Rexona takes on Aussie sport with first major brand-owned series
A mammoth undertaking: Rexona had a small window between teams' training holidays to film Rivals
Rexona is betting big on branded entertainment with the launch of an eight‑part sports series that pits Australia’s biggest football codes against each other.
Debuting 1 March on Kayo and Fox Sports, Rivals is a Survivor-style competition featuring stars of rugby league, Aussie Rules and rugby union. The series is filmed on Hamilton Island and fully owned by Unilever.
According to Unilever’s outgoing Australian chief marketing officer John McKeon, Rivals represents the company’s first major global investment in brand-owned entertainment.
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Speaking to Mumbrella about the decision to invest significantly in its own branded entertainment property rather than continue with traditional sports sponsorships, McKeon pointed to Rexona’s two decades of partnerships with athletes such as Ricky Ponting, Mark Webber and Sam Kerr.
“Those relationships have built real credibility for the brand, but traditional sponsorship has its limits,” he said. “It often comes down to logo placement, player endorsements or live broadcast tie-ins, which can only engage audiences so deeply.”
“Over the past few years, we increased brand and marketing investment to its highest level, which gave us the confidence to back something of this scale. Bringing together credibility, cultural relevance and the right level of investment made Rivals a risk worth taking.”
McKeon also highlighted how social and digital have “fundamentally changed how sports fans engage,” noting it’s “no longer just a linear broadcast model, but a two-way conversation.”
Indeed, he was quick to reject the idea of Rivals as just a TV show, describing the series instead as one part of a broader ecosystem spanning retail, broadcast and social. “This approach aligns with Unilever’s social-first strategy, which will see 50% of our marketing budget devoted to digital and social channels,” he said.
Rivals will see male and female players compete as equals in the battle of the codes.
Developed over two years with WPP Motion Entertainment and the now Omnicom-owned sports marketing agency Octagon, Rivals follows in the footsteps of other Foxtel Media-branded entertainment efforts, such as the Amcal-backed series Gen Well and a content partnership with platform Luxury Escapes.
However, in this case, Foxtel Media and Kayo act solely as media platforms, while Rivals will also have dedicated Instagram and TikTok channels to share behind-the-scenes content, athlete interviews, and code insights.
The series also includes a fantasy game where fans can earn points by predicting which code will perform best each week, which McKeon said will form a “broader content ecosystem aimed at fueling debate over what makes each sport unique and which is ultimately Australia’s favourite.”
Tapping into the retail opportunity, Unilever has partnered with Woolworths, where in-store displays and limited-edition Rexona cans for each football code will let consumers vote via QR codes. The results will feed into the competition while also providing Rexona with data on fan engagement and geographic trends.
McKeon, a union man himself, said he is hopeful that Rivals will be successful enough to return for future seasons.
The Rivals Teams
“The number one measure of success is simple: people need to watch the show,” he said. “We have clear benchmarks around viewership, as well as engagement across our social platforms.
“Engagement is critical. With today’s social algorithms, you can’t just use paid media to mask weak creative and buy reach; the content has to earn attention organically. That means we’re focusing on engagement rates: people liking, commenting and sharing the content, not just impressions.”
“And ultimately, we’re a business that exists to sell products,” he said. “Rexona is our number-one growth brand, so sales performance across March, April and May will be a key indicator, alongside any shifts in brand health metrics driven by the campaign.”
Asked whether the strategy could be applied to other Unilever brands, McKeon said it could work for Dove in much the same way Rexona taps into Australian sport, but instead focuses on the former brand’s identity with “real beauty.”
However, from a financial and logistical standpoint, executing a full-scale entertainment platform is a far bigger undertaking, requiring significant time and coordination, including securing enough players to participate between their training seasons.
“We started in April 2024 with just two people [working on the project], and by November, there were 155 working on Hamilton Island,” he said. “It’s a massive effort, but it’s what it takes to get all the pieces aligned and deliver it properly.”
In addition, “Even if a brand has credibility, it still needs to create something people actually want to watch,” he said. “By tying Rivals to major sporting events like State of Origin and the World Cup, we’ve created a platform where the content is both engaging and culturally relevant.”
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I am not ancient, but I worked AT Unilever in BRAND on Rexona Australia’s Greatest Athlete, so this is certainly not the “the company’s first major global investment in brand-owned entertainment” and nor is the first show of this type pitting different sports people against each other.
It was a flop then and in this world of competitive streaming I can’t imagine it will do much better, but good luck team.
hasnt this been done without any success a number of times before? players have to do silly tasks/challenges (league win brute stength, afl win cardio) but they are all having fun and friendly so its kinda…. dull