Why the ‘Cate’ carbon tax ads miss the mark
May 31 2011, 3:48 pm | | 20 Comments
Rowan Dean dissects the Carbon Tax ad, which launched on Sunday, in today’s SMH, coming to the conclusion that from an advertising perspective, it’s pretty thin gruel.
20 Comments
I disagree with Rowan that Cate vampires the message. For me, she has got me thinking. I think of her as an intelligent, educated, thoughtful Aussie, and I know for her to put her name to anything, she must really believe in it.
It’s made me investigate what a carbon tax really means for the first time ever (yes, I am lazy and not very politically informed… just like a huge number of other Aussies out there who don’t watch the ABC regularly). I haven’t really understood it till now.
Also, I think the theatrical symbols are common advertising fodder and just simplify the message (don’t we always say an ad should be understood with the sound down? It is tele…’vision’).
I don’t think the ad is a fail. I think it kickstarts the debate in a populist way.
Rowan is spot on, but from the moronic, reactive comments of the great unwashed in the SMH on-line and even by 4:17 on this blog – where you might reasonably expect people to be able to differentiate between Rowan’s critique and the broader debate – you can see what a hopelessly unsophisticated audience the public is.
M.A.
Rowan Dean’s critique is rendered completely invalid by the very fact that Cate’s participation with the ad in question, and the ad itself are what stimulated his critique, which along with any number of comments by ‘regular’ Aussie citizens in all the major Australian papers, as well as in this blog are proof that they’ve done more than raise awareness, or ‘vampired’ the issue to direct it toward Cate’s involvement, but have truly invigorated the actual debate on climate change, pricing carbon, and how to administer a program that will lead to an emissions trading scheme.
Indeed, Dean is complicit in the strategy of the ad which was clearly to educate and inform the populace, who heretofore have been listening to the screaming class on populist radio Right and from the Liberal front bench, and encourage them to ask the questions of their politicians and of themselves about the issue of climate change and carbon pricing.
Mission accomplished, and all this under Rowan’s nose, while he was grandstanding for his clients, or maybe just trying to rustle some up.
@8:10 Washed and sophisticated isn’t what it used to be, apparently.
Wrong, 11:40. The awareness of the ad and the debate have not furthered understanding or acceptance of the issues, just focussed attention on Cate and, if anything, merely turned up the volume of the ignorant, bigoted, small-minded ‘screaming class’, as you so colourfully describe them. Just because an ad gets a reaction doesn’t mean it achieves its goal. Perhaps you too would be better able to judge this topic with the benefit of detachment.
The problem isn’t Cate. The problem is that the tax is controversial and no matter who you put in the ad, or what format it takes, there was always going to be some stabs at it.
@C&S 8:10, 9:36, et.al.
Where’s the evidence for your claim? Divination? Crystal ball gazing? Some secret market research you’ve done through your private institute?
Read the posts by hundreds of commenters to the various news articles on the topic from around the country and you’ll see that the debate about Carbon and it’s pricing, via Cate’s participation in large part but not about her participation is everywhere. In fact, I’d venture to say that her and Michael Caton’s rebuttals to the Right’s claims of illegitimacy by way of elitism have raised the stakes considerably with the simple lines that “I can’t look my children (presumably Michael’s grandchildren as well) in the face if I’m not trying to do something in my small way and to urge other people. Everyone will benefit if we protect the environment.”
She’s a Mum, and a famous one at that, and I’m guessing that her genuine appeal on that basis alone more than trumps any notion by you and Adam Ferrier, and Rowan Dean of her ‘vampiring’ the issue, and certainly counters very effectively the elitist, Hollywood, wealthy actress, out of touch smears by yes, the screaming class of talk show hosts but also politicians Abbott, Pyne, Joyce, and their mob, who are out of touch on the very reality of climate change and the urgency of the cause to abate it.
Maybe you should be a bit more engaged, as your clean, sophisticated detachment has rendered you helpless to see the real effects of the message that these courageous Australians have signed on to make on all our behalves.
The ad just says yes to a tax. Elmo can do that! All the public wants to know is how a tax on carbon is going to reduce emissions and not increase our price of living. Explain that and I’m sure we all will say yes.
I’ll try to explain this patiently. If ever an ad had to be unarguably, incontestably persuasive, this was it. This ad had the extraordinarily difficult task of presenting the case for a Carbon Tax/Carbon Price. On a scale of 1 to 10, the degree of difficulty is probably a 10. But that’s the business we’re in. Ingenuity in solving marketing problems is what we’re paid for. That’s what genuine creativity is. Instead, this well-meaning but ultimately amateurish ad created an entirely different conversation to the one that’s needed. I don’t buy the argument that it created a genuine discussion of the critical issues in the community. I believe in this dumbed-down Channel 9/Daily Telegraph world, it ‘ll be remembered as the ‘Cate ad’ and the message -the need to act on climate change by putting a price on carbon – will be totally lost.
Kate comes across like a wealthy Monarchy snobbishly appealing with the working poor for money so that her children can stay in caviar.
Low blow bringing her children into the debate – I’d love to worry about the future environment for my children, I just have this dam distraction of having to worry about putting food on the table for them instead.
