Does anyone else despise the SA Great ads?

[stumpjumper]

The snakes and ladders ad is dodgy in a number of ways.

For a start, if you read the stuff churned out by the experts in the SA Great/Premiers Dept ivory tower you realize that the choice of this board game as a basis for the promotion is an intellectual follow-on from the thrust of the previous campaign: ‘SA is fiercely competitive’.

Remember that campaign? Well in the corridors of SA Great/Premiers Dept it was the talk for weeks, therefore everyone else must have been aware of it too…

The choice of snakes and ladders carries on the idea of competitive advantage, but injects fun and humour. It’s a game! It might be a game if you’re a securely employed public servant earning plenty with fantastic conditions, but presenting important decisions about business and quality of life as a game when we're heading into the worst recession in memory is at least questionable.

What’s more, the choice of snakes and ladders as the game metaphor is odd. At first glance (and a glance is all a lot of people will give the promotion so it has to work at that level) ‘snakes and ladders’ might say ‘negatives and positives’.

What a sales pitch. ‘Sir, let me tell you the negatives and positives of owning this car…’

A minor point, but the minor points add up, and it wouldn’t be the first time the bureaucrats have got a promotion drastically wrong – look at the national ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ tourism campaign. It turns out the message people got was ‘No-one’s coming here any more.’ So they thought, why should I go then? Everyone else can’t be wrong. The only winner was Matthew Clarke, who got Laura Bingle.

The information in the ad is suspect too. As has been pointed out, statistics can be misleading, to say the least.

The ad suggests that SA has the cheapest housing in mainland Australia. How does that line up with the 3rd quarter 2008 figures of the 5th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey 2009, which claims SA has the 12th least affordable housing in the world. Perhaps more prospective immigrants to SA would read such surveys than would see the SA Great ad.

Here’s a link for the survey: http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf

That brings up another point. What is the purpose of showing the ad to South Australians? Maybe the scheduling of ads here indicates the real purpose of the ads. They are a none too subtle ‘feel good about ourselves’ effort by our media savvy government in the leadup to the March 2010 election. You can almost see the puppet strings, leading back to the clever media managers in the premier's huge Media Unit.

Have a look around the SA Great site.

http://www.sagreat.com.au/membership/membership-news

Numerous lunches and launches; lots of events, wineries, Kangaroo Island – you get the idea,

At least someone at SA Great has twigged that the organization should be promoting SA to people outside the state, rather than to those who are already here. Even so, that idea is presented as a brilliant new strategy. Hmm. On the site goes, heavy with jargon about 'brand positioning' and so on. The people concerned could spout the stuff in their boozy sleep, between lavish lunches and launches.

By the way, note also that the list of current SA Great members is not available on the 'current members' link. I queried SA Great. ‘Commercial confidentiality’ I was told. How many times has the government used that smokescreen? It's universal, like 'computer error'.

I hate to hammer the same point, and I probably did go over the top complaining here about what I see as the dominant voice in public life being the orchestrated one of the Premier's Department/SATC/SA Great etc clique, or combine. But after all, the government's management structure controls the whole conglomerate through the simple mechanism of funding/housing/superannuating its officials, and their constant flood of media releases reflects the fact.

I am really pleading for other, fresh voices to be heard. Fresh voices may even prevent mistakes and give us better government. Look at the $100 million wasted on the unnecessary and failed wine centre. There were plenty of people begging the government not to go ahead with it, but they were ignored. Moreover, SA Tourism, SA Great and the rest of the government managerial caste wanted it, as they would want any new edifice. SA Tourism and the Adelaide Convention and Tourism Authority even pushed a Park Lands site for any wine centre rather than the more logical Waite Institute site because the Hackney site was within walking distance from the Hilton and the Hyatt!! In the short time the centre was losing thousands a week as a wine centre, how many people made that trip on foot? Three? Remember, too, that SATC estimated 'visitations' to the wine centre at about 3000 per week! In fact, the centre struggled to get 5% of that.

Ironically, the Premiers Dept, SATC, SA Great etc are now principal users of the building for their launches, lunches and dinners. It's like John Bannon's move into a penthouse in Garden East - a development salvaged from the disaster of Bannon's State Bank. The sales in the Garden East development were a tiny repayment for the tens of millions of public money lost by State Bank subsidiaries Beneficial and Oceanic Capital on the site.

Wayno is dead right - a change of government probably will not result in these fresh voices and new angles. The 'ruling clique' is well-entrenched, and well protected. We can only hope.

