Where women are real men

Whose truth is this? New Zealanders love the land. They love being in it, doing things on it. New Zealanders go barefoot or in jandals because they want to be as close to the land as possible. They love the outdoors so much that when they invite you into their house they immediately take you outside again. They like to run on the streets.

For New Zealanders the land represents everything that is pure and authentic. It's. the essence of who we are. We love it so much that we fear losing it which is why we get so upset about foreign ownership and Maori claims to the foreshore.

But Australians see the land as something to be tamed. The relationship to the land is more rugged, in the Marlboro Man tradition. The land is something to be observed, or crossed, not something to integrate with. Australians have a fear of the land because it's much more harsh and hostile. In Australia it's the people who create the land, the big continent. Australians have a psyche of populate or perish. They don't fear growth.

Buy it or not - and being from an advertising agency they hope you do - these are some of the results of an eight-month study by FCB New Zealand. Chief executive Nick Baylis says it "uncovers some gnarly truths about our culture". Gnarly truths arrived at by analysing advertisements in both countries. "This piece of research gives us the jump on everyone else because it uses semiotic and anthropological studies that people in New Zealand just don't use."

Semi what? Semiotics, the study of signs, first applied to the interpretation of popular culture in the 1950s by the French semiologist Roland Barthes in Mythologies. The principles of semiotics - signifiers and signifieds - had long been explored, but Barthes took it to his contemporary France and analysed the cultural significance of everything from professional wrestling to plastics. He died in 1980, knocked over by a laundry van - a chance collision itself subjected to semiotic analysis.

"The basic principle is that culture is constructed," says FCB social researcher Jacqueline Smart. "There is nothing natural or innate about it. It's made by the people that use it."

Smart avoids academic jargon, talking instead about legends and tensions. "The legends are the key cultural themes or stories that have constructed our cultural identity. Given that it's constructed, it's also constantly being reconstructed, which gives you residual, dominant and emerging codes."

Cracking the codes is what Smart does - looking at categories of ads to find what is being said and created, the metaphors, where the viewer is, the different icons and symbols. "You do a paradigmatic axis - if it's this, it can't be that. But what if we did the 'notness'," she raves. The whatness?

"The great thing about semiotics is that its slows you down as a practitioner to focus on the small detail - to break everything down and track and iterate between everything and build it all up to create one big picture again."

The big picture gets filled out with ethnographic studies, observing people and "accepting what you see rather than trying to make sense or give a reason behind it." Smart calls it "legalised stalking".

There was also input from American anthropologists and semioticians, who noticed how New Zealanders immediately take you outside just after inviting you in. When the Americans asked people for images that represented New Zealand, women brought pictures of All Blacks, sheep, tractors, the beach - the same as the men. Where were the feminine symbols like apple pie and quilts? The Americans said they had never been to a country where men and women were so morphed. Smart calls it the gender-blender phenomenon.

On the one hand, New Zealand is a dominantly male culture. But there's also a tension, "the emergence of a different status of masculinity to accommodate the increasing status of women as they earn this respect", as seen in the beer ad where men are wrenching off bottle tops with their teeth. Then the woman does it with her belly-button. The men are impressed - and she's an honorary bloke. The Americans say women's reaction in most cultures would be never to drink that beer for fear it would make them male.

It's the Tui ad with Kiwi mates in the backyard drinking beer and "watching sky" that addresses the gender-blender phenomenon most. When one sees a shooting star and makes a wish, his mates morph into gorgeous blond women, albeit still drinking, burping and crushing cans on their foreheads. So we're in a land where blokes are blokes and even women can be blokes. Be very afraid.

Australians just don't get such ads. They like to keep their mates male and keep males and females separate. So there's the Australian ad where the bloke and his girlfriend are enjoying a lovey-dovey Tarzan-Jane moment which is accidentally relayed to his sporting mates through his mobile. The mates interrupt with a group Tarzan chest-thumping call. The shame.

Or the Australian Jim Beam ads where the bloke won't drink anything but the real thing - even when he's being pummelled in the boxing ring by his ex or the big scary career woman. Aussies love it but New Zealand audiences don't respond so well, possibly because we don't mind women in authority.

Helen Clark wins on two fronts: popular because she's a woman with a deep voice, showing strong leadership just like a man; and her obvious love of the land - kayaking and climbing mountains.

Don Brash has a not-so-good relationship with terra firma - having had the land literally thrown in his face at Waitangi. And he has an Asian wife, possibly associating him with a culture that's more indoors and that doesn't always "do New Zealand". But Brash is also playing to the "residual codes", calling for a return to the way we were and tapping into the backlash against cultural change. That may work, because the research shows Kiwis like things to stay the same. And we don't like differences. Take the Toyota ad that shows everyone enjoying the same things, ending with the Asian market gardener - outdoors, loving the land - saying, "Every day I think this is great place."

Smart says that "He loves New Zealand the same way we love New Zealand" message is a key reason why Toyota is so popular here. We create our own stage and want the world to recognise us. Hence the Goldstein ASB ads, showing the Americans what a great little bank we have.

The Aussies don't have these hang-ups. They talk themselves up. New Zealanders take the piss out of themselves before someone else does. "The Australians take the piss out of other people and let people take piss out of them." They use humour as a weapon, like their tomato campaign slogan "rich and thick". Australian celebrities queued to have the words attached to their picture. If Watties wanted to do a similar campaign here with soup, can you imagine Paul Holmes or Charlotte Dawson on a poster? But while the ad-speak about culture is entertaining, FCB's interest is more practical. "It's talking to how you align your brands to a cultural ethos or a way of life that really connects people, and obviously advertising is all about connection." Baylis means to sell stuff. He says the research came about to stop Australian companies treating New Zealand as another state of Australia and running their ads here. And to show why Australian ads don't work.

The response? New Zealanders buy into the study. "It's the classic younger sibling going, 'Yes, yes, yes that's so bloody true." And the Australians go, 'Oh yeah, whatever. Go away'." So Aussie.