Bursty on rewriting livestream rulebook and profitable giant at The Drum Awards for Marketing

That was once the massive thought at the back of the company’s collaboration with staying power athlete Nedd Brockmann, which received the President’s Award and Gold within the Social Media class at The Drum Awards for Marketing APAC (the EMEA leg of The Drum Awards for Marketing takes position on June 4 and the Americas leg on June 12, with all presentations streamed reside and on-demand at thedrum.com).

This wasn’t Brockmann’s first run for a reason – his 2022 cross-country run raised $2.5m for homelessness. But in 2024, he aimed to double that affect. The objective? Break the sector list for the quickest 1,000 miles, this time on a unmarried athletics observe, and lift tens of millions extra for charity spouse We Are Mobilise.

James Ward, co-founder of Bursty, explains: “There’s a guy, Nedd Brockmann, who people around the world might not know, but in Australia, he’s a guy who does a lot of running and tries to raise money for other people. We did a campaign a number of years ago where he ran across Australia and raised two and a half million dollars. And this last year, he wanted to run around the track and try and break the record for 1,000 miles – but he also wanted to raise money. So we partnered with TikTok and we livestreamed the whole event.”

Running in circles on a observe wasn’t precisely constructed for viral enchantment. “It was just more trying to keep coming up with ideas to keep it fresh,” says Adrian Goold, Bursty’s different co-founder. “So we started thinking, ‘Well, we should do a live breakfast show and then highlights.’ So with the TikTok livestream, we had Nedd running around the track on the top half of the screen and then the bottom half was free, so we filmed. We had 24 hours a day to film, so we created a morning show and then we did a live TV show at night.”

It labored on account of, no longer in spite of, the platform used. “TikTok is normally all about short, quick grabs,” Goold says. “And this was 310 hours non-stop. So the appeal of that was the opposite of what people were used to and that’s why I think it got a lot of response.”

Getting TikTok to reinforce the imaginative and prescient wasn’t quick. “It hadn’t been done before. The longest stream it had had wasn’t anywhere near as long as this,” says Ward. “So it was a process of getting it to believe in the vision of the entire campaign and then also what we were trying to achieve with it. And then with that came opportunity and it was willing to get involved. We had a few technical glitches along the way and we were all a bit sleep deprived by the end of it, but the platform remained solid throughout and the results kind of showed themselves.”

As Ward places it, “We’re really proud of Nedd – obviously, he did the hard work around the track – and then TikTok. So grateful for its support. But also, we had 20 people working non-stop hours. It was a partnership with TikTok, but also a collaboration with everyone. We had amazing partners.”

Asked if this sort of inventive collaboration would possibly turn out to be extra commonplace, Goold notes: “More and more people will look to sort of buck that trend and look for ways to go against the grain when it comes to using those types of platforms and what you’re used to seeing on them.”

Bursty’s beginning tale makes the marketing campaign’s luck much more significant. “We started this business four and a half years ago – you’re in Melbourne, I’m in a shed in Wagga, which is, for those watching, like the middle of nowhere in Australia,” says Ward. “We’ve grown to 25 people in our team and it means a lot. It vindicates trying to do something with purpose, really.”

He provides: “Our tagline is ‘creation is made to matter.’ And the key for us is that we have helped those in need. We work with a guy who wants to help change the world and we’re working with him to do it – to raise $5m and across the campaign now nearly $8m for those in need.”

Bursty’s win on the APAC leg of The Drum Awards for Marketing kicks off an international birthday celebration of the most productive advertising and marketing campaigns all over the world. Next up: EMEA on June 4 and the Americas on June 12. All presentations are streamed reside and on-demand at thedrum.com.