Gruen Transfer Pitch - Anti Tourism

With the Gruen Transfer coming to an end I fgured it was only fair to finish off by critiquing the final pitch. The almost impossible pitch this time was to make an anti tourism plan for Australia.

Pitch 1 By Grey Worldwide



Overall all I have to say to this ad is that I really am disappointed in it. This is meant to be experts putting out awesome effective advertisements. However what I see here is a failure with only one semi redeeming moment being that in the humour of the demigod comment.

It is not simple a single reason as to why I find this to be an ineffective ad and because of this I shall break up each bit and explain them separately. The first aspect is that it takes too long saying how great Australia is before getting into the actual point. It's 40 seconds in before they actually turn it around to their main point. If this were a real advertisement then you face the issue of people only getting half of the message and then leaving the room. Despite the fact that the advert has not been effective enough to maintain your full attention it is still possible for you to retain part of the message you did receive. Thus it is possible that in certain cases this ad would have an adverse effect .

The other part I have an issue with is that it directly insults the intended target. The spokesperson for the ad said it tried to play on insecurities yet this is obviously too far past the line of acceptable which would make all people who were the intended target and actually saw to the end would grow angry at the endorser. Now there is one issue here. You're encouraging anti-tourism...so who do you get angry at? Who benefits from such a thing? Although however this may be considered irrelevant because it all basically boils down to if someone pisses you off you are inclined to do the opposite of what they say. With just how beautiful the first half made Australia you may just go and do it even though without the ad you may have not considered it.

So overall my opinion is that the first half is a failure and so is the second half.

Pitch 2 - The Glue Society



I am much more pleased with this ad overall. Even though this group utilize the same sort of build up and then hit you with insecurity, they manage to do it so much better and thus make it work. Thus proving that an idea itself may not be bad, it could just be in the action of said idea.

The play on insecurity is perfect. It isn't insulting at the slightest, it is simply stating a fact. Yet it is the perfect fact. Big open spaces. The obvious fear tourists face is getting lost. The fear in getting lost of course it what could happen when you get lost, and in that fear death is always the scariest bit. It has set you up for exactly that line to scare you out of Australia and if I didn't live here myself I'd probably be scared too.

If this were on normal tv it would be perfect. This is because once you've seen it then you'd be looking at the ad with new eyes for every next repeat viewing. Every scene you'd look at and notice little aspects and be like 'Wow, a body could easily go in there! 0.0;'. Now this does sound horrible, but the thing is this all happens in your head where you're much more susceptible to such thoughts without blaming the ad for going too far.

I do love the final line though. It is incredibly witty to use the line that Australia itself used unsuccessfully. Then the inclusion of the final word 'buried?' hits you back to the point at hand. If anything I think it would be incredibly effective as a scare campaign.

Now it almost goes without saying that I'd have to pick No 2 as the winner personally. The Gruen panel also chose the Glue Societies entry which makes me feel that I'm not 100% talking out of my arse here.

Unfortunately this weeks was the last Gruen Transfer episode of this series so it will be a while before I can critique any more pitches. I'll have to actually resort to real ads. In the final episode the ad of the year was also revealed in that of Gorilla by Cadbury. I really like the ad myself. I'd explain it but I'm actually tempted to critique it so I may just save it for another post.

Anyway I hope you all enjoyed this post and if you have any comments feel free to post them