Advertising

Went to a Super Bowl once. Hung out afterwards with 160 kilo nude, crying black dudes in the losers’ dressing room. Oh, but you don’t want to hear about that. The Super Bowl is all about the ads, which this year are said to cost $3.5 million for 30 seconds. Some recession they’re having in America.

When the 100 million Americans watching the Super Bowl go to the toilet in the ad breaks, they say city sewerage systems overflow. That’s actually a myth. No one takes a pee during the ad breaks. The ads are too good. The Super Bowl is the opposite of normal telly. That pesky football keeps interrupting some damn fine viewing.

Super Bowl ads are so highly-anticipated that you get teased beforehand. This year we’ve had the (thankfully false) threat of a Ferris Bueller remake and a sneak peak of David Beckham’s undies ad, which to be frank is more torture than tease. Fortunately, there have been some brilliant ads down the years. Let’s go the video(s).

Continue reading "Pass the Doritos… the greatest 13 Super Bowl ads" »

It’s not often you hear an apology from a big corporation that sounds like it really means it, but Jenny Craig’s statement last night that it “badly misjudged public perception of Kyle Sandilands” sounds genuine enough - perhaps because it’s so bloody obvious.

Hmmm, brand heavily skewed towards women with body issues, linked to the “fat slag” king, what could possibly go wrong?

The language marketing departments use when one of the stars they throw millions of dollars at to flog their products step out of line, is often at best hilarious, at worst mealy-mouthed.

Continue reading "Brands have become our new moral arbiters" »

Okay, so Australians love meat. We also love BBQs and Australia Day. Mostly because it means we don’t have to go to work. But could this be the worst advertisement for meat you have ever seen?

Or just a very clever way of getting us to think about what we’re slapping on the BBQ on January 26th?

We’re talking about the Sam Kekovic/ v Melissa Tkautz v Justice Crew Australia Day 2012 video. If you haven’t seen it yet, then watch it up the top here.

Continue reading "What won’t we do in the name of BBQ?" »

Kyle Sandilands is such an inconsequential waste of space that I would normally be reluctant to expend a single millilitre of ink or pixel of web space on his unfortunate existence.

This week I made an exception, in the first instance because of the remarkably vile nature of his attack on one of our young female staff, a sexually threatening rant where he called her “a fat slag”, talked about her breasts and her hair, and issued the creepy pledge: “Watch your mouth girl, or I will hunt you down”. All this because she wrote a completely unremarkable news piece about the unpopularity of his new TV show.

I’ve decided to saddle up again today because there is an interesting broader lesson from the Sandilands episode. Not to put too fine a point on it, the long-overdue commercial destruction of Kyle Sandilands shows that it is no longer OK to be an abusive, hate-filled arsehole without facing serious consequences.

Continue reading "How the public took charge of a deserved flogging" »

Here’s something to ponder – how many Smarties would you have to eat to become morbidly obese? 1000? Maybe half a million? Or is the consumption of Smarties merely a deadly entrée to a grotesque world of other fattening treats, where we start nibbling away at a small handful of the tiny chocolate sweets and pretty soon are subsisting on a diet of Chiko rolls, McHappy Meals and deep-fried Mars bars?

In the grand scheme of culinary evil I always thought the innocuous Smartie was the least of our concerns. Apparently not, according to the no-fun folks at the Obesity Policy Coalition, who have launched an action against the Smartie-peddlers at Nestle – cue angry boos from the crowd – over an apparently sinister online colouring-in competition which gives kiddies aged three to 10 a chance to win one of 500 Smiggles stationery packs.

The Obesity Policy Coalition complained to the Advertising Standards Board arguing that the Nestle Smarties website breaches the Responsible Children’s Marketing Initiative, introduced in March of this year, to protect the tiny tots from wicked corporate ploys to stuff them full of junk food.

Continue reading "Mmm & mmm. The nanny state can’t have my Smarties" »

FARE is a small organisation with a dream. There is no denying that FARE has taken on a cause of epic proportions – a shape-shifting entity that is hard to define because its boundaries are constantly changing. Alcohol is a central part of Australian culture, and it crosses demographic, geographic and social divides in a way other cultural activities don’t.

Drinking alcohol is for the young and old, the high achievers and under achievers, the wealthy and the destitute. For most Australians, drinking alcohol is a choice that doesn’t devalue their lives. It is more likely to add entertainment, experiential or leisure value.

