One thing I always find fascinating, is how easy (and popular) it is to tear something to shreds, without being able to offer one single decent suggestion about what else you could do better instead. And if ever there was something South Aussies are good at, it’s having a big fucking whinge. Perhaps it’s not something we have a monopoly on, and it’s probably not something we should brag about, but fuck are we good at it. Better at that than footy at the moment, that’s for sure. I mean, how are we still shitty about losing the Grand Prix to Melbourne in 1996? We’ve built at least one over priced footbridge since then and we still can’t get over it. Fuck. Me.
Taking cheap pot shots at the efforts of others from the sidelines, whilst at times a speciality of mine, doesn’t generally make you a hero, it mostly makes you a weak as fucking piss armchair expert. Sure, if you make your living as an actual critic or commentator, we don’t want the rose coloured glasses version, we want your truth, but for the rest of us just pissing about, doing what we do, popping up to say how shit something is, particularly when it’s something we might generally speaking have zero fucking talent or experience in, isn’t really overly meaningful.
A subheading about anal sex. You have been warned.
But before you have a whinge about that observation, let me clarify one thing. Yeah, yeah, we get it, you’re entitled to your fucking opinion. But an opinion is, generally speaking, about you, and not the thing you have the opinion on or about. It’s about how you think or feel. So if, for example, you think the new South Australia Tourism ad is a big steaming pile of shit, your non-expert opinion entitles you to say “I don’t like it” more than “That ad is no good”. Just like you can say “I don’t like gay people” which speaks volumes about you and is not at all about gay people, but you can shove saying “gay people are going to hell” up your arse. Which, of course, you probably wouldn’t do because, you know, anal and sin and whatever.
You see where I’m headed with this? If you asked General Public if they liked the ads about those little plastic things they give away at Coles, I doubt anyone would say they think the ads are marvelous. Because they’re not. They’re shit. Likewise, no jury at Cannes is about to hand out an award to those ads. But hey guess what? Coles couldn’t give a flying fuck about those judges or even if people like the ads. You know what they care about? Money. Profit. That people go and shop there to get the bloody things. It’s called a ‘result’. And if you’re a tree hugging vegan hippy having a cry about how they’re plastic and how baby dolphins are choking on them, they don’t care about you either. You’re considered “not in the target market” and they’re focused on the people who love plastic bags and single use plastic bottles and buying fruit and veg that doesn’t have to be in plastic in plastic, and fuck me have you seen the supermarket shelves lately? Also, why aren’t we angry about people who buy Lego? Is that made out of corn starch now? Anyway, you see where I’m headed with this: there’s a shit tonne of people in that category even if you’re not one of them.
Fat people don’t think fat jokes are funny.
So… South Australia. If you’re fat, and a bunch of people laugh at you because you’re fat, it goes without saying you’re unlikely to find fat jokes very funny. While the people who make them think they’re fucking hilarious. So if people interstate think South Australia is full of old people and isn’t worth visiting and make jokes about it, it’s probably pretty natural that the people who live here get a bit butt hurt. But the people who already make those jokes? Pissing themselves. Because it’s their joke. They’re in on it. Being the butt of a joke is rarely funny.
If you see an ad, that’s designed for people interstate, and you don’t like it, that’s probably a good sign, not a bad one. Our mentality, as people who live here, should almost by definition be different to people who don’t live here, but might want to visit, but keep putting it off.
While I personally found the Shit Adelaide commentary hilarious, for example, what have they ever done for the world? Posting images and videos of fuckwits being fuckwits isn’t some great masterclass in creative strategy. It’s been done since Candid fucking Camera. Since Jo Beth Taylor hosted TV Bloopers. Since Eddy McGuire did anything. Having a social media page that gets laughs out of crackheads and imbeciles isn’t altogether useless, but what it doesn’t make you, is an expert on advertising or marketing. It makes you an expert at getting cheap laughs out of crackheads and imbeciles. (It also doesn’t make you an expert AFL coach, so you’ll have to forgive me if I tend not to be inclined to listen to what they think the Crows should do with Tex or Pikey.)
Tourism advertising is tricky. If you ‘film the brochure’ as we call it in the business – that is, just show lots of nice pictures of the things you can do here – no one will be offended but everyone will be offended because they’ll say it’s boring as batshit and no one will pay any attention. And they’d be right. But dare to put some effort into having some sort of message or idea in there and it’s open season. “What the fuck were they thinking?” Well, I’ll tell you what they were thinking. They were thinking they could do a better job, produce a better result, by putting more effort in than just filming the fucking brochure. Any creative person on the planet, or more importantly, any agency head knows the easiest way to make money in this business is to ‘phone it in’. To just turn up, put as little effort as possible in, do what’s expected, don’t rock the boat, make some shit, and send the bill. I know, because I do it all. the. time.
I’ve made a lot of shit ads.
Seriously, my ratio of shit ads to great ads in my 30 year career is about 98:2. And I’m possibly being generous to suggest my ratio is that good. Or that I’ve ever produced something you could reasonably describe as ‘great’.
Doing great stuff is hard. Really fucking hard. Certainly much harder than doing boring shit and getting paid. Coming up with great stuff is hard. Getting it approved is hard. And getting it through the production process after every man and his dog has put their fucking finger prints on it is hard. It takes hard work, courage, talent, and fucking it up sometimes because if it was easy and certain, everyone would be doing it.
