Taryn Brumfitt fails to highlight tie-ups; Are there lessons from the Optus data debacle?

Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt. Picture: Instagram

The appointment of Taryn Brumfitt as Australian of the Year caught a number of people off guard, most notably Mike Carlton, the famously choleric journalist who scoffed at Brumfitt and reduced her on Twitter to “someone who makes a buck out of saying it’s OK to be a bit fat”.

An amusing description, maybe, but hardly endorsable as fair or accurate. Not in dispute, however, is that Brumfitt’s work as an influencer generates a revenue stream, gifts and the provision of at least some services from her various partners.

This would be uncontroversial if her amplification of certain brands came with the usual disclaimers that stated any praise for certain types of spaghetti, or absorbent underwear, were in fact part of a deal.

Not only does she seemingly neglect to do this for her legions of Instagram followers, she does so quite often.

“It’s Pasta time!” Brumfitt announced in a December 16 post for San Remo pasta, which does not mention her partnership with the brand. One is obliged to quest through acres of inanity on Brumfitt’s timeline, as far back as June and March when the posts are properly labelled, to confirm that her great love of San Remo pasta is, in fact, a transactional affair.

Likewise, an August 29 post does a fine job of spruiking the wares of underwear purveyor Modibodi, but without mentioning that Brumfitt is a listed ambassador for the company.

As she told followers: “I’m a big fan of all Modibodi products, but their latest one, I’m into – a lot!” Margin Call approached Brumfitt for comment through her website, Body Image Movement.

Also untidy is Brumfitt’s ­association with Edwardstown Mazda, a South Australian car dealership that appointed her an ambassador in September 2021. Subsequent posts in October and November rev up the benefits of Mazda’s BT-50 model without mentioning the affiliation – that’s after she was gifted a BT-50 and lessons on how to drive it.

Steps were taken towards clearing this up on August 14 last year, when Brumfitt again lavished praise on the Edwardstown team and faithfully informed followers that she was downshifting to a CX-9. It’s all riveting stuff. “With a family of six, we need all the seats we can get,” she said, this time mentioning her ambassadorial role somewhere in the caption.

But is that enough to meet the disclosure standards as outlined by the Australian Association of National Advertisers and its rather austere Section 2.7 guidelines on distinguishable advertising?

Bachelor winner Anna Heinrich was found in breach of advertising standards. Picture: Richard Dobson

The AANA’s code makes it plain that any relationship between influencer and brand must be “clear, obvious and upfront to the audience”, and expressed in ways that are easily understood. Terms such as “#ad, Advert, Advertising, Branded Content, Paid Partnership, Paid Promotion” are all encouraged.

Terms such as “#sp, Spon, gifted, Affiliate, Collab” and “thanks to” – this latter having been deployed by Brumfitt very liberally across her timeline – “may not be sufficient to clearly distinguish the post as advertising”.

Bachelor winner Anna Heinrich learned this the hard way in 2021 after being called out by regulatory body Ad Standards for posing in a dress and captioning the photo: “Turning my apartment into a Runway [green heart emoji]. Then back to my PJs I go! Wearing: @runawaythelabel”.

Brumfitt’s posts are not all that different, and in some cases perhaps worse, so we can only surmise what Ad Standards might have to say about it all.

It’s a timely conversation, too, given the Albanese government has only just welcomed an investigation of about 100 social media influencers and their product endorsements, to be led by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.

Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones lauded the ACCC’s investigation in a press release issued just one day after Brumfitt was named Australian of the Year. How’s that for timing!

“Commercial arrangements need to be disclosed when influencers recommend a product so consumers can make fair and informed decisions,” Jones’s press statement said.

Didn’t anyone at the National Australia Day Council think to peruse Brumfitt’s Instagram feed ahead of the AOTY announcement?

Lessons in debacle

Optus executive Sally Oelerich gave a memorably torrid radio interview in October following a cyberattack on the telco. Unable to answer basic questions, her on-air performance was criticised for extending what was already an unmitigated PR disaster for the company, leading to further damaging headlines.

Are there lessons to be learned out of the debacle? Plenty. But is Oelerich the person to deliver them? At least some industry figures are wondering why she’s been chosen to headline an upcoming Corporate Affairs Summit, scheduled for May, given that Optus’s performance remains a textbook example of how to egregiously mishandle a crisis. No suggestion, of course, that Oelerich is even remotely responsible for all of that – but her interview didn’t help.

Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Andrew McLean

CAS organisers told one bemused complainant that they “eagerly await Sally’s case study” and her insights into “what to do and not do in these circumstances”. We can see why that might cause some to bristle; you wouldn’t ask the captain of that Ever Given container ship to give a keynote on the dos and don’ts of getting wedged in the Suez Canal.

In any case, most flaks don’t need to be told that it’s better to stay off the airwaves when the basic facts are not at hand.

Not that anyone would have read about Oelerich or that radio interview in the Financial Review’s lengthy retelling of the data breach, in December, in a piece that emphasised the role of former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and her “unerring ability to predict what the media would want to know”, as though obvious questions about affected customers are some kind of cosmic mystery.

And yet even with Berejiklian’s piercing insights – she was appointed a managing director at the telco in 2022 – Optus seemed unable to deliver.

“(Optus) senior management are kidding themselves if they want a medal for the way that they’ve been communicating,” Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said at the time.