How do we view Australia’s drinking culture? Is it a glass half empty, or a glass half full?

Continue reading "Trust us, you’ll all drink less one day" »

For years now The United Colours of Benetton has been running shock advertising campaigns. Many of us remember the confronting images of AIDS victims that formed part of their early ‘90s campaigns. And some may remember their 2003 food-for-life campaign, depicting the different effects of famine on people from various African nations.

According their former head of advertising, Oliviero Toscani, the ads are intended to “promote peace, tolerance, multiculturalism and to challenge stereotypes”. However, their latest advertising campaign - which irresponsibly insults Muslim moral sensibilities - has revealed Benetton’s real motives. Benetton has just been exploiting the latte set’s vague commitment to world peace, using it to sell their products.

They don’t care about peace and tolerance. Indeed, they don’t care whether they provoke violent reactions from extremist groups. The bottom line of these buggers is selling jeans and knickers.

Continue reading "The United Colours of pseudo-morality" »

Bear Grylls makes brilliant telly. If watching a bloke sleep inside a camel carcass doesn’t make for a top night in front of the box, then what does?

And what about the time the former SAS man ate a giant larval worm which he described as tasting like a sausage made up of his mate’s boogers. The guy should try the café at the bottom of our building some time.

For all his showmanship and icky stunts, you sense there is a subtext to the Grylls gross out. By showcasing his own bravado and survival skills in some of the world’s greatest wild landscapes, he’s teaching his global audience of 1.2 billion about the wonder of the wilderness.

Continue reading "Bear Grylls: Environmental warrior or corporate sellout?" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit. Let’s get straight into it. So some bloody smart-arse congregation of designer-stubbled preening ad men have concocted a ridiculous campaign suggesting milk will take care of PMS.

Picture them sitting around their long shiny tables, bums squeaking in their exxy leather chairs, waiting for a cute secretary to bring them (soy) lattes and discussing just how ‘cheeky’ their new milk ads are.

Oooo and we’ll have a website and do social media and piss off the feminazis by suggesting women are hormone-ravaged banshees who can be tamed by calcium intake. IT’LL GO VIRAL, they probably thought, with pants-wetting glee.

Continue reading "ICB. PMS. Don’t. Get. Me. Started." »

So US tourist numbers are down since Oprah’s “Down Under” fire sale of our national dignity and the much-wished-for Oprah cash has failed to materialise.

The idea of letting a foreign talk show host turn our country into giant television studios smelt dodgy from the start, but after yesterday’s revelations, it stinks.

The news yesterday that US visitor numbers have dropped by 0.8 per cent in the last year just leaves you wondering how this ever got so out of hand.

Continue reading "Why the bloody hell was Oprah here anyway?" »

They’re calling it treason. Because it is.

Legendary Australian cricketer and beer drinker David Boon, who reportedly sank 52 cans en route to England in 1989, is now a whisky drinker. That’s like the Marlboro Man switching to Alpine Lights.

News of Boon’s starring role in a Canadian Club whisky ad broke yesterday amid much hullabaloo and flannelette shirt-rending, which is pretty much exactly the reaction Canadian Club would have been hoping for.

Continue reading "A hard earned thirst needs a big cold whisky" »

Nothing better symbolises the hypocrisy that surrounds sports betting in this country than this painting, which depicts the scenes in the Collingwood rooms after last year’s grand final.

You can’t see it at this resolution, but if you view the original painting up close, a betting slip is clearly visible in the hand of Tyson Goldsack, who is the bloke about fourth from the left standing against the wall with another player’s arm around his shoulder.

The slip contains the words “Mrs” and “80-1” and “first goal” – a reference to the successful bet Goldsack’s Mum placed on her son kicking the first goal. Nothing was untoward about that bet. But all the same, it’s a nice irony given the events of the past week.

Continue reading "It’s time to torpedo the punt" »

I know what you’re thinkin. You’re thinkin you want your bank to stop listening to focus groups and its marketing department and to stop telling us stuff it thinks we want to hear.

You’re thinkin that the next time your bank raises interest rates by more than the Reserve Bank’s official 0.25 per cent, you’re going to walk into your local branch and dump a bag of horse manure in the revolving doors.

