Page 1641 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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develop an advertisement for 2CC or 104 or WIN Television or the Canberra Times or City News the advertisements are to be developed and constructed without employing any advertising techniques. What a farce! Can you imagine? I wonder if any self-respecting advertising agency in Canberra would actually be prepared to take the government’s money in the preparation or the setting of advertisements that drone out from our radio stations or fade into the background of our newspaper pages.
The instruction would be: when you place this advertisement on behalf of the government, do not make it catchy, do not have any slogans, do not include a jingle—do not employ advertising techniques. Perhaps we could take out a blank spot and have this: this space is devoted to an advertisement, but we are not allowed or permitted to use any advertising techniques so perhaps we will not advertise at all. The advertising campaign without a slogan or a jingle or that does not employ advertising techniques would be stunningly successful, I am sure. Just imagine an advertisement with no slogans and no jingles—no advertising techniques. It would be a stunningly successful advertisement, wouldn’t it?
I always thought that the idea of advertising campaigns was actually to instil awareness in the target audience. The idea was that they not be bland, that they are catchy, that they are not forgettable, that they not bore the audience or reduce them to some catatonic state. Slogans and jingles are basic tools of the work of advertisers and of advertising. It is about assisting recall. It is about grabbing attention. It is about leaving an impression. I think we all know that that is the purpose of advertising. That is why we do it. We do it to ensure recall, to grab attention and to leave an impression. We do it to achieve an objective and an outcome.
We do not do it to bore the potential listener or watcher or reader to the point where they do not even notice the advertisement—an advertisement that does not use advertising techniques. For goodness sake! There is an awful lot more that one could ridicule in this bill—
Mrs Dunne: Just go and have a good fulminate. Don’t let the facts get in the way.
MR STANHOPE: Well, it is not good for my soul. I think I have probably gone far enough. One could ridicule this bill for as long as one actually has the capacity or authority to speak. It really is so absurd. I am not joking. I am not joking about the discussion we had in caucus. We did have a discussion in caucus. As we prepared for the business of the Assembly I did claim that this was a bill we would never have to debate.
We ignored this particular bill on the notice paper because we thought that it was so absurd, so ridiculous that with, the benefit of a bit of mature reflection, the Leader of the Opposition would have realised that bringing it on would simply expose him to the ridicule that he deserves to be exposed to. I did suggest to my colleagues in caucus—and I was wrong—that the bill is so absurd that it would never be brought on. I was wrong about that.
To conclude, if the bill, as drafted, passed—and I do not know whether this has dawned on its supporters yet—it would mean such fundamental things as the
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