TELSTRA | Together is for Christmas (Donkey) | 2025
When a donkey swallows an iPhone, a world tour begins / TELSTRA "Donkey"
A donkey swallows a phone and somehow becomes a world-famous singer. Said out loud, it sounds completely absurd, but watch it and you'll actually tear up. This is a Christmas film from Australian telecom company Telstra.
The problem
Following on from the previous year, Telstra made this as the second Christmas commercial under its brand platform. The previous year's film reportedly did well for the business and picked up awards too. Christmas advertising tends to follow a set formula, so this was also a challenge to work within—and push against—that formula.
The insight
The creative team has said they wanted to "tell a Christmas story while avoiding the usual Christmas clichés." The idea of placing a universal conflict—succeeding away from your family versus returning to the people you love—onto a donkey instead of a human really works. The story follows a donkey living with its family in the countryside who swallows its owner's phone, gains the power to sing, tours the world, and ultimately realizes there's no place like home.
The idea
A donkey that's heard its owner's old Christmas song on repeat one too many times swallows a phone one day and sets off on an adventure, rising to stardom on the strength of the singing voice pouring out from its belly. It gets a manager, forms a band, and becomes famous on the radio and TV—but in the end chooses to return to its family, bringing home a new Telstra device in place of the phone it swallowed. The richly detailed world of the sleepy little town and the donkey's design are both simply adorable.
What happened
While another film in the series won the Grand Prix, "Donkey" itself won a Gold and a Silver Lion in the Film Craft category. Judges praised it as "simple and deeply human."
Afterthought
The setup is bizarre—a donkey swallowing a phone—but where it lands is something completely universal: wanting to go home to your family. What's impressive is the nerve to take such a strange premise and carry it all the way through to a genuinely moving ending, instead of just leaning into the weirdness. Telstra pulls out some unbelievable animal every Christmas, and honestly, it's not fair how good they are at this.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2025
