Dr Mumbo

In praise of copywriters

Sometimes Dr Mumbo likes to be marketed to.

A couple of excellent pieces of work hit his inbox this afternoon.

First, here’s a great press release from ABC2 for a timeslot move of The Roast, which is apparently some kind of current affairs show for younger people:

The Roast returning with all new 7:30pm timeslot

After a short break, ABC2’s daily news satire The Roast will move to 7:30pm to go head-to-head with ABC1’s daily current affairs flagship 7.30 – starting Monday 4th August.

“It’s about time!” says The Roast’s showrunner, Nich Richardson. “Finally, we’ll be competing with the big guys over on ABC1 to see who has our network’s premier current affairs coverage.”

“Our market research shows that taxpayers want more Photoshop jokes at 7:30pm, and Sarah Ferguson just isn’t delivering,” says Richardson, who is excited about the challenge.

“Who names their current affairs show after a timeslot? Everyone knows that real hard-hitting journalism comes from shows named after ways of preparing chicken.”

“I think Australian viewers deserve their hard-hitting journalism served with a side of graphic, traumatising violence,” said The Roast’s anchor, Tom Glasson, who this weekend accidently binge-watched the House of Representatives instead of House of Cards.

“And since Sarah Ferguson refuses to be harpooned by Japanese whalers or shot by David Leyonhjelm or set on fire, we’re a natural fit,” continued Glasson, who has been killed on his own show five times this year.

Despite the head-to-head timeslot, Sarah Ferguson appears to welcome the decision. When asked whether she was threatened by the young upstarts, the Walkley Award-winning journalist said: “Name the time and place, children.”

The move comes at a good time, however, as investigations show that The Roast is currently in breach of ABC2 charter rules, which clearly state: “Any timeslot after 8pm is strictly reserved for Louis Theroux and documentaries about people who want to have sex with cars.”

The Roast returns at 7.30pm Monday to Friday on ABC2, from Monday 4th August. It’s about time!

And also today came this rather nice EDM for Tooheys Extra Dry:

tooheys historyA whirlwind history of the TED bottle

So many great things happened in 1994. Telephone numbers got eight digits instead of six. The TV show “Friends” brought in record ratings. And Tooheys Extra Dry launched (back then known just as Tooheys Dry) 

In 2000, this amazing beer became known as TED. And the bottle looked like this. Look at that nostalgic green colour. It is possible the awesomeness of this bottle caused a chain reaction of events in 2000 including, but not limited to The Sydney Olympics, the Y2K bug not existing and the introduction of GST (ok, we were definitely not responsible for that one).

Three short years later, in 2003, the geniuses at TED went all out, and made the TED font run diagonally on the bottle. That’s right. Diagonally. Other notable events that year included the mighty Penrith Panthers winning the NRL grand final, a little horse by the name of Makybe Diva winning her first Melbourne Cup, and in Mexico, the last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line because, unlike TED, not all cultural icons can last forever. 

Ah, 2006 . What a bottle. Look at that stag, floating freely above the label with the amber behind him, almost like he’s bathing in it. It was so inspirational, the climate itself responded to the release of the new TED bottle in dramatic fashion with Sydney reaching 45 degrees on New Years Day. Perfect TED drinking conditions. 
It wasn’t just the weather that was going a little wild in 2006 Brazil sent their first person into space, Phil Mickelson threw down a sneaky 281 at the Masters, Facebook became available to all Australians, and YouTube started to take off, leading to wide circulation of cat videos and, 1 year later, the “Charlie bit my finger” video which now has over 740 million views on YouTube. 

That TED bottle was so popular it hung around for five years. When the wheels of change caught up in 2011 it brought us something quite special, a thinner bottle and stripey label. Same clean, crisp taste. 
The sporting Gods seemed to respond to this bottle. Cadel Evens won the Tour De France, QLD won the 2011Super Rugby, “Aussie Kim” Clijsters won the Australian Open, and actual Australian Sam Stosur won the US Open. As if that wasn’t enough, the Queen and President Obama BOTH visited Australia. Coincidence? We think not. 

Which brings us to our current TED bottle, released last year. There is an image above, but what you really want to do is go out and buy a cold one. Much better than looking at it. Oh… and no list of other events for 2013. If you can’t remember what happened last year, you’ve got some problems.

The message then goes on to introduce some sort of promo to win a Tooheys cooler, but Dr Mumbo won’t bore you with that. Still, it’s nice to know that the art of long copy is not dead.

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.