For any newly arrived marketing/advertising people in Australia, this article may help explain why 99.9% of all the creative you see is absolutely shit.

A country produces people and culture, and those people in their cultural realm in turn produce marketing and creative engagement in the media.

 

Thus in reverse, when you are looking at an out-of-touch yokel-style collective mindset and communications industry, together with its all-round high-irritant advertising and consumer engagement methods, it is a sign that the country itself needs to rethink some things.

Whether you’re eyeballs and eardrums are being lambasted by the hardly normal incessant yelling of in-your-face ‘discount retailing’ …

… whether you’re watching a fresh food person studiously kneading your forthcoming hot-cross bun dough with their bare hands

… or perhaps you’re just being subject to some of the ever-irksome lowest common denominator mundane moron imagery that slops around the place …

… no doubt you’ve become accustomed to muting, turning off, or separating yourself from your Australian TV set during commercials as an involuntary reflex – if you are “normal” ie you have traveled (and lived) elsewhere long enough to understand what it is you are seeing in Australia.

If you have an open mind and you are exposed to Australian TV advertising for long enough you should be able to identify an extraordinarily immature controlling elite of prehistoric cronies gleefully and self-indulgently engendering a kind of new-age American style sickness that infects the minds of the young, mostly white, kids who are to ‘inherit the throne’.

 

Well, they think will inherit the throne but they are grossly mistaken.

If you’re not a fan of TV, just take in some of the icons and symbols around the place, such as the coat of arms – here we have two essentially useless animals that do little more than destroy the environment and have not even the first clue about the concept of walking backwards.

Or try the most immature national anthem on the planet that essentially says nothing more than “Material wealth, the exploitation of nature, exclusivity and progress-at-all-costs constitutes the meaning of life.”

 

To cut a not-so-long story even shorter, the combination of isolation, mental rigidity and xenophobic egotism has created an out-of-kilter aspiration-based pathology across a caravan park that’s been spread across the biggest island on the planet (bearing only the population of one decent-sized city) that believes in its own imagination that it’s some kind of white supremacist world leader.

Despite the fact that Asia is the only thing holding Australia up, along with its majority contributors of Asian descent living in plain sight.

 

In any case let’s not be too harsh on our beloved Australia, I mean you can only do whatever you can do with what you are given, and my point is that Australia has not had much in the way of cultural capital to start a country with.

But certainly let’s be honest about the people problem as it stands right now, as Australia’s cultural capital has completely changed and is changing more each day – but no one has tapped the original colonist Australians on the shoulder yet and told them.

Q. What is the main driver of Australia’s “people problem”?
A. There are nowhere near enough people.

The main point here is that Australia needs an additional 20 million decent quality, reasonably intelligent, and culturally harmonious new citizens.

And it needs them yesterday.

Pursue any line of thinking or detail any problem related to the global, local, or glocal economy and Australia’s relationship to it, or try culture, societal health, regional strategy, GDP, jobs, transport, healthcare, road safety, the maintenance of tradition, a fair-go, whatever have you, and I assure you that an Australia with a quality population of around 40 million will at the very least decrease that problem, if not vanquish it entirely.

In the case of the marketing ecosystem, an appropriate market size and associated local economic health will produce, attract and pay better creatives and strategists etc, etc.

Australia, know thy self
Australia (the continent) is in Asia. Fact.

It’s identity is no longer a gun-toting stand-alone white renegade semi-criminal hero with the mind that “I do whatever I want and don’t care who anyone else is or where they come from”.

The “Australian” is changing as we speak, and changing in a very big way. Forever.

You only have to jump on any suburban train and observe some primary school children. (Tip: If you do lower yourself to jump on some public transport, it may help if you actually open your eyes, your ears, and even your mind – which leads to great strategy formation!)

 

They may not “look” Australian to you, but they certainly are.

Most importantly, millions upon millions of people from other parts of Asia will continue to arrive, study, and work with great vigour and spirit and in a civilised and harmonious manner, and rightly become Australian and in doing so change what it means to be Australian in the main. most dominant sense.

And really the sooner the better, because what I see when I look objectively at my beloved country as is an isolated garrison mine just north of Antarctica that might ‘box above its weight’ a little in the macro-economic sense due to natural resources, but only in order to cash up a couple of dozen fat cats families pigging out in their own little den of exclusivity at its apex.

While the Australian people are are denied the power of a decent-sized national economy and modernised infrastructure, workforce and society.

I’m not saying let any more boats in, I’m saying make more planes land.

