Donation Era.
Year three of the Clothing Drive, year two of Donate Better. Cody Simpson and Stan Walker help Australians and Kiwis figure out which wardrobe eras to finally let go.
After 2024 set a new record (133,000kg donations, 45% saleable yield, 4× industry average), the 2025 brief was to do it again, harder, without recycling. The Donate Better platform had to keep working. The audience that came once needed a fresh reason to come back. And the campaign had to land in two markets at once, with separate teams, separate talent, and one shared yield ambition.
There's a point where you've had so many fashion eras, and accumulated so many clothes over the years, that the wardrobe becomes cluttered and confused. When we finally decide whether to keep, chuck, sell or donate something, we usually take it out, try it on, and give it one last go. That's the moment to enter. Not the donation pile, the trying-on.
From there, the talent picked itself: men of many eras, who'd actually had distinct style chapters worth revisiting, and who already lived on the platforms the campaign needed to live on.
We landed on Cody & Stan's Donation Era. Cody Simpson in Australia, Stan Walker in New Zealand. Two musicians with public, distinct fashion eras, both fluent on social, both with deep ties to their respective markets. We split the campaign into two local builds with one strategic platform.
Cody's hero film follows his internal turmoil as he gives old clothing one last go. Stan's hero plays social-first, talking direct-to-camera through his fits. Both are followed by 15-second sharper cuts (Eras and Way Back for Cody; Career Starter and Best Dressed for Stan), thank-you spots (three Codys saying thanks; Stan signing off with 'ngā mihi nui'), and high-impact static cuts for paid social.
We built an 8-creator influencer layer (Maddy Macrae, Two Broke Chicks, Brayden Stiles, Maggie Zhou, Geebungalow, William Waiirua, Jessie Kirk, Ethically Kate), expanded out of last year's verticals to include comedy, sustainability, fashion and lifestyle. Each got an open brief with creative guardrails: campaign messaging on quality, the what + when, how to book. Their content was posted organically on Uber's owned channels in collab, then boosted as paid. A separate 'Remind Me' short-form layer used Meta's reminder function to capture intent.
Press ran in three waves: research-led news hook (Oct 1), talent announcement (Oct 8), drive day (Oct 18). 169 individual creative assets across paid and organic, AU and NZ.
Donations. 175,000kg collected across Australia and New Zealand. Highest-ever yield, 50% saleable, vs 45% in 2024 and 25% in 2023. Donations volume up 33% on 2024.
Reach. 710 total integrated coverage hits across ANZ (KPI was 500). 99.9M reach. 10.13M total social media views (KPI was 5M; vs 4.6M in 2024 and 4M in 2023). 32.6M earned social OTS (KPI was 1M). 6.9M impressions on in-feed influencer content alone, +1,243% on 2024.
Australia. 665 hits, 70.5M reach. Cody secured 154 earned features from 8 interview slots (25M reach, 37% of all campaign coverage; 100% mentioned both Uber and Red Cross). The Daily Telegraph kicked off the talent campaign with a first-run interview. Hit Network's Hot Hits with Nic & Loren delivered the most valuable earned: 52 editorial hits and 1.31M reach from a single interview slot. Paid partnerships with Weekend Today, Weekend Sunrise, The Daily Aus, The Squiz and Buzzfeed delivered 244 syndications across both major national breakfast TV channels.
New Zealand. 45 hits, 29.4M reach. Stan delivered 10 earned pieces from 6 interview slots (6.5M reach, 26% of campaign coverage). TVNZ Breakfast paid partnership with Matt Gibb produced three live crosses on drive day, ~2.6M reach.
Owned social. 6.99M impressions, 28,343 interactions, 0.41% engagement rate, 88% positive sentiment in AU and 92% in NZ. 'Cody's Green Screen Outfits' alone hit 377k views and 19k engagements.
Paid. Brand Lift Studies showed +25.2pts ad recall on Meta and +17.2pts on TikTok. Brand favourability lifted +3.3pts on Meta (the only stat-sig YoY lift across the full BLS). Message agreement on TikTok lifted +1.8pts overall, +10.1pts in the 35-44 age bracket. Reminder-ad strategy on Meta hit 7.4k AU + 3.6k NZ reminders, up from 3.7k + 1k in 2024 — 2,100+ Remind-Me clicks total, 13× last year, despite a smaller total budget.