case studies / Bonaire
case study
brand awareness up 50% in one summer campaign
A 70-year-old heating brand moving into air conditioning. We put the budget into streaming TV, radio & YouTube, weighted to NSW and QLD, then judged the campaign on brand tracking instead of clicks.
appliances · trade & retail · 2025 campaign
+50%
brand awareness among in-market buyers, 14% to 21%
2×
the competitor average's growth rate (+50% vs +24%)
~460k
more in-market Australians who know the brand
category
Climate control appliances
sales channel
Trade partners & retail
services
Primary research, brand strategy, identity refresh, Shopify build, TVC, CTV, radio, YouTube, brand tracking
the problem
Bonaire sells mostly through trade deals and is a household name for evaporative cooling and gas heating in the southern states. In NSW and QLD, where air conditioning growth sits, few people knew it.
Expanding into refrigerated heating and cooling, a category owned by the big Japanese brands, meant two audiences had to learn something new about a name they already knew: the installers and trade partners who recommend a system, and the households who buy one.
the call
spend where the brand is weakest, on screens the audience actually watches, & judge it on awareness
The category default is dealer promotions, product-on-a-wall ads and any brand money on linear TV in home markets. We went the other way on all three.
The plan weighted the budget to NSW and QLD, where Bonaire had the least to defend and the most to gain. Linear TV struggles to reach younger buyers below roughly $1.25m of spend, so we bought streaming TV through Foxtel and Kayo, across SVOD & BVOD, with intent-based audiences, then added radio and YouTube to cover the rest of the day.
Sport was the bridge between the two audiences. Live sport on Foxtel and Kayo puts the same message in front of tradies and homeowners at the same moment, in a lean-in environment they watch rather than scroll past. It told installers Bonaire was serious about reverse-cycle air conditioning, and told households it was a name worth asking for.
Before launch, we agreed with the executive team that the campaign would be judged on brand tracking. A mass-media campaign will never show up in last-click sales, so we didn't pretend it would.
why it works
Growth comes from reaching more category buyers, and mental availability is lowest where a brand is least known (Ehrenberg-Bass, How Brands Grow).
what we did
research-led brand strategy
Primary research built a hierarchy of consumer needs for climate control. Total cost of ownership, quiet running and reliability from a known name came out on top, which shaped the positioning: built for Australia's climate.
refresh, don't rebrand
We kept and sharpened the assets people already link to Bonaire, its colours and logo, so the campaign built on 70 years of memory instead of starting from zero. One system now runs from trade print to social and display.
a TVC that doesn't look like HVAC advertising
Produced with TwoTractors, one of Melbourne's leading TVC production houses, to stand apart from the unit-on-the-wall creative the category runs.
one site for consumers & trade
Rebuilt on Shopify so a viewer prompted by the TVC and a dealer checking specs both find what they came for.
the creative
results
In-market buyers aged 25 to 64, 3-month rolling average (Tracksuit).
Both moved up 7 points in peak season. On a smaller base, that is twice the rate of growth for Bonaire, closing the gap to the category leaders from 48% to 58% of the competitor average.
Adults 25 to 64. Time spent: share who use each channel. Awareness: share who name it as where they became aware. Yield: awareness divided by time spent.
TV turned reach into awareness at 3.5× the rate of Facebook, and radio at 2×.
How we measured: Source: Tracksuit, 3-month rolling average, July to December 2025: Australians aged 25 to 64 in the market for heating & cooling systems, against the Tracksuit competitor average. People reached: the 7-point lift applied to a category of about 6.6 million Australians (30% of roughly 22 million adults, ABS). Channel data: adults 25 to 64.
the takeaway
A performance dashboard can't show you this result. If your growth depends on new buyers in new regions, measure what changes in their heads before you measure their clicks.
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