Thryv’s sense of humour bypass over ACT Liberals’ Yellow Pages parody ad

Deborah Kennedy in the famous ‘Not happy, Jan!’ advertisement from Yellow Pages in 2000.

As far as reading material goes, the Yellow Pages has always been dull. Not just dull but burdensome, unwieldy, and not always helpful.

But humourless?

No one would have levelled that charge at the Yellow Pages. Not after its iconic advertisement of 2000 starring actor Deborah Kennedy, her famous shriek – “Not happy, Jan!” – still deployed as a catch-all for any frustration to this day.

And so serious is Thryv Australia, the entity responsible for marketing and distributing the Yellow Pages since 1991, in its role as custodian of this zinger, and the ad itself, that it’s threatening to sue the ACT Liberal Party over the use of both in its recent spate of electioneering content.

Represented by King & Wood Mallesons partner Bill Ladas and special counsel James Robb, the Yellow Pages sent an urgent cease and desist letter to ACT Liberal Party director Adam Wojtonis over the weekend claiming copyright infringement over the party’s shameless (but clever) ripoff of the ad.

In a homage to the original, the Liberal version features a woman sitting at a desk flicking through a large book of “Labor promises” and voicing her exasperation with “Andrew”, an employee who bears a physical likeness to the ACT’s Labor Chief Minister Andrew Barr.

The broken promises are counted with increasing irritation at Andrew until he, much like the infamous Jan, decamps down the fire stairs and out of the building.

“Oi!” the boss shouts at him from a high window, “Not happy Andrew!”

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

This ran on TVs around Canberra for two weeks before the people at Thryv got wind of the joke. Their legal letter is certainly no fun in response.

“The Liberals advertisement features an actor similar in appearance to Ms Kennedy,” it moans. And the ad, they said, was “plainly not a work of parody or satire of the Thryv advertisement”. This is a bizarre claim; the ad is so obviously a parody.

Accompanying the letter, obtained by Margin Call, was a shopping list of demands, namely that the ACT Liberal Party stop airing the ad and destroy the content by 5pm Monday or face the wrath of impending Federal Court proceedings.

Some internal hand-wringing took place on Monday about pausing the ad but, as the legal deadline approached, Margin Call was advised that the ad would stay online and keep airing despite the threats.

The only loose end now is figuring out how Thryv caught onto the ad’s existence, given it was played only on Canberra’s sparsely-viewed free-to-air television, which almost no one watches.

A Liberal spokesman said the government probably tipped off the company. “My guess is it was actually someone at Labor HQ that was very ‘not happy Jan’ about our parody.”

Mayor’s musings

Nick Reece’s mayoral campaign in Melbourne is going down like a splayed body in a revamped park. Keep reading, the analogy will make sense in a minute.

Reece is running for re-election as lord mayor and released high-gloss pictures on Sunday promising to rehabilitate Melbourne as a Garden City with fresh parks and green spaces.

The internet promptly fell over itself as the renders of this vision, mocked up by Hassall Architects, were posted online, each photograph littered with unsettling AI Easter eggs: a corpse in a children’s playground; mutated limbs and; an eerie man who seemed to be walking his pet shoe.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece. Picture: Jason Edwards

This AI misstep was followed up on Monday with news that Reece, a former Victorian Labor secretary, lost his bid to secure Labor preferences during the ballot; they went instead to Liberal candidate Arron Wood.

Which was unexpected because of the Labor firepower Reece had hired to execute his campaign and secure those preferences. He chose FMRS advisory, led by Lissie Ratcliff, Jessie McCrone, Ben Foster and Adam Sims, all of whom ran the office of Dan Andrews before he quit politics and turned to consulting.

Not exactly a campaign FMRS can crow about now given it’s basically a shambles. Without the preferences, Reece’s run is probably over, too. The AI fumble didn’t help.

And while we mention Wood and his preference lockup, it’s worth noting that he did receive some help from Steve Michelson, a former staffer to Bill Shorten. Michelson isn’t just advising Wood – he’s also a prospective candidate on the council ticket.

And does that name ring a bell? Michelson resigned from Shorten’s office in 2017 after a decade-old photo emerged of him in blackface at a party.

Justin Trudeau admitted in 2019 to doing the same in high school, if only to sing “Day-O” by Harry Belafonte. Sadly, he (Trudeau) is still the Canadian Prime Minister.

What’s up, Guv?

Spotted in deep dialogue on Monday were former Reserve Bank governors Glenn Stevens and Ian Macfarlane at Sydney CBD eatery Legal Grounds, the mere sight of these monetary titans sending a ripple of whisper across Macquarie Street.

What could they possibly have been discussing?

Was it Jim Chalmers’ attempts to reform the RBA (currently jammed in the Senate)? Macfarlane actually panned some of those intended adjustments as “very bad policy” and a “leap of faith” only 12 months ago. Or was it whether Michele Bullock – the current RBA governor – would finally cut rates on Tuesday?

We called Macfarlane to put this mystery to bed. He and Stevens are old friends and catch up every few months at the same venue to chat monetary policy and business – professional and personal, he said.

“It’s all very innocent,” Macfarlane added. “Make of that what you will.”

Which is normally our line.