You’re thinkin that the ANZ recently spent $15 million to change its logos from three stripes to one stripe with a blue flower thrown in for good measure, and that Aussie Hollywood superstar Simon Baker can’t have come cheaply either.

Continue reading "If banks live in my world, I’m moving to Mars" »

For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission in the United States will conduct an inquiry into Google which will not be limited to mergers and acquisitions, or violations of privacy, but fundamental issues relating to Google’s core search advertising business model.

This follows the European Commission probe which commenced late last year. The European Commission stated that it “will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialised in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so‐called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services.”

Google has argued over the years that it does not manipulate search results and that its algorithms are designed solely to deliver the most relevant results to search queries; however it has fiercely protected its algorithm or secret black box.

Continue reading "Google’s license to print money is under siege" »

Should we allow the depiction of homosexuals in the media?

Well of course we should, shouldn’t we? The answer is pretty self evident. But then I have to ask – are depictions of homosexuals “sexier” than straight sex? You may have seen the news.com.au report that the Adshel company has pulled the “Rip and Roll” advertisements for HIV awareness for same-sex couples. 

UPDATE: The CEO has just reinstated the advertisements, saying the company had been targeted by the Australian Christian Lobby’s orchestrated campaign, rather than a series of individual complaints as first thought.

Continue reading "Gay sex. Apparently sexier than straight sex." »

Like a niggly married couple, Australia’s increasingly divided populace is having a big, dirty spat this morning. And just like parents split on how best to discipline a naughty child, the warring parties are united on the goal but divided on the methods employed to achieve it.

The goal we’re united on is the need to cut carbon emissions. Even the staunchest anthropogenic global warming denier would surely concede there are all sorts of benefits in cutting carbon emissions, not least cleaner air and the transition to smarter industries and renewable energy sources.

But thanks to the “Say Yes Australia” ad, made by a coalition of leftist groups and starring popular actors Michael Caton and Cate Blanchett, the carbon tax debate has been turned into the equivalent of a he says/she says marriage dispute. Or in this case, a we pay/they pay issue.

Continue reading "Shoot the messengers, and send them to Bonnie Doon" »

As a parent, there is always that one question from your child that you struggle to answer. I never would have predicted the one that finally stumped me when it was asked by my 4-year-old son.

With both of his Italian grandparents in the car, he asked me innocently and loudly - “Dad, how do you make your sex last longer?”.

I fumbled the answer, mumbling: “We will talk about it when you are older”. The conversation moved on quickly. The embarrassment for me lasted a little longer.

Continue reading "Dad, how do you make sex last longer?" »

Plain packaging of tobacco products has great potential to reduce the appeal of smoking, particularly among young people, and should be supported if Australians want to see death and disease from tobacco use continue to decline.

Simple, really. But unfortunately the facts have been difficult to read amid the smoke and mirrors, sound and fury. So consider this:

Fact: Glossy, stylised cigarette packets are a valuable marketing tool for attracting new smokers. This has been shown in Cancer Council research and dozens of other Australian and international studies, not to mention documents obtained from tobacco companies.

Continue reading "A few plain facts amid the smoke and mirrors" »

VB doesn’t strike you as a brand that needs protecting from being viewed as overtly cheap piss. This isn’t to bag VB, but there’s probably a reason it chose David Boon and not David Marr as a mascot.

News yesterday that Foster’s stopped supply of its beers to Coles and Woolworths for a short period this month, after it emerged the warring retail giants were planning to sell VB (and possibly other brands) for as low $28 a case. Carlton & United, Foster’s beer division, have said that they stopped supply to the supermarkets out of fear their beer brands were being undervalued; according to CUB it was done to protect “the brand equity – the image of our brands”.

Now you might be asking yourself how it’s possible to undervalue the Australian gold standard of cheap beer? Well you can, and it’s got something to do with the amount of beer we’re drinking - or more accurately, not drinking.

Continue reading "When a hard earned thirst needs a big cheap beer" »

As Julia Gillard puts the finishing touches on a multimillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded ad campaign to sell her unpopular carbon tax, the Labor backbench has sent the Prime Minister a blunt warning.

Kevin Rudd once described government advertising as a “sick cancer within our system”. 