[Will]

Regarding the marketing of the state, although it has improved a little bit in recent years, with the abandoning of the 'secrets' campaign in favour of the SA a brilliant blend', I am saddened that not more progress has been made. For example I was indignant when I read that the new head of tourism would use wine to sell the state. Haven't they being using wine for around 100 years?! This type of thinking shows the lack of fresh ideas.

The reputation that Adelaide has is sort of like the school nerd. And the current ads such as the ones featuring Keith Conlon or the snakes and aldders ad are akin to the school nerd getting up on stage in front of his peers and telling everyone "I am excellent at chess, I like wearing socks and sandals and I refused to kiss a girl because I didn't have a chaperone." For us to lose our negative reputation we need a 2 pronged attack. On one level we have to stop making embarrasing decisions (i.e. denying planning apporval to the tram line extension because of a few trees) but also fresh ideas in the marketing department. I think it would be best if the money wasted on such ads was spent instead on ads telling people interstate about the events in Adelaide. Getting people here during our great and exciting events will do much more for improving our reputation that getting an elederly man to tell us how 'world class' we are.

And regarding the above comments from SJ. The reason why the wine centre failed was because of its location. It is in the backwaters of the Botanic Garden. Building it at urrbrae would have been an even worse location because who the hell is going to go to Urrbrae to visit it?

[stumpjumper]

I suggest that wherever the thing were built it would not get visitors.

For a start, as a 'product' it was badly researched. It had very little support from the industry, and was basically a solution for which there was no problem.

And remember the admission price of $19? That didn't help either.

I think the building owed more to a government (Lib in this case) 'edifice complex' than anything else.

The wine industry and the tourism industry would have been better served by a 'virtual wine centre' with a comprehensive web site suitably back-ended and licenced to make it capable of wine sales and with a free 'kiosk' , ie internet touchscreen, in every winery and wine shop. Every winery, variety of wine and booze outlet in Australia could have been featured on the site, which would have been accessible around the world.

Promotion could have included postcards about the site in every case of wine sold in or exported from Australia, and a pointer on every bottle label, with the support of the Wine and Brandy Council r whatever the body was: 'Visit ozwinecentre.com'. A much smaller physical centre at Waite would at least have had some synergy with the oenology course up there, and would have been no worse a site in most aspects than the Hackney site.

[crawf]

Go away.

[Shuz]

Here's five bucks. Shoo.

[Cruise]

I believe this should be our new advertising campaign:

[Shuz]

I think we actually should.

[monotonehell]

I believe this should be our new advertising campaign:

I think that particular advert is embarrassing. "Victoria is shit, stay away from our beer." How rude is that? The advertisers should be ashamed.

It's just as bad as the recent comments from interstate politicians in the media regarding Adelaide.

[Aidan]

I believe this should be our new advertising campaign:

I think that particular advert is embarrassing. "Victoria is shit, stay away from our beer." How rude is that? The advertisers should be ashamed.

It's just as bad as the recent comments from interstate politicians in the media regarding Adelaide.

Why? Everyone knows the stay away from our beer message isn't meant to be taken seriously - rather like ad where they switched the signs at the roundabout because they didn't want the ice cream bars to leave Queensland.

And state rivalries have long been used to sell beer. Since most of the non local beer sold in SA comes from Victoria, they're the ones to diss. And since they're not averse to dissing us, what's the problem?

[monotonehell]

Why? Everyone knows the stay away from our beer message isn't meant to be taken seriously - rather like ad where they switched the signs at the roundabout because they didn't want the ice cream bars to leave Queensland.

And state rivalries have long been used to sell beer. Since most of the non local beer sold in SA comes from Victoria, they're the ones to diss. And since they're not averse to dissing us, what's the problem?

Because it works both ways, and we are above that. Also the actual ad is devoid of comedic timing and the bloke at the end acts like an idiot. Poor idea, poorly executed.

[Zills]

best ad ever period

[peas_and_corn]

Pity Worst End is owned by a Victorian brewery which is in turn half owned by the Japanese...

[Aidan]

Pity Worst End is owned by a Victorian brewery which is in turn half owned by the Japanese...

It's not owned by a Victorian brewery. It's owned by a Lion Nathan, which is NSW based and also has breweries in Queensland, WA and NZ.

[peas_and_corn]

Pity Worst End is owned by a Victorian brewery which is in turn half owned by the Japanese...

It's not owned by a Victorian brewery. It's owned by a Lion Nathan, which is NSW based and also has breweries in Queensland, WA and NZ.

I stand corrected. I get LN and CUB mixed up a lot, seeing they both produce identical products.

[Dorfian]

where do we stand on this ad, chaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLDhA4lbSQc