Kangaroo to be sidelined in favour of yellow wattle in logo shake-up

Marketing experts have largely given the thumbs down to the newly-approved logo for Australia’s international trade logo, with one saying she wouldn’t have picked it in a week of guesses.

• COMMENT: We’re replacing the kangaroo with this?

A new logo developed to sell brand Australia to the world has been slammed as confusing by advertising experts who say the abstract gold wattle design looks more like a luxury perfume label than an official national logo.

As revealed by The Daily Telegraph, the Aussie kangaroo was sidelined in favour of a minimalist depiction of the wattle in a report by the ­Australia’s Nation Brand ­Advisory Council and accepted by Trade Minister Simon Birmingham.

The council of business and cultural leaders said in their report the kangaroo only emphasised what foreigners already knew about Australia while we should be pushing our other lesser known assets like technology and education.

The new proposed logo for the brand Australian Made. Supplied

But University of Canberra brand expert Adjunct Prof Dr Petra Bouvain said the wattle logo was too abstract and looked like generic luxury perfume labelling which could have come from ­anywhere.

“It needs to be clear what it is, to me it looks like expensive gifts, like a new perfume, it doesn’t look like business to me,” she said.

“I have a PhD, two other degrees and I work in mar­keting  —  if it is a wattle, you could have locked me up for a week and I would not have guessed it was a wattle.”

She also said the new “only in Australia” tagline was misguided because gold could be found elsewhere in the world, as could wattle which also grows in Europe.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was part of the group which came up with the new logo. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

“The AU (lettering) doesn‘t make it clear it is Australia … people could mistake it with Austria.

“Lots of the stuff we sell, you can get from a whole lot of other countries. Gold comes from other countries, wattles grow in other countries, it doesn’t make sense.”

Advertising expert Dee Madigan gave the new wattle logo the tick of approval ­because she said the kang­aroo had been overused.

“Anytime I see the kangaroo on any piece of Australian stuff I feel like it is made in China, it has been appropriated by the kind of cheap tourist stuff which usually is made in China (so) it has been devalued as a logo,” she said.

But the overwhelming ­majority of Telegraph readers said they liked the kangaroo over the wattle.

The former kangaroo Australian Made logo

In a reader poll of almost 7000 respondents, 96 per cent said they preferred the roo over the new logo.

One said it looked more like a dandelion than wattle while many were quick to note the unfortunate resemblance of the new logo with the coronavirus spur.

“I don’t see wattle at all, I see some gold dots. And as for the AU, everyone in Europe will think of Austria,” one reader wrote.

“I was waiting for the credits from ‘Utopia’ to start playing, surely this is an episode and not a gov decision?”

“$10m for that? It could have been done online for $10. It’s awful, uninspiring, and (reeks) of someone wanting change to make a name for themselves,” another reader said.

Numerous iterations of the new logo will be made available to be used by business, industry and government agencies, replacing the current one depicting two orange boomerangs which form a rough outline of Australia.

Originally published as Kangaroo to be sidelined in favour of yellow wattle in logo shake-up