed before that respect was formalised.
The response was not limited to institutional voices. Grassroots rural connectivity groups responded directly, noting that nearly one in three Australians live outside major cities and that connectivity in those communities is critical for safety, business, education and health. One co-founder of a prominent rural broadband advocacy group put it simply: there is a lot more out here than nothing.
The CEO Wrote the Rebuttal Himself
“Backing Australia means backing the networks that connect us,” he wrote.
He described the MOCN arrangement as delivering “better service, more choice and stronger competition without duplicating infrastructure or wasting taxpayer dollars.” He said network sharing “ensures Australians in rural and remote areas enjoy the same connectivity benefits as those in our cities.” He called connectivity “not a luxury” but “the foundation of modern life.”
In the same edition, TPG’s general manager of strategy Jeremy Howe described the MOCN deal as bringing “more choice and lower prices to the bush,” noting that regional customers had previously been paying higher prices due to limited competition.
Three months later, Vodafone’s national campaign told those same Australians there was “nothing out here.”
The RRRCC didn’t need to write a rebuttal to Vodafone’s campaign. Berroeta already had.
The Arithmetic of the Premise
The campaign’s central boast – 98.5% population coverage – deserves a moment of scrutiny that Howatson+Company apparently did not supply.
98.5% population coverage is not a Vodafone achievement. It is an industry baseline. Telstra has it. Optus has it. It is what you get when you build a mobile network in a country where 89% of the population lives in urban centres that collectively occupy less than 1% of the landmass. Claiming 98.5% population coverage as a competitive differentiator is the telecommunications equivalent of a restaurant advertising that it serves food on plates.
The ad’s voiceover acknowledges this with accidental candour. Wong’s character refers to the coverage figure as “98 whatever percent” – a casual dismissal of the very statistic the campaign is built around. When your own spokesperson can’t be bothered to remember the number, the number is probably not doing the work you think it’s doing.
There is also the small matter of what the 98.5% figure actually represents. By population, Vodafone claims near-parity with its rivals. By landmass, the picture is rather different. The MOCN deal brought Vodafone’s geographic footprint from 400,000 square kilometres to over one million – impressive growth, but still well short of Telstra’s coverage of the continent. More than 60% of Australia by landmass remains without mobile coverage at all. The campaign’s implicit claim that Telstra wastes money building towers “out here” glosses over the fact that ‘out here’ includes areas where reliable access to Triple Zero has been a critical issue.
What the campaign is actually selling, stripped of the desert cinematography and the emu’s menacing close-up, is a cost structure. Vodafone doesn’t build rural towers because rural towers are expensive. The implicit message to customers is: you’re paying less because we spend less. This is a legitimate business model. It is a considerably less legitimate advertising premise when customers in inner Sydney are reporting they can’t get a signal.
This Is Not The First Time
The current campaign is not Vodafone’s first brush with the gap between advertised coverage and documented reality.
The launch campaign for Vodafone’s MOCN arrangement – marketed to consumers as “Double the Network” – featured a town in which the protagonist and patrons are seen indoors, phones in hand. The protagonist swipes on Tinder. He matches. Life, apparently, is well connected.
The town was Dalton, NSW. Vodafone’s own coverage map shows Dalton as having no indoor coverage.
Source: Vodafone’s Coverage Maps – retrieved on Tuesday 31 March 2026.
The people on screen, swiping away in a location Vodafone’s own tools classify as uncovered, appeared inconsistent with the company’s own publicly available coverage mapping tools.
This matters beyond the anecdotal. TPG Telecom has, in separate regulatory proceedings, taken issue with Telstra’s coverage map representations to ACMA. Its CMO told The Australian the ACMA coverage mapping standard was “about truth and honesty and transparency for Aussies” and that the standard would result in Telstra’s coverage claims dropping significantly. “This is about Telstra versus the truth,” she said.
A company prepared to invoke truth and transparency in coverage claims before a regulator – while simultaneously running advertising featuring locations its own coverage checker cannot serve – creates an apparent tension between its public position on transparency and its marketing execution
ACMA has an active investigation, as disclosed by TPG in its results announcement to the ASX last month, the scope and findings of which have not been publicly determined. The regulator, it appears, has formed its own view about what warrants closer examination.
The Agency Will Have Read the Brief Differently
Howatson+Company is a capable agency with a track record of producing genuinely disruptive work. The Cubery data showing high emotional activation is real. The challenger brand positioning is coherent on paper. The emu is, objectively, memorable.
