Today we ask a panel of TV industry veterans about their favourite ads of all time and the campaign that they believe had the largest impact on Australian society. Few know Australian television as well as Harold Mitchell (Free TV Australia), Kurt Burnette (Seven West Media), Adrian Swift (Nine Entertainment) and Kim Portrate (Think TV).
What is your favourite TV ad of all time?
Kurt Burnette: ‘The Carlton United Big Ad was very clever and well produced. Yellow Pages, the Go Go and Not Happy Jan really helped us laugh at ourselves.’
Kim Portrate: ‘The body of work is the Qantas work. It taps into a sense of what it is to be Australian, it features our landscape beautifully and puts our kids front and centre. It taps into that national pride and sense of community done with beautiful music that is true and reflective of Australian culture.’
Adrian Swift: ‘You can’t beat a good jingle in an ad. I still watch the VB ads that a very old fashioned – ‘you can get it, you can get it driving a plough, as a matter of fact I’ve got it now’. And you can run those ads now ironically. I also think the Big Beer ad, Qantas’ I Still Call Australia Home and Louis the Fly is an old-school classic.’
Harold Mitchell: ‘It’s for a product called Holeproof computer socks and features a man throwing an apple up in the air. Socks before that time had elastic around the top to keep them up around the knee, but the elastic would cut of your circulation and you’d die! An engineer worked out how to get elastic running all the way up the sock to hold it in place. A creative fellow I worked with on the campaign, Lionel, invented the term computer socks and the brand absolutely took off. The lesson out of all that is that television can create a product out of almost nothing.’
Which TV ad has had the greatest impact?
Kurt Burnette: ‘The obvious one is Louis the Fly, it was when the real power of TV was realised. The Grim Reaper ad for AIDS changed perceptions, understanding and behaviour.’
Adrian Swift: ‘I really do like is the current Western Sydney University with the South Sudanese refugee who becomes a lawyer. That’s a really clever campaign and operates on a number of levels. It’s anti-bigotry and in favour of asylum seekers and what they can achieve but at the same a time a really clear ad for the university itself and the brand. The great political campaign was ‘It’s Time’ in 1972 and I think one of the great advertising campaigns was the anti-Republican campaign.’
In the November issue of AdNews magazine, we take a nostalgic look back at 60 years of Australian TV as well as what the future holds.
Harold Mitchell: ‘The ad with the biggest impact was the grim reaper HIV ad. It had a budget of only about $1 million and changed the whole of Australia at a time when people were worried about AIDS.’
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