Bill Leak cartoon and smashed avocado column focus of The Australian’s new marketing campaign
The Australian has kicked off a new marketing push drawing on the title’s image and cartoon archive, including Bill Leak’s controversial Aboriginal fathers cartoon.
The campaign, which kicked off today and is running across television, digital and within the newspaper itself, features different images to highlight the newspaper’s coverage of various events and introduces the new positioning for the News Corp-owned newspaper “For the informed Australian”.
Speaking to Mumbrella, The Australian CEO Nicholas Gray said the campaign is a response to the wider world context, including the rising notion of fake news, and the role of journalism within that.
The choice of Leak is revealing. His work rarely punctures any balloons of the powerful. In this case he chose to promote the issue of parenting when the news event concerned abuse of kids in detention by the warders.
The Oz runs agendas, it does not promote debate.
Spot on. The Australian has a right-wing agenda so appalling it’s unreadable. Politicised rubbish like this, pretending to be news, belongs in the era when Murdoch was kingmaker. I met Bill at the beginning of his career — at his first exhibition of mostly leftie political stuff. What the hell happened? Did the Australian radicalise him?
I look forward to Leak producing a cartoon reflecting the late-night alcohol-fuelled violence in Sydney, just as a cultural counter-point.
The campaign does what it does pretty well.
Personally I’d feel pretty sick if I had to work on such a publications so awful it thinks Bill Leak or his work has any place in proper debate.
Great to see that in this new digital age, with print media slowly dying and been replaced with unreliable junk online, that our last remaining broadsheet (in both proportions and attitude) is not taking it lying down. A welcome response compared to fairfaxes sad whimpering into oblivion…
Wel said.
Well Said.
Murdoch Press Double talk…
For “Provoking Debate” read “Telling you what to think”
For “Decoding The Complex” read “Dumbing down to a few soundbites”
For “facts that aren’t alternative” read “For opinions masquerading as facts”
Few publications have done more to dumb down and discredit journalism that The [Un]Australian and no amount of advertising will fix it.
Well Said.
I think it’s a nice campaign
shame that commenters up above feel the need to let their leftist agendas towards the brand colour their comment about the merits of the campaign.
Yeah, how dare people bring politics into an assessment of this campaign that’s all about their politics.
When a paper and it’s owner fire their right wing agendas aggressively towards the public in a way that intentionally misinforms, and intentionally aims to build hatred and division – how can politics NOT come into it?
I’m all for people expressing their political opinions regardless of side, but that has to go both ways. In the news print media today you pretty much get one mans opinion forced onto you, that isn’t debate, that isn’t decoding, that isn’t factual.
Which one man forces their opinion on you in The Oz? Phillip Adams? Peter van Onselen? Graham Richardson? Paul Kelly?
Yeah, because The Australian is renowned for its diversity of views – unless right-wing, more right-wing, incredibly right-wing count!
Was this art directed in PowerPoint? It looks like the last throw of the dice to get something out…