Australia is in dire need of millions more consumers such as the open-minded studious people of Asian descent who are yearning to live here.

Billions more in localised cash flow dollars, and millions more healthy personifications of diet, work ethic, and civilised sturdiness and stoic thinking amongst its collective citizenry.

 

And ideally the ever-annoying reality to which Australian consumers are banished, ie The Great Australian Duopoly (ie having essentially no better choice than to sign up with or shop at one of the “big two” in almost every industry) will hopefully fade to a long-distant nightmare of our immature past.

And as for the marketing industry, well, for me, after 8 years in Japan preceded by 5 years in the UK, I can say that yes there is some great work produced in Australia sometimes, but it’s so rare that it gets flogged to death more than a riot-inciting pop song.

I mean date-stamping pillows is a great idea, but I just wish we could have moved on after the first six months of celebration and collective industry uber-gloat.

On a societal level, this expired form of cultural capital dominance by colonist Aussies, together with their denial of emerging changes and social currents will dissipate soon, which will include a couple of sudden sub-totals of realisation, or ‘moments of collective clarity’ for those in denial.

 

Maybe someone could suggest to Australia that there are only so many highways and sporting arena stands that can name after retired or deceased white people before it becomes a global joke?

Give an everyday example I hear you say?

Well, as pictured below, you can put up the biggest most expensive poster in the whole world of a white family to advertise a northern Sydney suburban shopping mall if you like, but it doesn’t change the reality of who shops there and actually lives in the catchment area, nor does it alter the identity, intentions or destiny of the ethnically diverse, now Australian, people who have to keep looking at such moronic crapaganda.

And worst of all, it doesn’t allow original settler Australians to change and integrate more newly arrived Australians, which so many culturally aware people in this country actually crave permission to do.

Above: The “Champion Family”. More than three quarters of the people frequenting this Australian shopping centre are of Chinese or Indian descent … um, perhaps they’re just not considered by advertisers as being ‘champion’ enough to feature?

The question is whether or not the people who founded modern Australia actually want to be a part of its future, and if they do then it’s a question of whether their collective ‘check-up from the neck-up’ comes soon enough. As one of them myself, I’m really hopeful such a wake up call does come soon.

Though I really do doubt if there is the capacity for collective objectivity and decisiveness to go against the grain and change things up.

It’s a monumental task of soul-searching, humility, maturity, cultural awareness, societal change and empathy, which to be frank is all but absent in so many of the people who need to do it.

In any case I could complain all day but better to suggest a solution.

One solution is that in the short and mid-term that Advertising, Marketing & PR can wake up to the Asian reality of Australia, to the cultural, societal and psychosocial pitfalls, strength and potentially solid future of the place in which they work and live, and start reverse-engineering some positive change and attitude adjustment.

Nothing too panicky or major, just measured yet concerted counsel to clients how the country is changing and how they’re best communicating to the collective to succeed and to gain a leadership position in Australian society.

At least it would be a very effective and very psychologically healthy start towards recovery from the stubborn cultural ditch the country is currently in thanks to we the small number of obstinate custodians who persist on continuing to live in denial.

In sum
Q: Australia, where the bloody hell are ya?
A: Under-staffed, under populated, culturally ignorant, and altogether “out to lunch” (and ingesting lard, sugar and salt in lethal quantities)

Ok let’s heal it all with a song
This is a song I’ve called “Terror Australis” (featuring mother nature as ‘the one’ true love). 🙂

May it remind all colonists that no matter how shit the country is that you’ve created, how lost you are, and how terrifying the future is with all these other people arriving, hope is not entirely lost…

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Sam Spencer

Couldnt agree more, cmon aussie cmon!!

Funny that the same thing happens with two big agencies dominating (or being thought of as the best) just like the Woollies-Coles problem!

Q: Where’s the next Bunnings?

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MF.com

Whoever it is aiming to catch the bolting horse of Bunnings (BW just announced a further 85 stores nationwide) had better be offering a second-to-none online shopping environment together with delivery service!

Reply

Tiff L

Some true, but mostly a bit too harsh Id say. Im proud to be Australian and happy to take the good with the bad. You?

Reply

Jerome

Population indeed, which highlights the madness of Mr Swan’s witch hunt and destruction of the living away from home allowance (LAFHA).
The hoards of incoming talent especially from the UK will reduce considerably from June 2012, well done Wayne what a great achievement.

-Never put finance in charge of talent or operations! 🙂

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