Great and less-great moments in marketing: we should be so lucky — lucky, lucky, lucky
The Sydney Morning Herald front page yesterday:
Former ABC chairman Justin Milne wanted to hire pop icon Kylie Minogue to sing about the public broadcaster in a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign … former managing director Michelle Guthrie … is understood to have “hit the roof” …
Milne confirming the story:
An emotional campaign with Kylie singing a song … I thought that could be cool.
Minogue’s fee was to be a cool $750,000, bringing new-found profundity to her 1988 hit …
I should be so lucky / Lucky, lucky, lucky
Daily Telegraph page one yesterday:
CHEAP BEER, FANCY BOOTS: Libs’ answer to membership crisis … The Liberal Party has gone in boots and all to boost its ailing membership … Prospective party members would be offered discounts on Coopers beer, Haigh’s chocolates and even RM Williams boots … “This would elevate the ‘selling point’ of membership and enable small businesses in the party to promote their products” (a Liberal state executive report says.)
Great moments in PR. Coopers’ website suggests it is far from a “small business”, declaring:
Coopers Brewery is the largest Australian-owned brewery.
RM Williams’ website, likewise:
RM Williams exports to 15 countries, has more than 50 retail stores …
The Libs have a proud history in marketing, such as the 1975 slogan:
Turn on the Lights.
And a less-proud history, such as Andrew Peacock’s 1990 slogan:
The answer is Liberal.
To which PM Bob Hawke replied: Well if the answer is Liberal it must have been a stupid bloody question.
Or the failed Fightback! campaign, which John Hewson interred a month before his own political burial. The Australian, April 16, 1994:
And we have already said that the GST is dead, and in that sense, Fightback (by now, printed without the exclamation mark) is dead and buried. And we’ve moved on …
Julia Gillard preferred moving forward — 22 times in one speech on July 17, 2010, announcing an election:
I believe this is a moment for all of us to strengthen, to innovate, to learn — in short, to move forwards, not backwards.
Don Watson, Paul Keating’s speech writer, was moved to respond:
People think the only way you can make a political point or persuade people of an argument is to treat them like imbeciles. It’s like training a dog …
Keating and Hawke managed to sell the most radical changes to the Australian economy … without doing this messaging all the time … She may as well go and stand on a hill and send up a smoke signal. That would have more meaning.
Gillard on the ABC’s 7.30 Report:
I’ve been using those words because they mean something to me and I think they mean something to the nation … I believe it captures a spirit about Australia. We are a confident, optimistic, forward-looking people.
Labor moved backwards to Kevin Rudd. His slogan, A New Way, was trumped by Tony Abbott’s New Hope.
Marketing? Guthrie might suggest to Milne that they stick to the existing ABC campaign song, with a tweak:
I am, you are, we are … sacked.