Before the 2007 election he said: “I can guarantee that we will have a process in place, run by the Auditor General ... you have my absolute 100 per cent guarantee that that will occur - 100 per cent guarantee. And each one of you here can hold me accountable for that.”

Continue reading "Failed policies cost the taxpayer twice" »

ANYONE who has spent any time in NSW would be familiar with the provocative “small-penis” advertisement aimed at combating hoon driving.

The ad, filmed in slow motion with a classical music soundtrack, features a pimply-faced youth, still on his P-plates, who almost loses control of his crappy old Toyota Corolla while trying to do a burn-out.

His mates in the back seat look at each other, raise an eyebrow and smirk, then make a wiggly gesture with their little finger as if to say their driver friend must be so poorly equipped tackle-wise that he has to compensate by being a big man with the car.

Continue reading "Raised pinkie only provokes a raised middle finger" »

Flames, biffo, Bon Jovi, a sneaky Benji Marshall flick pass, more flames, more biffo, more Bon Jovi, more spectacular tries, then to top it all off, Todd Carney puffing out his chest in what may be an expression of his feelings about the drink driving laws.

Oof! Bam! Thwok! Rugby league is back, and the NRL has cleverly ushered in the new season with an ad which is preaching to the converted, reaching out to the inner bogan in all sports fans.

The 2009 official AFL ad, where AFL players mimicked the skills found in such sporting arenas as a bullring, the Hong Kong races and the Paris Dakar rally, was undoubtedly both clever and brilliantly executed. But in retrospect, it was nudging that wanky ball of string territory. Not so this year’s NRL ad.

Continue reading "NRL preaching to converted, not living on a prayer" »

The season’s latest campaign ads follow the same old tired plot of black and white attack hysteria, gloomy (or comical) music and an authoritative male voiceover reviling the failings of a tired old Government.

The latest from the NSW Liberals opens with a black and white scene of our lead character (the embattled NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally) admitting her failing only to be ear ambushed with a chorus of our ad’s tag line “same old Labor, same old tricks”. But we’re not left wondering for long what the plot is.

Our storyline of the sorry tale of NSW Labor’s leadership’s mistakes and failures becomes glaring apparent with the TV interview vox pops of our supporting characters Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees. And in case we didn’t get the ad’s message, we’re treated to a catchy jingle of “same old Labor, same old failure” on nauseous rhyming repeat. 

Continue reading "Political ads: the good, the bad, and the really bad" »

As entertaining as the game was, the best action in yesterday’s Super Bowl was off the field.

In the second quarter, Motorola ran a one minute ad which parodied Ridley Scott’s bold, apocalyptic 1984 Apple ad.

In Scott’s ad, Apple seemed to be implying that the world of personal computing, circa the actual year 1984, was dominated by a Big Brother-like power (IBM, anyone?) more reminiscent of Orwell’s fictional 1984.

Continue reading "Motorola taunts Apple: “Who’s Big Brother now?”" »

For the last quarter of a century, it’s been something of a national pastime to bag ad man Siimon Reynolds for being a wanker. But if Gen Y – a group who know a little something about being pilloried as superficial, materialistic, self-obsessed fame whores – were old enough to know who he is, they might be tempted to claim the 46-year-old as one of their own and insist he be treated with more respect.

Perhaps it’s time all of us — Yers, Xers and Boomers alike — rethought our attitude towards Reynolds.

For a case can be made that he is not the pretentious tool of the popular imagination, but rather a prescient pioneer who intuited where society was heading and adapted to the economic and social changes being set in motion by Thatcher, Reagan and, in Australia, Hawke and Keating, at the time he was coming of age.

Continue reading "Was Siimon the original Gen Yer?" »

Commonsense, let alone science, tells us that no level of smoking is safe or healthy.

Yet 2.9 million Australians smoke each day and smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in Australia.  Each year smoking kills 15,000 Australians and costs the economy more than $31 billion.

With this sort of impact, we can’t afford not to act. By not acting to reduce smoking, we’re standing by letting people die.

Continue reading "The Federal Government takes on Big Tobacco" »

Lost jobs, failing economies, broken marriages. Now you can add a massive upsurge in the level of sexism in ads as one of the GFC’s effects.

The way people are portrayed in advertising has never been what you could call enlightened. But now advertisers are pitching lower than ever before.

