Why can't political ads be more like beer ads?
The election cycle has begun and so has the beginning of the political advertising blitz. Not just from the two major parties but from other groups that rely on political outcomes, most recently the unions and mining companies fighting over the government's proposed mining tax. The ACTU, AWU and the Minerals Council got involved, sticking to the same formula - make one side look bad and sell a simple message to the swinging voter.
But Goanna needed to look at the heart of political advertising, and ask the burning question, why are political ads crap? Or, more pertinently, why can't political ads be more like beer ads?
Everyone can agree that beer commercials in Australia are great.
In many ways they are a kind of Australian art form, and are eminently successful at connecting with the Australian public's psyche - particularly compared to political ads.
Often they transcend the predictable; there's a good idea, a good amount of Australian humour and a larrikin spirit and they're memorable. Sure, they might have bigger budgets and big advertising companies behind them, but they work because there is a solid narrative the public connects with.
We all remember beer commercials like the Carlton Draught "It's a Big Ad" commercial in which hundreds of dressed up extras formed an aerial view of a man drinking a beer to an alternative version of Carmina Burana's "O Fortuna". Or the Toohey's catapult ad, where various ingredients, hops, women in bikinis, a stag, are placed in a catapult and sent into the heavens to make it rain beer. Or the Boags' water ads, where the Tasmanian waters magically produce better versions of everything that gets dunked in. These are just a few that work but there are many more.
The thing is a lot of these ads are not screaming "Look at our beer! Its great!" or "Look at our competitors' beer, its terrible!" - the essential formula for every political ad.
They are telling a story, associating it with a name and making it memorable so that when you go to get a six pack out of the fridge (or indeed tick a ballot box) you remember that brand over others.
So how can a country that makes such good beer comercials make such terrible political ads?
The fact is Australian political ads by and large are rubbish because they can be. Recently we've had advertisements from the Liberal party with big simplistic arrows pointing us to "illegals" swamping our shores, the AWU ad with grainy black and white stills of mining bosses and their obscene pay packets, the Labor party's "Phoney Tony" ads and promotions from theMinerals Council using disputed figures and fear mongering about jobs and superannuation. All of these are cheap to make and easy to put out into the community quickly, they last as a talking point for about a nano-second in the news cycle and then they disappear. All they are really meant to do.
Apart from the occasional successful anti-WorkChoices "Tracy" campaign that touched a nerve in the community, most viewers instantly switch off or forget the message a week later. This is mainly because political ads are so predictable, we know we're going to see a grainy image of a dodgy politician created on behalf of another dodgy politician, trying to make themselves look better than the other. They are often superficial with no driving idea behind them and they stick to the same obvious political advertising formula.
Political commercials are also more often than not reactive as opposed to proactive.
The recent "Phoney Tony" advertising campaign looked like it had been cobbled together in about 10 minutes by a film student trying to make a parody of a political ad. And it was reactive to the situation - like a kid trying to call another kid out for cheating in a playground game. As a result the ad feels like just that, an over-dramatised whinge to the public.
Getting their message out has been a problem for both parties. Brand Rudd and Brand Abbott are not doing it on their own - so getting the parties' brand out has become even more important.
It's so easy to put out a bland, rough and ready campaign that can just skim the debate, that last for two minutes in voters' minds and then recede into a footnote of the campaign.
In the end, sticking to the same formula is just a waste of time and money. In 2007 it almost looked like things were getting more sophisticated, particularly with the Labor campaign. With these recent ads, it looks like we were too optimistic. This consistent inability to sell Rudd or Abbott is worrisome, when all the strategists need to realise is that most voters just want a Prime Minister they can have a beer with.
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