The cuss Australia can't stop repeating

By IRENE CHAPPLE marketing writer

When the Toyota Hilux landed with a thump in 1999, the ensuing expletive reverberated around the world and launched an explosion of recognition for New Zealand's creative advertising talents.

The "Bugger" phenomenon sent waves through the global advertising industry, which chuckled at the irreverent humour, and wondered at the cheek of the New Zealand Saatchi & Saatchi creatives.

The original campaign is old news. Well, it should be, if it was not for the repeated reference to its success, three years later, to help explain the dominance of New Zealanders in CampaignBrief magazine's April display of top Australasian creatives.

For New Zealand agencies - particularly Saatchi & Saatchi - it is a line-up to draw more chuffed swearwords than back-to-back screenings of the Toyota advertisements.

The listings - based on award tallies - show that seven of the 10 best creatives are New Zealanders, (all Saatchi & Saatchi, five from the Wellington office) while the top two agencies are local - Saatchi & Saatchi and Colenso BBDO. The Auckland offices of DDB and Whybin TBWA also scoot in ahead of their Australian affiliates.

The industry's success is now gathering the attention of the Government.

A meeting last year between advertising representatives and Industry New Zealand's chair of the creative industries working group, Rob Arlidge, was a "very positive engagement", he says.

Arlidge says Industry New Zealand is waiting on a report, commissioned as a result of the meeting, suggesting ways to promote local advertising talent. Advertising - New Zealand's third largest creative industry - is being recognised in an overall push for creativity, initiated by the Knowledge Wave conference.

A few key factors contribute to New Zealand creatives' impressive reputation. The industry works in a small market where clients are willing to take risks and where decisions can be made on instinct, rather than through a convoluted approval process. Budgets are small, meaning simple, clever ideas are paramount.

And New Zealanders' laconic humour - as heartland as Lemon & Paeroa with fish and chips - repeatedly tickle the funny bone of the international advertising judges.

New Zealanders were highly acclaimed at last year's Cannes Lions show.

Bugger got a gold in 1999, and last year New Zealanders collected three gold, three silver and two bronze awards. It was a huge haul, equalling the wins of their Australian counterparts.

Australian industry magazine AdNews bemoaned the results. They showed "an indictment of the [Australian] industry ... which has five times the population and resources of its transtasman neighbour," wrote James Mackay.

"Although many Australian advertising executives blame unadventurous clients for lacklustre campaigns, the real reasons for the malaise include the disempowerment of creative minds and reduced margins, which lead to fear of innovation."

Andrew Jaffe, executive director of the Clio global awards festival Clio, says "there is something going on in New Zealand which, considering the market is about quarter the size of Australia, is very significant".

He believes New Zealand's success - it won three Clio statues last year, two fewer than Australia, but up with the Netherlands and Hong Kong - is a result of high standards self-imposed by the industry.

"It's not enough for an agency to hire good people, it has to push them to do great work, and then fight that work through the approval process with the client, and sometimes with the media. Eventually the buzz gets so great, clients start to have an appetite for better work," says Jaffe.

In Australia's AWARD show last year, Auckland's Colenso BBDO scooped the biggest award count, almost doubling the six accolades received by Australia's best performer, Melbourne M&C Saatchi.

Last year's AXIS Awards chairman, Australian Jack Vaughan, was so enthralled by the New Zealand phenomenon he offered to write down 10 reasons the New Zealand industry does better.

Those theories have yet to make print, but the adman's faith in the qualities of the New Zealand market is worth noting.

Last year, New Zealand advertising spending as collated by the Advertising Standards Authority reached $1.6 billion. Australians had A$8.39 billion ($10 billion) to play with. Per head of population, the Australian figure is about 25 per cent more than New Zealand's.

But New Zealand's small budgets are seen as an advantage by many, including Colenso BBDO's Mike O'Sullivan, who notes that "research is nowhere near as common in New Zealand as it is in Australia ... As a result, we don't consult with the consumer on all the work produced in New Zealand. This leads to slightly more unexpected creative work."

Whybin TBWA's David Walden agrees, saying clients have to rely more on instinct than the so-called luxury of ad pre-testing. "Give me the instincts of an intelligent client over pre-testing any time," he says.

DDB's Jeneal Rohrback says Australians are stymied by too much research. "Death by a thousand cuts is a saying I'd use to reflect this disheartening process," she says.

O'Sullivan points out New Zealanders can not do major extravaganzas, and that forces clarity and simplicity of ideas which shine without hoovering up clients' cash.

There are other reasons for New Zealand's success over Australia.



CampaignBrief's first-equal ranked creatives, John Plimmer and John Fisher, from Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington, say local creatives' access to the client's decision-makers gives better results.

"With other countries you never get to the person who says yes," says Fisher.

"There are layers and layers of people who comment then come back and ruin your work, here you get a say."

Colleague Howard Greive, fourth in the creative rankings, reckons Australians are getting introspective about why they're missing out on awards. "They're wondering what they're doing wrong," says Greive. "As opposed to saying, 'You bloody bastards, we're going to beat you'."

Walden says New Zealanders should not get too smug.

Many of the local adpeople are expatriates, including Rohrback (American), O'Sullivan (Irish) and Fisher (British).

But all seem happy to claim New Zealander status.

Walden, who has worked on both sides of the Tasman, recalls a past discussion on the issue. "A creative director I once worked with suggested we look no further than the native bird life. The Aussie parrots are red, yellow and blue, quite pretty in a show-off kind of way, and they're everywhere and they squawk like buggery.

"The New Zealand natives, on the other hand, are black and blue and hard to see, but they sing beautifully somewhere deep in the forest."