Look at these images from Dutch Fashion Label suitsupply’s “Shameless” fashion campaign. The images caused a huge outcry when displayed in a Westfield shopping centre in London. The picture of a man looking disinterestedly up a woman’s dress while she leans back over a stairwell and writhes in ecstasy makes you wonder what urge exactly advertisers are trying to appeal to.

Continue reading "No power in the boardroom? Try the bedroom instead" »

Has there ever been one that’s pushed you too far - an advertisement that’s taken you past the silent grimace stage, to the point where you need to slap the offending television or radio right off?

Notable over the years for their mind-numbing, though no doubt commercially effective, advertising style, were the likes of Saba, National Tiles, Franco Cozzo, and Ken Bruce.  But that ‘s not what I’m talking about here, I’m talking about an ad that manages the seemingly impossible – it can numb your mind while at the same time making you mad.

My advertising nemesis is AMI.  Perhaps I could just relax and take a chill pill, as my little brother used to instruct me, if I didn’t hear their ads every time I get in the car with the radio on.

Continue reading "Longer, stronger distortion of sexual expectations" »

The other day I was presenting at a conference on sustainability, and wondered what I was doing there.  I clock up more air-miles than a rare bald headed eagle, have an unsustainable lifestyle, and don’t own a rainwater tank.  Don’t get me wrong I was flattered to be asked to talk, and trust I contributed to the conference, but it got me thinking. 

I can’t go past a discussion on a cultural, environmental, or societal issue these days without seeing an ‘ad-guy’ (and unfortunately it’s very often males) proffering their opinion on what will solve our latest ill.

Like it or not, the advertising industry is being pulled into all manner of communities with the hope they can solve the world’s issues. And like it or not, the world is now taking the ‘ad guy’ seriously. 

Continue reading "Since when did advertising become respectable?" »

Last night three of my female friends posted unusual updates on Facebook about where they “like it”.

I wanted to know what was going on, so I Googled it (I often find this approach less stressful than talking to women). i-It turns out it’s a campaign to draw attention to October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

It’s an idea along similar lines to last year’s effort which centred on posting your preferred bra colour on your favourite online social network.

Continue reading "I like it on the floor too, but not for an entire month" »

It’s hard to envy the ad makers over at Carlton United Breweries for the task of marketing VB – arguably one of the world’s most undrinkable beers, but they’ve absolutely nailed the song that runs behind their latest series of ads “real beer” – with Neil Diamond’s, “Hello Again”.

Because while good actors can come and go and an epic back drop will only get you so far - there is nothing more important to creating a successful beer ad, than choosing the right song to go with it. It’s just a pity they didn’t make the message of the “real beer” easier to understand.

Continue reading "What makes a good beer ad?" »

Should Australia make a quick return to the polls, stand by for the el cheapo election re-run, where the late night Guthy-Renker advertisements for the Sham-Wow chamois system and the Zumba high-energy dance program are interrupted by statements from a guy called Tony and a woman called Julia about their vision for the nation.

After the style of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, the leaders will spruik their major policies on a series of hand-written cardboard flashcards.

There will be no money for focus group testing.

Continue reading "The NEW! improved low-fi el cheapo election campaign" »

Independent Bob Katter, the Member for Kennedy, has saved us from advertising mediocrity with this US-style campaign for re-election.

(Thanks to Chris Uhlmann for pointing it out just now on ABC News24).

Katter has thrown down the gauntlet. The rest of them have two and a half weeks to take up the challenge.

Look at your ad. Now look at mine. Now look at your ad. Now. Look. At. Mine. Sadly, this is not your ad. But what if your ad could look like this ad?

We all have fond memories of the Old Spice ad, don’t we? The Old Spice ad campaign ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ features former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, in all his muscle-bound glory, telling the viewer that a real man would smell like Old Spice.

Appealing to both men and women, and now nominated for a Primetime Emmy, the ad has revitalized the brand, turning Old Spice from something your grandparents used to wear, to a smell for real men. But has it become old news already?

Continue reading "Old Spice - old news" »

Just when does spin become a lie? Answer – when the overwhelming objective is to deceive.

Harsh? Certainly! True? Most definitely.

Particularly when the advertisements to convey the lie is paid for by theft from the taxpayer ie advertisements to promote the Labour Party’s great big tax on mining, have avoided complying with the advertising guidelines but is none the less paid for by the taxpayer. Bargain at $38 million!

