Telstra’s latest ad is probably one of the most creative telco ads I’ve seen in a while, titled ‘Secured by Telstra’ and picturing an armoured escort around a family SUV.
So, before we get stuck into it, this is the ad.
Fun, right? The song is A/B Machines by Sleigh Bells, in case you were wondering. Telstra loves to have a bit of fun with its ads, having last year remade the ‘keep the rabbits out’ ad.
What Telstra’s going for here is pretty obvious – the telco is trying to say in the ad that its customers are secured strongly by Telstra on its network. Armoured black vehicles work into the analogy really well.
Keep in mind though that it’s just an ad; you won’t actually have armoured Hummers and helicopters surrounding your vehicle as you drive through the countryside if you’re on a Telstra Upfront plan.
Credit where it’s due, Telstra does put a lot of focus on cybersecurity. The cybersecurity and safety page on the Telstra website directs you to some pretty useful resources, from scam awareness to using SMS filters.
The telco also announced in December that it had blocked 225 million scam text messages since April 2022. So, you know, go Telstra.
Although not Telstra’s fault, in the era of telco data breaches, we’d be remiss to not cast your mind back to October when Telstra revealed that a third party it uses for its staff rewards program had suffered a data breach, exposing the info of around 30,000 past and current employees. All of this information could be found by looking each individual person up on LinkedIn, however, so it isn’t as severe as the Optus scenario.
But, hey, getting back to the Hummers and helicopters, it’s the season of over-the-top ads. Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the Super Bowl just wrapped up, we just got flooded with a bunch of pretty cool ads just like this one.
Ad News reports that it’ll show up for sponsorships and top-rating programs, across both free-to-air and on-demand streaming.
At the time of writing, armoured Hummer and helicopter escorts are not available on the Telstra Rewards website or as an add-on to any plan, sorry to disappoint.