Editorial: Have Tui ‘Yeah Right’ billboards had their day or have we lost our sense of humour?

A Tui beer billboard referencing Phillip Polkinghorne, the retired eye surgeon acquitted of murdering his wife, has been slammed as being in bad taste and disrespectful.

EDITORIAL

Tui Breweries’ world-famous-in-New Zealand ”Yeah Right” advertising campaign has returned – and was predictably quick to cause offence in some corners.

The beer company’s first billboard in years referenced the recent high-profile trial of Auckland eye surgeon Phillip Polkinghorne.

“Back to being a respectable meth-smoking, sex-worker-loving doctor then,” the digital sign said, just days after Polkinghorne was cleared of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna.

It prompted a handful of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) along with a flurry of online chatter.

“Not funny. A woman died,” one user commented, while others also found it to be in “bad taste”.

After the Polkinghorne relaunch, the marketing director of DB Breweries, which now owns Tui, didn’t back down from its sign.

“We’re living in a world where everyone has an opinion about everything, all the time,” says Fraser Shrimpton.

“There’s no avoiding feedback, so we’ve decided, as a brand, we’re not afraid to say what we’ve all been thinking.

“The billboards are our way of connecting with Kiwis, aiming to help them lighten up and have a laugh.”

Tui billboards have long turned heads.

The brewery has even launched a feedback 0800 line to get public feedback on its billboards.

Although canned in 2016 when Tui announced it was scaling back its brewery operation at Mangatainoka, it believes a revamped “Yeah Right” campaign can hit the mark, especially pushing back against what it says is political correctness gone mad.

“Being edgy isn’t off the table,” AUT communication studies lecturer Daniel Fastnedge says.

Billboards for beer brands have long strived to turn heads and attract attention – after all, that is what all advertising is about.

As Fastnedge says, consumers embrace brands that “aren’t afraid to be a little daring”.

However, humour can be more “complicated” for younger audiences in 2024, which the lecturer says often now stems from “irony, cultural awareness and even self-deprecation”.

“What worked in the early 2000s might come across differently today, especially if the campaign comes off as outdated or out of touch.”

Ever since Tui first launched its “Yeah Right” campaign in 1997, featuring topical one-liners, it has worn the backlash with occasional accusations of “crossing the line”.

It has previously withdrawn campaigns and fallen foul of the ASA.

But there is also a modern trend of people becoming offended on the behalf of others; being vicariously offended, rather than their own personal feelings getting upset.

Kiwis are known for having a robust, healthy and particular sense of humour.

Yes, it is important that humour moves with the times – but we must never lose the ability to laugh at ourselves.