Continue reading "The mining ads are all spin, and the Budget shows it" »

Two weeks ago I wrote for the Punch a piece about Kevin Rudd breaching his election commitment and dumping the Auditor General from the advertising process.

This was in response to the politically motivated advertising on the so-called health reforms that were launched by Rudd Labor.

However it turns out Kevin Rudd wasn’t satisfied with simply breaking part of his pre election commitments on government advertising; he wanted to go all the way. The advertising campaign for the mining tax was born. 

Continue reading "Labor mates mining Rudd’s new-found cash deposit" »

This column is proudly brought to you by BMW. Or Mercedes Benz. Or Holden (if I’m desperate).

Advertising and editorial – traditionally uneasy bedfellows – are having uninhibited sex at the moment. Instead of protesting, we media sluts have joined the orgy, legs in the air like frozen chooks (from Steggles, of course – Steggles for quality).

How long before we see newspaper stories headlined, “Tony Abbott surges ahead in the polls” (sponsored by Nutri-Grain – Iron Man Food).

Continue reading "Editorial content should not be up for sale" »

Advertising gets a bum rap. There are plenty of ads that are annoying, a few that are offensive – longer lasting sex, anyone? – but there are many that make you laugh and often eclipse the shows that carry them for creativity.

A shortlist from the past couple of years would include the terrific Toyota border security ad (“Yep, we’ve got tofu”), the Four and Twenty Pie campaign for fake salad for men (“Hey those blokes are eating salad – let’s give them our phone numbers!), and the current Perfect Italiano campaign (“Sometimes when I cook, I weep”) which is happily is on high rotation during Masterchef.

At the other end of the spectrum of genius are the government and political advertisements. We should brace ourselves for the bombardment over the coming months. The cost of political advertising is one thing, but it would so much easier to cop the amount of money blown on these ads if they were actually informative, or possibly even entertaining.

Continue reading "Off-message: Australia’s woeful political advertising" »

Have you heard a radio advert lately telling you that the new health reforms are really good for you?

They are hard to miss and there is avalanche to come.

According to the Budget, the Rudd Government will spend $126 million on five campaigns in the next few months.  These campaigns cover topics including climate change, tax reform, health reform, broadband and paid parental leave.  $33 million will be spent in the next six weeks alone.

Continue reading "You can add ads to Rudd’s list of policy backflips" »

UPDATE 2.30pm: The WorkCover Authority just provided a statement to The Punch saying the Be Aware Take Care campaign will cost NSW taxpayers $2.3 million.

“The aim of the information program is to ensure people know about the many hazards on or around a construction site that could pose a serious safety risk,” the statement said.

If you were watching the Masterchef premier in NSW last night, and it’s safe to say more than a couple of you were, you would have seen an advertisement featuring the Federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution.

The ad is filled with neat little kids in public school uniforms standing in front of beautiful new under-construction school halls. The voice over says: “Right now you might notice changes at your local schools. To build a better future for our children the Commonwealth and State governments are investing more than $6 billion into NSW government and non-government schools. Around 15,000 workers are undertaking building and construction on more than 3000 schools across the state.”

An election ad paid for by the ALP right? No, a “safety awareness” campaign from the NSW WorkCover Authority. You can see the ad here, at the Be Aware, Take Care website, which helpfully fills you in on all the fabulous construction programs underway.

Continue reading "Are state taxpayers funding federal re-election ads" »

So Tiger Woods didn’t win the Masters Tournament over the weekend. Probably for the best really, otherwise, just as in Nike’s most recent ad, his father might have emerged from the grave and told us that ‘equal fourth place is as good as last place, son’.

Nike’s recent marketing stunt shows Woods staring silently and somberly at the camera, as his late father Earl speaks to him in voiceover:  “Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was; I want to find out what your feelings are. Did you learn anything?”

And for those that missed it the quote was pieced together from interviews his father had given prior to his death.

Continue reading "Marketing advice for Nike: Just don’t do it." »

Don’t you hate it when you see an advertisement on television that you love or you think is really clever, and then a week later, you discover that the ad has been taken off the air because of complaints.

It can be frustrating sometimes, obviously complaining doesn’t guarantee that an ad will be banned but it does highlight how we can take some things very seriously.

