Not with a bang, but a whimper: Australia’s continuing cultural cringe
Talk to anyone working in the field, and you will hear that the rise of branded entertainment represents one of the most interesting and important shifts in the world of commercial creativity.
But those same people will also tell you that in Australia, we aren’t much good at making it.
The rhetoric from the industry was largely that we’re sadly lagging behind our US and UK contemporaries.
Anyone you speak to who has created good work will tell you it happened against the odds.
Brave clients are seen as a rarity, even from those with a portfolio of case studies across brands. Successes are related like war stories, tales of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
The adland bubble is full of people (mostly foreigners) telling everyone that Aussies don’t get anything and everything, and we are doing it all way shitter than everyone overseas.
We heard it with digital. We heard it with social. We’re hearing it with branded content. And we’ll hear it with whatever comes next.
But inherent Australian corporate conservatism (and smaller budgets) means that by accident or design, few Aussie clients get suckered into spending money on the marketing “fad du jour”.
There is nothing wrong with not running after the latest marketing trend, sitting back calmly, watching the success and failures of others (with deeper pockets), and then only funding successful strategies on your own dime. (It’s called “fast following” and we laud it in every other industry but our own.)
the media regulations around “branded content” are pretty tough here in TV and radio in particular. That doesn’t help …