Square dropped its first Australian brand campaign and it has Naomi Watts, Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Fanning spruiking your local corner store

Square just made payments infrastructure look like the most Australian thing you have ever seen, and it actually works.

The company's first major Australian brand campaign, See You in the Neighbourhood, puts Naomi Watts, Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Fanning alongside more than 100 real Square sellers across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Watts turns up at Bakery on Glenayr in Sydney, Ricciardo pairs with Leonard's House of Love in Melbourne, and Fanning visits Pasture & Co on the Gold Coast.

The campaign runs across TV, radio, digital, social and out of home, rolling out in tiers through July and August. Later waves spotlight more neighbourhood regulars, Firedoor, AP Bakery and Tarts Anon among them, each getting dedicated outdoor placements, radio spots and professional photography, fully paid for by Square rather than left to the sellers to promote themselves.

Here is why this actually lands instead of feeling like three celebrities awkwardly holding coffee cups. Payments infrastructure is about as unsexy a product category as marketing gets. Nobody has an emotional relationship with their point of sale system. So instead of selling the tech, Square sold the thing every local business actually represents, community, and let three famous, relentlessly likeable Australians be the excuse to look at your own neighbourhood differently.

It also helps that the whole thing was produced locally, local talent, local crew, local sellers, shot by Australian photographer Declan Blackwell and built by Square's internal creative team. That is not a small budget note, it is the difference between a campaign that feels like head office in another country picked three names off a list, and one that actually understands the streets it is filming on.

If you are a small business owner watching this, the lesson is not "hire a celebrity." It is that the best brand story you have is probably the shop two doors down, and somebody just proved that story sells better than another feature list ever could.