I remember not long ago the Hyundai “Toddler” commercial that showed a little toddler taking his Hyundai out for a drive. Along the way he stopped to pick up a female hitchhiking toddler and the two of them headed to the coast where he later impressed her with his surfing skills by riding a massive wave.

Continue reading "Shock sells, even when we don’t like the message" »

It’s a show that deals with the most ideologically contested decade in living memory, but neither the Left nor Right have stepped up to the plate and dragged Mad Men into the culture wars.
 

The third season of Mad Men, the cult hit TV show set (thus far) in a Kennedy-era ad agency, is about to be broadcast in Australia by cable channel Movie Extra. The show is now closing in on 1964 ­- the year when the Sixties really began to swing.

By the season’s finale JFK will be history and the Beatles three months away from setting off the baby boomer youthquake that, within four years, will have torn the US and, to a greater or lesser extent, the rest of the Western world in two, setting in motion a host of rancorous political conflicts that are still being played out five decades later.

Continue reading "Where are all the angry white mad men?" »

New A-League team The Melbourne Heart, who kick off in the 2010/11 season, have unveiled a shocking logo to match their unbelievably stupid team name.

At least they’re consistent.

The logo, which looks like an unironed pair of undies emblazoned with rugby posts, was designed by the “international brand design consultancy” Elmwood, who apparently have offices in loads of big important cities as well as Leeds, UK.

Continue reading "Australia’s worst sports logo: how low can they go?" »

UPDATE: Toyota has just pulled the ad.

It’s easily the worst ad of the year, one of the worst ads ever made, and while it’s obviously an attack on the dignity of women it does men a major disservice too by suggesting they’re so screwed-up that they actually say disgusting s**t like this.

The people at Toyota have besmirched their brand with this squalid effort, featured above, which revolves around a creepy play on words in which a father discusses her daughter’s virginity and sexual prowess with her young boyfriend.

It almost defies belief that a major company would associate itself with this garbage. It’s offensive on so many levels - the kids in the ad look really young, the idea of a father discussing his daughter in such a fashion is a total gross out, there’s a stupid hubba-hubba tit joke, the “give her a pounding in any direction” line, the girl at the end saying she’s ready to blow. In a perverse way it’s a credit to the creators that they managed to jam so much tasteless and desperately unfunny crap into just one minute and 14 seconds.

Continue reading "Toyota: Oh what a creepy feeling" »

Hannah Montana. The very name is enough to chill the heart of any parent desperate to dodge the scourge of our age – the commercial exploitation of young children.

Weak fool that I am, though, I gave in recently to my 10-year-old daughter’s pleas to watch the show.

“You get the best of both worlds,” crooned Miss Miley Cyrus as we tuned in to the Disney Channel. If only, I growled to myself.

Continue reading "Why I hate Hannah Montana" »

Some might charge me with politicizing Football – but here I go, here I go, here I go …

With the last places being filled for the 2010 Football World Cup in Sth Africa, I’d like to propose a new international FIFA award, to be launched at the opening ceremony next year- the Eudy.

The Eudy would be the short name for the Eudy Simelane Leadership Award and for the foreseeable future it should be awarded for ‘Outstanding Contribution by a Male Footballer to the Campaign to End Violence Against Women’.

Continue reading "The Eudy: a new global sports award" »

Does anyone else find it quite frankly perverse that in affluent first-world Australia so much time is spent fretting about the supposed weight problems of our children when UNICEF figures show five thousand kids across the globe die every day essentially because they can’t get a clean glass of water?

I sure as hell do. But here we go again. Last week the Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Task Force Report called for a ban on junk food advertising on TV before 9:00pm and for the use of toys, cartoon characters and celebrities that appeal to children to be phased out. But the Australian Communications and Media Authority is against the banning of those TV ads.

The reaction? A seething white-hot fury coming from nice middle class homes all over Sydney. How can anyone possibly put corporate profits before our kids’ health?

Continue reading "Junk food doesn’t make kids fat - junk parents do" »

The Elites are back in town – that is those people who tell us endlessly that they know better than the rest of us how we should eat, drink and presumably be merry or melancholy are back with a vengeance.

And they are never satisfied – their self belief is ever growing if you give in a bit they push even further to enhance their power and control.

