Marketing

            One of my favorite things about travelling is observing the different marketing campaigns whether I’m comparing them to their counterparts in the American scene or just looking at original marketing campaigns it is always enjoyable.

            The first thing I noticed was the vulgarity within the commercials and billboards. It goes hand in hand with the prevalence of swearing in the workplace and culture as a whole. Advertisements were bold to a degree I was not used too. Mostly loud and in your face with highly Aussie themes. A good example of this is a chip commercial that highlights the beach and grill life of many shoreline Aussies. Along with this, nudity is visible in many commercials on regular cable which is all but absence on American television.

            Many of the major brands that are globalized have an interesting take on multicultural advertisements. Popular brand spokespeople, like Progressive insurance for example, have Australian doppelgangers. They incorporate some of the major themes or characteristics from the American version and make it a bit more Aussie friendly.

            Social marketing campaigns were also something that I noticed off the bat. A major one, as I have discussed before, is the need for awareness about the illiteracy of the Aboriginal population. Throughout the public transportation and television commercials there are examples of campaigns such as this. A campaign that I actually got to do some work on through the Attorney General’s Office was the anti-graffiti initiatives. This involved billboards and ads to enlighten people about an anti-graffiti day that got people together to paint over old graffiti in an effort to dissuade people from continuing the practice.