But there is a version of challenger brand strategy that punches up – and a version that punches sideways at your own customers. This campaign found the second version.
The brief presumably said: position Vodafone as the smart, urban-focused alternative that doesn’t waste money on infrastructure its customers don’t use. The execution said: people who live outside our coverage footprint are the punchline. The customers said: we live inside your coverage footprint and we can’t get a signal either.
The gap between those three things is the campaign’s fundamental problem. And no amount of moment-by-moment emotional activation data resolves it.
There is also the question of perception – the one metric no campaign brief adequately accounts for. Vodafone in Australia carries a consumer reputation that predates any current management team, any agency relationship, and any MOCN arrangement. It is a long-standing consumer perception shaped by historical complaints around coverage, billing and service that generated their own folklore. When you arrive carrying that history, the bar for credibility is not “emotionally activating.” It is “believable.”
Ms Darley acknowledged as much, noting that trust remains one of the biggest challenges for the telco sector, with Roy Morgan data placing the category as the second most distrusted behind social media companies. Vodafone ranks 116th on the most trusted list. TPG ranks 114th.
An emu in the desert does not move either of those numbers. Neither does “98 whatever percent.”
If you have a Mickey Mouse perception, that takes a great deal to overcome – regardless of any purported improvements in the underlying network. The consumers in the comments already knew this. The RRRCC knew this. The question is whether the people who approved the brief did.
The Shareholder Read This Differently Too
Washington H. Soul Pattinson, Vodafone’s longest-standing institutional shareholder, sold $304 million of TPG stock in fifteen days during March 2026.
They did not issue a statement about the emu.
They did not issue a statement about the campaign.
📨 Right of Reply
TPG Telecom Limited, Howatson+Company, and any individuals or organisations referenced in this article are invited to provide clarification, correction, or additional context in relation to any matter raised.
This invitation extends to any person or entity who considers that the publicly available information discussed may relate to them, their work, or their professional conduct. The author welcomes any response that provides additional context, corrects any factual matter, or offers an alternative interpretation of the campaign, its reception, or the market dynamics discussed.
Verified responses can be sent to vodafailed@gmail.com and will be published in full and without editorial amendment, alongside the original article, to ensure readers have access to all perspectives.
This right of reply remains open indefinitely.
⚖️ Disclosure, Disclaimer & Legal Notice
This article is independent commentary and analysis examining a publicly available advertising campaign, its public reception, and its relationship to the company’s disclosed financial performance and regulatory position. It is based entirely on publicly available information including ASX announcements, published advertising campaigns, social media commentary, published media reporting, industry body media releases, ACMA regulatory disclosures, and Vodafone’s own coverage map.
All views expressed are the author’s honest opinions, formed on reasonable grounds. This article is not legal, financial, or investment advice. Readers should seek independent professional advice before making any decisions.
No assertion of a breach of any law, regulation, or advertising standard is made in respect of any campaign or regulatory matter discussed. References to the ACMA investigation reflect TPG’s own disclosures to the ASX. References to coverage limitations reflect Vodafone’s own publicly available coverage maps.
Where social media comments are reproduced, they are drawn from publicly posted comments on the company’s own advertising content across public platforms. No private communications are reproduced.
The author has an active dispute with TPG Telecom Limited (ASX: TPG) and has made protected disclosures under Part 9.4AAA of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). The author holds a very immaterial shareholding in TPG Telecom Limited. These interests should be considered when evaluating the commentary presented.
All entities and individuals retain the presumption of lawful conduct unless determined otherwise by a competent authority. Nothing in this article should be taken as an assertion or implication that any person or entity has committed a criminal offence, civil wrong, or breach of any advertising standard unless that finding has been made by a court, tribunal, or regulatory body with appropriate jurisdiction.
The author has taken reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. If any factual matter is incorrect, the author welcomes correction and undertakes to amend the article promptly upon verification.
Previous posts in this series:
Post #65 – When The Music Stops
Post #66 – The $2B Problem TPG Can’t Afford
Post #67 – The Bonus Year: Thin Earnings, Thick Optics
Post #68 – Buying the Narrative
Post #69 – The Smart Money Just Left the Building
Post #70 – Who’s Watching the Watchers?
Post #71 – Nine Lives: The Ad Agencies Vodafone Burned Through on the Way to Zero Growth
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