Not satisfied with demanding new taxes for alcohol to make it so expensive that they can kill the wine industry and dictate what and when we drink, they then move on to tell us what we can or cannot eat and how we should look.

Continue reading "Is beauty now in the eye of the Body Mass Index?" »

Last week when Simon Crean announced a plan to rebrand Australia, we sought your suggestions for a new national marketing slogan. Penning a line is one thing - but to get the full impact, it may help to see how some of the stand-outs read on a poster. Add your responses and appraisals in the comments - the first attempt is from Eccles:

The rest are after the jump.

Continue reading "Your suggestions for a new national marketing slogan" »

If you have a teenager about to get their licence make them sit down in front of the computer and watch this UK public service advertisement.

Then ask them if the message sank in. I have a theory about shock ads: that the more graphic the less effective. The more extreme the outcome, the harder it is to relate to the scenario = “that would never happen to me.”

But this four minutes of chilling horror might just be the exception.

Continue reading "Do shock safety ads work?" »

I saw an advertisement last night for a lip gloss that not only offered more shine but “more nutrition.”

Now I like a good lip gloss as much as the next woman, but nutrition?

Admittedly the commercial was on during Packed to the Rafters, which from now on should be known as Packed with the Products, so deliberately are the labels on the beer bottles in the hands of the Rafter men at the kitchen table aimed at the camera.

Continue reading "Harder, longer lasting, more virile eyelashes" »

While Italian politics is unable to go a week without some 18-year-old girl claiming to have had a sixsome with the Prime Minister, Australian politics has more of an unusual fetish for utility vehicles.

Barely a week after things settled down with the utegate scandal we are now confronted by “Truckasaurus 09” or “The battle of competing political propaganda trucks” (I prefer the former).

This is a new model of what was an old Coalition campaign introduced to draw attention to the Keating Government’s foreign debt in 1996.

It was also the same year that the Coalition took control of Government from Labor after ten years in trucking wilderness. 

Continue reading "“Hey, check out the truck”: our political Summernats" »

It’s tiny but powerful.

Its incorrect insertion could mean the difference between life and death.

And it’s fighting for its very existence.

I’m referring to the apostrophe; specifically, the possessive apostrophe.

Even its proper name – saxon genitive – sounds more like a sexually transmitted disease than the pinnacle of punctuation.

Continue reading "Its time. Sorry, it’s time to save the apostrophe" »

Whatever you do, don’t watch the above ad before you drive home. You might turn into a maniac and start aiming at bus queues. Happily, the car advertisements of the not too distant future will feature a middle-aged dad in a beige cardigan and a mum in a twin set, and a couple of kiddies lashed into ergonomic capsules and wearing crash helmets for added protection.

They will be putt-putting along in the non-fast lane at 47kmh as the ad extols the car’s safety features and ability to get you from A to B. There will be no mention of how much fun the car is to drive, how it handles corners, how quickly it can go from nought to 100, how it’s got racy bucket seats, beautiful zippy lines, a cracker of a stereo or a monstrous donk under the bonnet.

Continue reading "In our dull Volvo world even ads come with safety features" »

Well it’s official. People hate marketers, particularly those in advertising. Research by Roy Morgan has ranked advertising as the third most-hated industry across all professions. We’re more hated than union leaders and real estate agents, but just managed to scrape in front of journalists and car salesmen.

All I can say is thank god I don’t work with any car clients because with this article and an interest in marketing I might take the trifecta and actually be the most hated person in the world.

So why do people hate the profession in which I’m going to invest my entire career? I’ll probably agree with what you’ve got to say for the most part, but I should probably at least attempt to convince you otherwise.

Continue reading "I know you hate marketers but face it, you need them" »

DON’T be surprised as you walk down a street in Spain to hear someone humming or even singing the words to Waltzing Matilda.

The catchy unofficial Aussie national anthem has become somewhat of a sensation in Spain since it was chosen by a mobile telephone company to promote its new summer tariff plan, then featured in their advertisement in the break of the televised Champions League soccer grand final watched by millions across Europe recently.

The accents on the advertisement are strange and the video clip is downright wacky but online chat rooms and talk back radio in Spain has been inundated with debates about “Billy-bongs” and “Kooly-bar trees” and speculation about what it was that a man put into a “ta-ka” bag.

Continue reading "Juan’s a jolly swagman: the Spanish Waltzing Matilda" »