Telstra has avoided festive clichés in it’s 2025 Chrismas ad, which tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a girl and a ghost.
The campaign, developed by Bear Meets Eagle On Fire (BMEOF) and +61, builds on the telco’s ‘Together for Christmas’ platform.
It uses a 60-second film, directed by Steve Rogers from Revolver in partnership with animation company Mathematic, that follows a teenage goth whose dark look contrasts with her family’s festive spirit.
BMEOF chief creative officer Micah Walker said the campaign centres on two ill-fitting souls finding one another.
“People all know the traditions most Christmas ads are typically built on, so we wanted to scratch below the surface for a surprising story,” he told Mediaweek.
“For us the spirit of Christmas is about connection, more than it is anything else, so that’s the heart of the idea.”
The girl and the ghost go viral
Telstra’s latest ad has gone viral across multiple social media platforms.
The film has earned more than 700,000 likes, more than 40,000 shares, more than 39,000 reposts and been saved more than 80,000 times so far.
It has been viewed on Revolver’s Instagram post alone more than five million times.
Commenters across platforms have responded positively to the emotional resonance of the work.
Many expressed shock that the work was a Telstra commercial and not a trailer for a feature film.
Others praised the film’s use of 3D animation as opposed to AI, while some pointed to the lived-in realism of the animated world, praising the way the film captured the familiar textures of real Australian suburbs and the families that occupy them.
Telstra head of brand and marketing communications Alita McMenamin said the campaign is about the kind of connection “that transcends distance, differences and even tradition.”
“It’s about finding your people, whoever and wherever they are, and celebrating the joy of being together,” she said.
“And as a 90’s music lover the track works so perfectly with the gorgeous story.”