Advertisers can be be proud about Australia Day, but it’s a big challenge
Review Partners' Paul Costantoura takes a look at Egard Watches' recent Gillette ad response, and considers what it means for all brands this Australia Day.
The recent response by the Egard Watches brand to reflect on what is good about a man has drawn the usual polarising responses. However, it also has lessons for our own debate about Australia Day advertising.
As a nation Australians have always been confused about out identity and advertisers have struggled to capture it in advertising.
Go back a few decades and most Australians felt we were defined either by our British origins or by the concept of ‘a multi-cultural nation’. Telstra advertising suggested ‘True Australians’ had relatives who lived in a farmhouse with big verandas and corrugated iron roofs. Everyone else made a long distance call to the folks in the village on the hill in the old country, or perhaps to central London.
Indigenous people tended not to have the recognition and respect they have today. There were few high profile success stories and the prevailing view of Indigenous communities was that they were disadvantaged and welfare dependent. Indigenous people were largely absent from our screens, in entertainment or advertising apart from token stereotyped roles.
On all these fronts things are different today. We are still confused about our identity, and attempts at expressing Australian identity usually draw heated criticism from at least one strident segment of the population.
But there is a greater sense of pride in being Australian, including in the diversity of our origins and our reputation throughout the world. Indigenous people are now far more recognised and respected for their achievements, culture, history and contribution to Australia than ever before. We can’t ignore the continuing tragedy of gaps in life outcomes for Indigenous Australians in mortality, health, education and incarceration, but Indigenous people have a much stronger voice than ever before.
So what does that stronger voice mean for advertising around Australia Day?
Since the end of last century Australia Day has become a focal point for thinking about what it means to be Australian. Brands started to warmly embrace ways to help us look at ourselves as we are, with humour and pride. The lamb industry led the way with successive campaigns, helping us reflect on what we were becoming as a nation.
Over the past few years, that has declined to a point where advertisers are now scared to even mention Australia Day for fear of the social media backlash. Media commentators have warned them that the tide is turning against brands – with no real basis in fact for their claims.
Our national research studies in 2017 and 2018 have shown that Australians are ready to embrace a greater recognition of Indigenous culture, history and contribution to Australia. They also show there is a very limited desire to change the date of Australia Day even if they have the facts of history explained to them.
Last year we found a very low level of support throughout the population for triple J’s decision to move the date of the Hottest 100, even though it was stronger among 18-24 yr olds. Linking this with a person’s political preferences explains why both Liberal and Labor leaders are standing back from the issue – because there is limited electoral support for the change (except among Greens voters).
This year we will again track changes in attitudes and how people spent Australia Day. We’ll also look in more detail at the segments that make up the population and how this influences attitudes towards changing the date.
There is little doubt that the extreme negative symbolism attached to Australia Day is preventing many Australians and brands from feeling like they should openly proud of all the things that make Australia great on Australia Day.
The more important question is whether this also has the potential to set back progress on reconciliation and equality of outcomes by creating greater divisions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
At the heart of the debate is whether the strong voices would be better directed at recognising the shared pride that should should represent a bond between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Whether we should be looking for and celebrating the great things about the past and present of both cultures in Australia today.
The current focus on Australia Day is that it represents all that is bad about our nation’s history. The challenge for Australian brands is to stand apart from the crowd, perhaps consider Egard’s ad and express their own version of shared pride in Australia, without being scared of an apparent social media backlash.
Paul Costantoura is CEO and research director at Review Partners.
70% of Australians do not want to change the date of Australia Day.
Its the message that counts. It should be a celebration of the unification of Australia as a nation of many tribes, but if people want to put a divisive spin on it for political point scoring then its a case of “you can please some of the people some of the time but you can’t please all the people all of the time”.
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I’m not convinced by the widely reported figure: i.e. 70% don’t want to change the date. I think that perhaps many believe if we change it we’ll lose a public holiday! Having said that most white Australians have very little insight into how deeply affected the celebration of Cook’s landing is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I’d certainly like to see that changed.
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I’m not sure the Egard watch ad is that “polarising”? When I watched the video, it had 1% dislikes on youtube (288,000 likes vs 4,000 dislikes)…
And going through the youtube comments, they seem to me to be overwhelming positive?
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That’s odd.
I heard that 91.5% of Australians found it hard to believe that 70% of Australians do not want to change the date. About as reliable as IPA’s 71% figure. (Nah, I just made it up with a quick whip-around some non-IPA friends.)
Australia Day was only gazetted in 1994. We made a change then – we can make a change now.
You might say that is pedantry, but January 26, 1788 was the proclamation of British sovereignty over New Holland – not Australia. Matthew Flinders did use the term “Australia” during his circumnavigation of the continent in 1804 (with Bungaree at his side the entire voyage).
Australia did not officially become a nation until January 1, 1901. We made a change then – we can make a change now.
Our nation needs to look towards the future and not gaze wide-eyed to the past while not admitting all of our history.
It’s like driving a car – you have less trouble and a smoothed trip if you look through the windscreen that just look at the rear-view mirror.
As long as it is a national holiday (we Aussies love a day off) most people won’t give rats as to what the new date will be as long as it is sensitively chosen. Personal view – when the inevitable happens Queens Birthday weekend becomes Australia Day and an opportunity for a more amenable date.
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When are you going back to England ?
Shut up then.
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