Wrong and out of touch – shame…
@C&S 8:10, 9:36, 2:43, et.al.
You just don’t get it, and by your rationale I think most of us will understand the role you play in our business. Effective advertising doesn’t inform or explain, it engages on an emotional level, on a psychological level. We don’t follow brands slavishly because they’ve been explained to us, or because of some retail sales pitch, we buy products, align ourselves to causes because of a message that impresses us, sometimes dazzles us, hopefully moves us, but most importantly compels us to follow it’s lead.
The ad’s task was never to present “the case for a Carbon Tax/Carbon Price”. That’s for a political position paper, a newspaper editorial, maybe even a political leader’s speech directly to the people of Australia on the issue. The goal of this campaign was and is to get people to think about what they can do personally to help save the planet from climate change, and the simple invocation from a charismatic person they all know and revere, as well as from some plain speaking and well informed people who’ve made it their goal to engage in the process of this cause was to say Yes. Say Yes as I have as a Mum, say Yes as we all should to our best option to halt the adverse effects of manmade global climate change and to take a leadership stance, as we all should in creating a new economy built of renewable energy.
Say Yes is an appeal to one’s better sense put forward by an honest broker whom we all know and admire. It’s simple, your patient explanations notwithstanding.
Bollocks, 3:28. Are you the planner on this?
When you lose your job as a Creative Director, best to try to bring other people down also.
@C&S 8:10, 9:36, 2:43, 4:16
Bollocks is right, ’cause that’s all you’ve done so far is show us yours, and they’re shrinking.
You’d think that an ad industry blog would bring out an educated and articulate audience by and large, as it would in most parts of the world, but it frequently feels as if one is speaking to the Flat Earth Society here in Oz by the responses we see far too often, especially on this subject and others like it (see Mining Tax). Apologists for big multinational corporate industry, how did you get into our creative business?
Exactly whose jobs in advertising are going to be placed in jeopardy by putting a price on carbon? If my energy bill were to double in the next few years, I’d be paying $1600 a quarter rather than the $800 now (which is as high as it is because of the privatisation of energy and the failure of any previous government to force energy providers into developing alternative renewable energy resources). Even at $260 more a month for gas and electricity, and this is without any of the household compensations that the government’s plan has repeatedly says they’ll incorporate into the program, forcing the burden of the revenue on to the energy providers, and encouraging them to then develop renewable alternatives, it’s a price that is reasonable to force the transition to a non-carbon based economy from the current dependence on coal and oil, which has economic disaster written all over it.
Wake up and stop your shilling for the mega rich. Attacking the ad for using Cate is the kind of misdirection play that one would expect from the Liberal party leaders sending their PR flacks out to do the dirty work. We should be better than that.
More people are on side with the government’s proposals because of this campaign, more people are talking about the issue in a reasonable, human fashion, and much of the demagoguery by the opposition is being rejected by the people because of this human approach to the reasons for saying Yes.
TAX is like cancer noone wants it but it comes to us all.
Could you sell cancer? no, can you sell the idea of Aussies already struggling to meet there bill payments the idea of paying yet more money out? no.
This ad could have a naked Katy Perry swinging dildos suggestively and it still wouldn’t be popular. NEXT
You idiot, 5:36. I am not arguing against a Carbon Tax. I am criticising the ‘Cate’ ad as a feeble inept response to a crucially important brief.
@C&S 8:10, 9:36, 2:43, 4:16,10:13
Your brief was clearly not their brief, and we’re all thankful for that.
By the way, it was 5:38, not 5:36. Your eyesight appears to be just about as good as your insight.
Thanks for clarifying that you were the so-called planner,10.55. Back to school, sonny.
@C&S 8:10, 9:36, 2:43, 4:16,10:13, 2:53
Bring your walker, your panty liners and your specs to the rally on Sunday at 11AM and see for yourself how effective the Say Yes campaign has been for Get Up and the rest of the environmental groups who are tired of letting the debate be dominated by the far Right, Alan Jones, climate deniers, Barnaby Joyce, Christopher Pyne, Tony Abbott, their choir leader Rupert Murdoch, and yes, sadly, old ad geezers who still think that a campaign brief for a public issue that demands real leadership in the face of hard choices and harder realities should focus upon information, and who never really understood that the only effective brief requires that the audience be inspired with an appeal that targets their emotions and their strong sense of doing what’s right for the environment and for the next generation.
See you there, if you wake up in time from your mid-morning nap.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/climate-action-now/nda-sydney/national-day-of-action-sydney
Yes nice spin, but what is the tax going to be spent on?
FMD
50,000 people across Australia’s major cities rallying to Say Yes thanks to a campaign with a simple, positive message fronted by a committed, well know and respected mother, who just happened to be a celebrity.
The deniers were silenced not by by a detailed explanation of the mechanism for pricing carbon, how compensation to average households would be formulated, the percentage of revenue collected to go directly to renewable energy development, nor even how a carbon trading scheme would be fazed in over time as the market adjusted to compensate for the price of pollution, but by an emotional appeal that allowed people to become part of a solution to the crisis of manmade climate change by taking the first step of supporting carbon pricing and clearly acknowledging their support for the settled climate science.