I’d planned a long, detailed blog post about the new Tourism Queensland ad (which I think is terrible) and the public’s reaction to it, but my new favourite blog bne.adjunkie has beaten me to it. Looking at the reactions below, it makes you wonder if Cummins Nitro (the agency behind the triple-Gold-Lion-winning Best Job in the World campaign) changed their name to just to avoid any potential association with the new commercial.

Lowlights from Campaign Brief, news.com.au and The Cairns Post reader reactions included:

“An abomination. Hang your heads in shame TQ.”

“And the Qld Govt paid a “creative” agency to produce this?”

“Take an established ’60s song, change the lyrics and pitch it to 20-somethings… Hmm… Damn, I knew I should have done advertising at Uni.”

I’ll bet the honchos at the agency formerly known as Cummins are hoping their new fully-global status will stop them losing any more pitches to brands like Clemenger who can boast proper international credentials. (And I’ll bet you they’re kicking themselves they couldn’t make the announcement a few weeks ago when they were pitching for TQ!)

Why doesn’t McDonalds do its ads in-house? Surely it would be more cost-effective. They could hire a bunch of creative teams and do their own production. It would have to be cheaper. Obviously there’s the argument that they want variety, but VW used DDB for decades and the results were brilliant. The Economist hasn’t changed it’s marketing comms strategy since the 70s. McDonalds could save a mint, and they never do anything that risque anyway. They’re never done anything remotely like Subservient Chicken.

Although this is weird enough…

What are they worried about?

What am I missing here?

The winner has been announed for Tourism Queensland’s ‘The Best Job in the World‘ campaign and congratulations must go to Brit, Ben Southall, for taking out the prize.I have no idea what he did to win, but presumably he was affable, scrubbed up well on YouTube and had starred in less than a handful of Russian porn films. I haven’t been following the campaign closely, but of course, I didn’t have to. Every news channel in the world has been running headlines since day one, Sunrise had a spot on it this morning and even ABC news bulletins have talked the story up.

I’m mighty impressed with the campaign on the whole, despite some early stumbling, and given that this is only the end of phase one (the dude now has to go do the ‘work’ and write a blog about his experience), I’ll bet Tourism Queensland are chuffed with Cummins Nitro’s work. My guess is Ben’s blog won’t reach even a fraction of the people that news of the campaign to hire him did, but at the end of the day, I don’t think that really matters. Both agency and client will be hoping the online journal generates some interest, but success will be measured by overall column inches, and by that yard-stick, they’ve put together one of the best social media campaigns to date.

Will it translate into dollars for Queensland’s Tourism industry? It certainly will for Hamilton Island (I wonder what the other resorts think of it all). There’ll undoubtedly be a ripple effect too for the rest of Tropical North Queensland, but I’m really looking forward to reading the final report at the end of the day and comparing the success of this social media-bsed campaign to what they’ve done in the past. I’ll be surprised if there are any jaw-busting revelations there though. I think it will result in much greater media coverage than they’ve ever had, but in reality, Queensland is a long way from the rest of the world and favourable coverage on Fleet Street has a long way to trickle-down. For this to convert to substantially greater visitor numbers would be a massive achievement. I don’t think they’ll pull it off, but regardless, it is an absolutely fantastic advertising campaign.

Oh, and did someone mention something about a new mens range at a clothing store? No? Didn’t think so.

I was in hospital last week. It was my first time as a patient, not counting the day I was born. I’m OK now, it was a stomach thing and I’ll be fine, but it left me feeling a little shaken (and poked, and jabbed and prodded and tired and vulnerable). In fact, I was so mortified by my own mortality, I even changed my Facebook status to the following:

“…is in hospital. First time in hospital. Doesn’t like hospital. Fees mortal. Preferred previous immortal feeling.”

If you’ve never been in hospital before you probably don’t quite know what I mean, but if you have ever been in hospital for the first time and been told the news that you are not, in fact, immune to everything, you will, in fact, die sooner or later, and your previously temple-like body is not as fit and healthy as it was when you were, for example, 12-years-old, it does definitely arouse a sense of  mortality. So much so, that the last thing you want to be told upon you exit is that you will, with almost 100% certainty, be back, one day.

This ad in the hospital elevator was therefore the last thing I wanted to see:

The photograph is a little blurry because the lift was full of sick people and I didn’t want to be seen happy-snapping away in a hospital (’it’s OK people, it’s for my blog’), but the poster is advertising ‘free will-making’ and ‘executor services’. Ouch. Talk about kicking people while they’re down. I can totally see why the Public Trustee of Queensland wanted to get a message to people in a hospital lift, but it left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Is the same media buying agency hitting up morgue escalators and funeral parlour urinals as well?

My desk smells like strawberry ice cream. It’s fabulous. I can’t remember getting a bit of direct mail that excited me since, well, ever. Appropriate then, I guess, because it’s an ad for direct mail. And it came in the post.  Wonderful stuff, and lovely proof that until we get smellyvision or scenternet, sometimes you just can’t beat a bit of paperto get the ol’ factory system going. Maybe GM and Chrysler need more scratch and sniff ads. Kudos to the Open Mind Research Group.

