Cobox | Topsoil Organics Brand Campaign

reel

A Farmer's View of Tomorrow

Topsoil Organics

In a paddock just outside Forbes, in the heart of Central West NSW, a small boy looks out across the land and imagines what he'd do if it were his to look after. It's a simple idea. A child's eye, an old soul's wisdom, and a question the rest of us probably should have asked a long time ago. This is where the Topsoil Organics brand campaign begins, and where a quietly remarkable Australian story has been building for the better part of a decade.

Topsoil Organics was founded by Dan and Lana Nicholson, the Forbes-based operation has spent the last few years redefining what a regional business can be, and what the circular economy actually looks like when someone rolls up their sleeves and gets on with it. Through their Central West Nutrient Return Centre, they've already diverted more than 200,000 tonnes of food and organic waste from landfill, depackaging, decontaminating and composting it into premium soil for broadacre farming across Central West NSW and Southeast Queensland. The same nutrients that grew the food go back into the ground to grow the next crop. Full circle. No fuss.

Dan sees it plainly. One person's waste is another person's untapped resource. Not a problem to manage, an opportunity to be had. That worldview has earned Topsoil Organics three NSW State Business Awards in five years, most recently the 2025 Excellence in Large Business award at the State gala in Sydney, after taking out Western NSW Business of the Year earlier in the season. Dan is fast becoming one of the most respected voices in Australian resource recovery, and the timing couldn't be sharper. With the NSW FOGO mandate coming into force from 1 July 2026, councils, supermarkets and hospitality businesses right across the state are scrambling to work out where their food waste is going to land. Topsoil Organics already knows the answer. They've been ready for years.

Which brings us to the campaign.

Topsoil approached CoBox with a brief that, on paper, looked straightforward. They needed a brand spot. Something with reach. Something to plant their flag and tell the East Coast they're here, they're serious, and they're not waiting for permission to lead. What it actually called for was something rarer. A piece of work that could speak to councils, farmers, government, and the everyday Australian who's quietly wondering what happens to the apple core they tossed in the green bin last Tuesday.

The seed of the creative idea came from a memory Aaron Petersen brought into the first conversation. Years earlier, on the family farm in Gilgandra, he'd watched his two young boys, around five and seven at the time, walking behind their grandfather. A man with more than fifty years of farming in his bones, with a meander and a wobble to his step. The boys followed him into the paddock, hands clasped behind their backs, mimicking every movement. The cadence. The lean. The unhurried surveyor's pace of a man reading his land. It's the kind of moment that stays with you, the small revelation that wisdom isn't taught so much as walked. That children learn what the land means by watching the people who've lived it. Aaron put that image on the table early, and it never left the room.

Producer and writer Sarah Linton took that seed and grew it into something the brief alone could never have asked for. Not a corporate manifesto. Not a sustainability pitch. A poem, spoken through the eyes of a child imagining himself as a farmer.

*If I were a farmer, I know what to do. I'd treasure this earth with the things that I grew. My teachers said science can show us the way, return the nutrients to where they should stay. I'd make it a rule to recycle our waste, to nourish our crops and improve the taste. Recycle, return, and protect our tomorrow, and show the way so others might follow.*

It's the kind of writing that does the heavy lifting without ever raising its voice. The whole philosophy of Topsoil Organics, the circular economy, the long view, the moral weight of it, all carried in eight lines and a child's imagination. Director Aaron Petersen took Sarah's words and built the visual world around them, working closely with Director of Photography Kent Marcus to find the tone. Warm. Unhurried. The light doing most of the talking.

We filmed across a few days in Forbes on the Nicholson family property and surrounding land, and the weather, somehow, was on its best behaviour the entire time. Golden mornings, soft afternoons, the sort of light cinematographers spend careers chasing. Kent shot on the RED Raptor X 8K with a selection of prime lenses, paired with the new Nikon ZR capturing in R3D wrapped files, a combination that gave Aaron the range to move between sweeping landscape and intimate close-up without breaking the visual language. There's a quietness to the footage that feels earned. Boots in soil. Hands in compost. A child watching where his footsteps land.

Project Lead Elle Zirwanda kept the wheels turning across the production, holding the schedule, the client, and the crew in steady balance. Aaron took the edit in-house at the Newtown studio, shaping the narrative through to delivery.

The campaign rolled out across summer 2025 on television right along the East Coast. The reaction was immediate and, frankly, bigger than anyone forecast. Councils and waste authorities preparing for the FOGO rollout took notice. So did the market. For a regional Australian business going up against larger, better-funded competitors, the brand spot put Topsoil Organics squarely on the board, not as the regional underdog, but as the operator already doing what everyone else is being mandated to figure out.

For Dan Nicholson, the campaign was always about more than awareness. It was about making the case, plainly and beautifully, that the future of food, soil and waste in this country doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be circular. Their work in Forbes is the proof. Sarah's poem is the story. And the boy in the paddock, looking out across the land, is the reminder.

The path forward is already underfoot. Topsoil Organics is just showing the way so others might follow.

Creative : CoBox Collective

Director :Aaron Petersen

Producer & Writer :Sarah Linton

Project Lead :Elle Zirwanda

Director of Photography :Kent Marcus

Editor :Aaron Petersen