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The marketing geniuses working for Pepsi thought they'd struck upon a brilliant idea. Imagine the pitch: "Let's get Kendall Jenner at a protest, diffusing the tension by handing a Pepsi to the cops. We'll tag it Live Bolder. The ad will be a unifying moment. And the message will be: Pepsi brings people together."
Only it didn't.
Released in April 2017, as the Black Lives Matter movement was gathering a full head of steam, the marketing ploy did more harm to Pepsi's reputation than the marketing execs of rival Coca-Cola could have dreamed of. What was meant to be a feel-good message was interpreted as trivialising African American concerns, of portraying a life-and-death protest movement as a fun day out in the sunshine. The ad was immediately denounced, attracting its own, real protest.
The same year, Audi produced a commercial in which a Chinese mother-in-law-to-be inspected her son's bride at the altar, checking her teeth, nose, ears and chest - looking closely under the bonnet as it were. The ad crashed like a freeway pile-up, rightly scorned for objectifying women.
And this year, while we were being stung for ridiculously expensive airfares and the Qantas debacle was unfolding, the Flying Kangaroo released a schmaltzy commercial featuring a dutiful son flying home business class to surprise his mum at her 60th birthday party.
If the intention was to raise a tear, it missed the runway entirely, landing in a bog full of bad feelings about Alan Joyce, cancelled flights, lost baggage, the near impossibility of using COVID-era flight credits and vast profits. No surprise then that new CEO Vanessa Hudson has engaged an outside consultancy to try to repair the airline's damaged reputation.
What these failed campaigns have in common is an abject failure to read the room.
Judging from fresh polling, the campaign for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is headed in the same direction, with support for the "yes" vote slipping even further behind and, worryingly for Anthony Albanese, the PM's approval rating eroding into negative territory. He may have read the room full of Labor supporters on election night, when he committed to putting a referendum on the Voice to the Australian people in his first term. But he failed to read that other, much more important room - middle Australia - when he made that commitment.
And in the 18 months since that election night, the PM has managed to achieve something many would have thought impossible - he's breathed life into Peter Dutton, perhaps the most wooden opposition leader this country has ever seen. And all because he's failed to explain in plain language what it is he's trying to sell the Australian electorate.
This is a tragedy of Albanese's own making - not helped by poor branding, laid down in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. "A voice to Parliament" is hard to conceptualise. Until last year, most Australians thought of the Voice as a talent quest on commercial TV. Only recently has Albanese begun to use words - like "advisory committee" - to explain what it would be. Too little, too late.
The room he failed to read was hungry for detail. It wanted to know how the Voice would be structured, what its powers would be, how much it would cost. But instead it was given soft soap - about being the modesty of the proposal, its generosity, about being on the right side of history - rather than a detailed legislative plan.
The lack of detail handed the "no" campaign its slogan: "If you don't know, vote no."
And now, four weeks out, not even the entry of John Farnham's stirring You're the Voice into the armoury of the "yes" campaign is likely to convince a sceptical and exhausted electorate. One poll indicates support for the "yes" vote has fallen since the song entered the campaign.
Further proof that marketing doesn't always get the intended result.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you think Anthony Albanese could have done a better job selling the idea of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament? Will the Voice succeed or fail? Did the PM fail to read the room when he committed to the Voice referendum in this first term? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The Greens have agreed to support the Albanese government's signature social and affordable housing package after months of stalled negotiations, putting aside demands for rent freezes and caps but vowing not to stop fighting.
- Illiteracy could cost the Australian economy up to $44 billion per year as almost half of all adults struggle to read, a new report suggests. An investment of $942 million in five measures to improve reading instruction in schools would deliver a $12 billion return, according to the "Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia" report commissioned by the Code Read Dyslexia network.
- The number of drowning deaths in Australia has dropped over the past year, but lifesaving groups fear a hot summer season will lead to a lift in fatalities. The 2023 National Drowning Report showed 281 people died from drowning in Australian waterways and swimming pools in 2022-23, a 1 per cent increase on the 10-year-average but a drop from last year's 339 drownings.
THEY SAID IT: "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter Drucker
YOU SAID IT: The surveillance state arrived years ago. We carry one of its tools in our pockets.
Lee writes: "I am not so worried about cameras being everywhere. They don't make me feel safe because they are used after an incident, I don't think they have a proactive service attached to them. However, I do have fun with some of them. If I am with my hubby I turn his back to the camera and grab his butt. Given we are both in our 60s I hope someone gets a good laugh from an older woman groping her man."
"Rural communities need no surveillance cameras: we have The Grapevine," writes Ken. "Now she's 'graduated' from driving in the paddock I've been out on our remote country road with my daughter (a few months short of her 16th birthday) with the L-plates on. Of course she can't yet get a learner's licence though she's read the rule book - so yes we are outside the law. But I've had messages from two sources that someone knows we're bending the rules and will report us to the police, or Crimestoppers. Who? Dunno. Why don't they just give us a call? Dunno. Big Brother? Big Sister? They are there. Of course if we do the right thing we have nothing to fear, in China, in Sydney, or in a little rural community. If The Right Thing doesn't fit with common sense, we break the rules, if we dare. Alas, we are back in the paddock. Cheers and thanks for the daily stimulus."
Arthur writes: "There is no point in worrying about our loss of privacy. The horse has already bolted. There is no use crying over spilt milk. Echidna, you forgot to mention that television broadcasters seem to know what television channel we are watching. I wonder how they know. The next generation of smartphones will read our brain waves without a head band. The only way to regain our privacy is to dispatch all smartphones along with iPads, security (surveillance) cameras and computers to the rubbish tip. That is not going to happen."
"I try hard to preserve my privacy," writes Maggie. "I don't do social media. I don't have a smartphone - my old dumbphone serves me well. I wear a COVID mask in shopping centres. The reasons given for surveillance make sense - crime prevention, public safety - but purpose creep is creepy. I have nothing to hide except the essential me, but that is reason enough."
Murray writes: "Yes, I am concerned by the presence of security cameras everywhere and don't believe they have made us any safer and Australians are far too relaxed about the stealthy erosion of our privacy. The principal beneficiaries of all this are big brother governments and greedy corporations, not the average citizen in the communities of our once great country. People need to get back to taking some responsibility for themselves and their actions and not expecting the governments or someone else to make their decisions for them."
"I'm in Burnie, northwest Tasmania and I'm not prepping," writes David.