Three things:

a) Watch Mad Men. It’s a brilliant TV show, and a great reminder of how great it was back in the 1960s when women knew their place.

b) I actually thought things have changed, but thank god they haven’t. A very good friend of mine is doing some work at a very well respected Melbourne ad agency. One you will know. One with big accounts. One with big awards. One with big letters on the door. She is young, pretty and female. Here’s what she had to put up with today, and I quote:

1. One of the guys took a piss and a shit in the girls loo and didn’t flush it after lunch cos it was “funny”
2. The creative director couldnt be assed to go outside for a smoke so brought the ash tray inside and turned off the smoke detectors
3. The MD said that the problem with advertising now days is that everyone is too politically correct so should be more racist, sexist, play more practical jokes and should be more crude to improve company culture

I thought times had changed, but it’s great to see these attitudes are still alive and well.

c) Has anyone seen my can of spraypaint? I need to re-coat the glass floor/ceiling. Just this morning I caught one of the female account managers eyeing off my corner office while she was putting away the dishes. She should be ashamed.

Has anyone else heard of any other efforts by courageous advertising gents putting the ‘I’ back in sexism? Please share.

“Tegan,” from Australia is actually a digital project manager at Cummins Nitro, the Brisbane agency behind Queensland Tourism’s best job in the world campaign and the tattoo is quite clearly fake. Discerning YouTube viewers picked up on the facts pretty quickly (for goodness sake, fresh tattoos bleed, you don’t walk out of the shop with a pristine design), yet the video has had more than 60,000 views so far and considerable traditional media attention from around the world.

Who looks dumber, AAP and the major news outlets who ran with the story, or Qld Tourism who used it as an example video without a disclaimer?

Either way,  nice acting Rhiannon. Are the freckles real?

UPDATE: It seems Tim Burrowes over at MumBrella actually beat me to the punch on this story - for further reading and a response from Tourism Queensland, make sure you check out his blog post.

I’m a terrible fisherperson. I’m a terrible fisherperson because I’ve got the same shit rod that I stole off my brother when he was 10 and when I go fishing it’s in the middle of the day, after a few beers, at a spot that no self-respecting sea creature has visited since the last ice-age, the hooks are rusty, blunt, older than me and the bait I use was bought from the servo last Christmas and has been left in the freezer for 18 months. If you want to be a good fisherman you need a carbon fibre rod, you need to get up very early in the morning, you need to spend a hell of a lot on your bait and you need hooks that have been chemically sharpened. A good boat doesn’t help either.

No surprise then, that if you invest $150,000 on the expedition and cast off into the middle of a calm, hungry media pond after a minor war has gotten boring and before a new President takes office, you’ll get a few bites. So many bites in fact, your website won’t be able to cope with the load.

Brilliant stuff.

Last Sunday I counted the number of ads I saw in a day. The number came to 1,033. I wanted to wait a little while before I tried to recall them, just to see what stuck out and what didn’t. This is what stuck out:

1. The Ford logo on the Cricket score popup TV thing (but only because I blogged about it)
2. The 3 logos on the Australian players chests (paging Dr Freud)
3. Emirates was mentioned somewhere
4. BMW,
5. Mini,
6. and Lexus signage on the various car dealerships near work, although, I may only remember them because I see them every day
7. Visa signs on shop windows in the mall. I can’t visualise Mastercard signage, although I know it was there
8. Some posters for an event, but only because I took a photo of them, even then, I can’t remember the event’s name
9. There was a radio ad for those people who promise longer lasting censored, but I don’t know who they are without looking them up, and even then, I was only interested because of the billboard fracas (no, really)
10. There was probably a KFC ad on the cricket, but I can only vaguely recall it.

That’s all. I’m racking my brains, but seriously, that’s all.

Total brand recall: 1%

Total relevance of those ads I do recall to me

1. I won’t ever buy a Ford, unless it’s a vintage Mustang. Relevance Score: 0
2. I’m a happy (enough) Optus customer for now on a 24 month contract. I’m not switching to 3. Relevance Score: 0
3. I’m not going anywhere overseas for a while, but I would definitely consider Emirates. Relevance Score: 1
4. BMW, meh. I’ll buy one when I have children who won’t fit in a sports car. That will be a while. Relevance Score: 0.03
5. Mini, meh. I’ll buy one when I’m a real estate agent. Relevance Score: 0.
6. Lexus, meh. Relevance Score: 0
7. Visa; I have one, don’t need another one and don’t see any difference between them and Mastercard. Relevance Score: 0
8. Event posters I can’t name. Enough said. Relevance Score: 0
9. Longer lasting censored; doing quite well thanks. Relevance Score: 0
10. KFC. Would rather lick the floor outside a Brunswick Street kebab shop at 3am on a Saturday morning. Relevance Score: 0

Total relevance: 1.03/10

Add that up, and out of the 1,033 ads I saw that day, 1.03 of them were relevant. Which is, conveniently, 0.1%.

Very, Very Slightly Scientific Conclusion

The average consumer is exposed to around 1,000 ads a day. Out of those, only a handful, perhaps 1% will be remembered, and out of those, perhaps only 10% (0.1% of the total) will be relevant to that consumer. In other words, 99.9% of ads are irrelevant.

I can’t stress enough how unscientific this process has been, but surprisingly, the results have mirrored other slightly more scientific studies I have come across. Look out for more detailed results in Marketing Mag soon. In the meantime, start thinking of better ways to promote your product than advertising.

I’m going to write a detailed article about the results for Marketing Magazine which will be out soon, but some interesting points to note include:

• If you want to avoid seeing ads, underwater is a good option
• Commercial TV and Radio feel like an advertising wilderness compared to the Internet, or your typical city street corner
• It’s hard to count ads on TV because you’re so used to ignoring them
• Defining an ad is even harder

Stay tuned for more info and some ’scientific-style’ results soon.