Each Australia Day brings a flurry of patriotically slanted ads replete with visual and audio cues which attempt to remind people what it means to be an Australian. January is filled with brands attempting to engender a positive association by tapping into an intangible concept: Australian identity.
Into this fold of your usual supermarket fare about Australia Day specials (drinking game tip: take a shot every time you see a flag) and the long-running Meat & Livestock Australia Sam Kekovich campaigns is thrown a high-profile effort by multinational restaurant chain McDonald’s.
Given the contested space of what it means to be ‘Australian’ in our multicultural, diverse and ever-evolving cities and towns, how does the average consumer respond to corporate brands which try to leverage something as multi-layered and almost abstract as the Australian identity?
“It is a good strategy for brands to utilise. Australians love it when brands try to capture the national sentiment and be part of the national conversation. It’s good for global brands to celebrate why they’re part of the Australian identity,” social researcher Neer Korn said. “When we’ve shown consumers an ad which tries to do that, it’s heavily supported by them. They appreciate that the brand has made an effort and Australians go for it.”
The McDonald’s campaign, which involved the renaming of several outlets to Macca’s, has generated considerable buzz locally and overseas. That an American corporate conglomerate would agree to alter its internationally identifiable Golden Arches surprised consumers and industry alike – at least according to McDonald’s Australia and New Zealand chief marketing officer Mark Lollback.
“We’re passionate about being locally relevant. We’re linked into communities, we’re run by Australians and the restaurants are owned and managed by Australians,” Lollback said. “We’ve been blown away by the response. The chatter and discussion on social media have been extremely positive.”
On the abstract nature of Australian identity, Lollback argued it has already been defined: “Of course people have different interpretations of it. It’s complex, multicultural and there are certain expectations of behaviour and core values around mateship and fairness.” He said the current campaign is designed to represent Australia today, evidenced by the prominent inclusion of an Asian family in the ad.
However, Lollback believed that a link between a brand and Australian identity must not be artificial. “More than half of the country already refers to McDonald’s as Macca’s by default. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have gone out and manufactured it,” he said.
Not everyone was convinced McDonald’s had pulled it off. Murdoch University associate professor Steve Bellman, who is the deputy director of Audience Labs, said neuroscience research demonstrated consumers buy into brands not just for their utility but also for emotional connections and cultural associations to those brands.
“A lot of brands are trying to create greater attachments so it’s harder for their competition to pick them off,” Bellman said. But, he argued,Australians know which brands are theirs and it can be problematic for an international player to muscle in on the action. “If you have a history where people connect you to America, you’re throwing away one of the reasons people are buying you in the first place.”
Bellman said home-grown brands such as MLA have traction because they have greater authenticity. The MLA lamb campaigns have made the often-loaded term ‘un-Australian’ their focus, but MLA group marketing manager Andrew Cox said humour has always been the anchor.
“It’s a fine line. Obviously over the years it’s been a controversial topic and it’s controversy we’ve attempted to stir up. We need to encourage Australians to keep their tongues firmly in cheek, which is the Australian way,” Cox said.
“Each year there are things which occur that make Australians debate what the true nature of our society is. We try and stay out of the political discourse and away from issues such as race. We’re looking for examples of ‘un-Australianisms’ that Australians can laugh at and laugh at themselves with.”
This article first appeared in the 25 January 2013 edition of AdNews, in print and on iPad. Click here to subscribe for more news, features and opinion.
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