And then there’s the definition of ‘great’. Does that mean ‘universally liked’? Does that mean ‘produced a great result’? Or maybe a bit of both? Because now we’re in rare air indeed. Plenty of great ads out there that everyone loved that were spectacularly unsuccessful let me tell ya. And vice versa. Some of my shittest ads, for example, have also been my most successful. I remember doing a series of ads for a retailer once where we based them around words like ‘Strewth’ and ‘Crikey’ to describe the customer’s reaction to the low price. I went to the client after the campaign launched and told him I was a bit embarrassed about the creative. His reply? “I couldn’t give a fuck how embarrassed you are, the ads are working really well and we’re making a fortune.” 100% true story. He has a much nicer car and house than me, and has taken me sailing around the Greek Islands on a private yacht a few times so maybe they were pretty great after all.
I keep going away from the South Australia Tourism ad though, don’t I?
Me thinking it’s shit doesn’t mean it’s shit.
OK, one more shot at staying on brief then. I personally don’t like the ad. That’s my opinion. I’m not saying it’s shit. I am saying I don’t like it. Which is actually OK because I live here, so they’re not trying to get me to visit. They’re not trying to convince me of anything. Fuck, they’re not even talking to me. I’m just listening in to their conversation with someone else so the fact it makes no sense to me is OK. I’m already here. I’m the butt of the joke. Not an entirely unfamiliar position for me to be in, so I’ll survive.
We’ve all seen all the criticisms, so let me mix it up a bit and tell you what I do like about it then.
I think the strategy and insight that people say “I’ll go there one day” and then never do is rock fucking solid. And great advertising always starts with a great insight. It’s how you do more than just get liked, it’s how you change behaviour. And that’s what the game is about. So great insight.
Old Mate is awesome. And hopefully not a pedo.
I think Old Mate Dave is awesome. He’s even got his own Instagram page. Admittedly, he has about as many friends as I have left in the advertising industry, (and certainly more than I have in the SATC office), but it’s early days and I can see potential. (Fuck knows why those 47 people are following him though. I wanted to follow to be supportive, I really did, but… why?) Besides, if he doesn’t get enough friends organically they’ll probably just do what they did with the last campaign nobody watched, and pay for views/likes/followers. (A completely acceptable strategy also, by the way, and one I’d totally recommend to any client of mine looking to build traction faster.)
I think somewhere between the strategy and the final execution, the creative team, possibly the director, disappeared up their own arseholes a bit as has been known to happen, but again, that’s just me and my opinion. And I can say that with confidence for two reasons: firstly, because I’ve done it myself once or twice. And secondly because a few years back I actually applied for a job at the agency who produced the ad and didn’t even get a fucking interview and have been a bit critical of their work at times since then, so burning what’s left of that bridge isn’t going to make things any worse for me than they already are. (Although sort of in their defence, for fuck’s sake, please can we maybe get over ourselves and stop calling them “an interstate agency” as if that explains why we hate them and why their work must be shit? They have an office here. They employ actual people who do actual work here. We didn’t look at Clemenger or Y&R or Leo Burnett who are all part of (multi)national agency groups when they were here and say “oh, they’re an interstate agency” because their head office was somewhere else. So come on, being a proud South Aussie is great, but being parochial to the point of being a fucking idiot isn’t useful. They’re local now. End. Of. Story.)
If Old Mate doesn’t die, there’s still (great) work to be done.
The final thing I like is the opportunity that now presents itself. I’m not one to agree that any publicity is good publicity. I think there are exceptions. Storm Boy does wonders for the Coorong region. Roman Heinze (who abducted a backpacker, and I’m guessing some Pelicans as well, there), not so much. Trust me, there’s such a thing as bad publicity.
You can’t deny the value of engagement though, and right now South Australia Tourism definitely have that. I’d argue it’s not good engagement, because, well, it’s not good, but I think there’s an opportunity to work with the engagement they do have. I think there’s an opportunity for Old Mate to wrestle back the narrative. A 30 second TV ad can never tell the whole story, and I think Dave our Old Mate has a really good opportunity to have a right of reply.
I mean, we don’t know his wife is already dead like he will be soon. We don’t know he’s lonely. We don’t know anything at all about his story other than the fact he wishes he’d come to Adelaide sooner. Mrs Old Mate could have been doing the adventure climb down at West Beach and skinny dipping at Maslins while he was doing the mostly boring as fuck stuff he was doing, including staring creepily at some young kids at a winery. He might have done an Eddletsone and married a 25 year old for all we know, and she was off smoking meth and climbing the malls balls in an effort to get on Shit Adelaide while he was being an old fart and wandering around the art gallery. Who knows?
Maybe his wife is gone, but he has heaps of mates who came to Adelaide as well but stayed in the hotel room playing bridge. Or went to the house of pain to play pokies. Maybe they all met up after he cried watching the Crows/Power lose yet another home game, and watched a stripper set the Crazy Horse on fire? Who the fuck knows?
Old Mate needs to deliver a few dick punches.
Well, Old Mate could give us a bit of an update, couldn’t he? He could get one of his grandkids to help him film a video on the smart phone he doesn’t have because we all know old people are still using landlines, and come out and tell all the people who think his ad is shit to “fuck off”. He could tell them he’s not lonely at all and is a bit embarrassed by all the attention and the fact he turned on the water works doing the roof climb. He could steer the narrative back to where it was supposed to be in the first place. Dave could stare all the nay sayers in the eye, and punch them in the dick. (Or insert gender neutral version of that insult here.)
There’s opportunity there. The strategy and insight were solid. The idea of having Old Mate was solid. The 30 seconds they produced may have not been liked by a lot of people, myself included, but that doesn’t mean the thinking behind it is flawed. It just means that one piece of the puzzle may, or may not, have missed the mark. And no matter how depressing or shit we may think it is, much like my own client many years ago, I doubt SATC will give a shit about how embarrassed/depressed we are if our friends over the border think it’s funny and stop putting it off and come for a visit.
