Gruen delves into new Roy Hill ad: “If you don’t support mining, I won’t support athletes, and we won’t do well at the Olympics.”
Gina Rinehart’s new Olympics commercial for Roy Hill came under fire in last week’s episode of Gruen on the ABC. The new Roy Hill commercial promotes Rinehart’s support of the Australian Olympic team but also pushes the contribution the mining industry makes to Western Australia.
Gruen co-host and former CEO of Leo Burnett Australia, Todd Sampson, summed it up with “The problem with advertising is that you can buy it”.
Sampson points out that Rinehart and Clive Palmer have used advertising for their own political means.
“I’m ok with there being an ad that’s promoting mining and there being an ad that promotes the Olympics, but she’s (Rinehart) conflated these two things together, and it makes it super irritating. It’s referred to as ‘sports washing’. It’s been around for a long time. People use sports. You see fossil-fuel companies disproportionately use sports in this country. So, coal, oil, gas, they’re all over our athletes. They’re all over the jerseys, they’re all over the grounds and the reason is it’s an association strategy. So what they want is they want to pull the goodness of the Olympics, the goodness of athletes training and overcoming barriers, the goodness of winning, and they want that to wash away some of the negatives that they have as businesses. And this is a kind of horrible example of someone overly using that.”
Sampson said what irks him the most about the ad is the threat at the end.
“Let’s be clear on what she means, because she’s not. The ad, for all its horrible execution, it is fairly clear, which is that if you don’t support mining, I won’t support athletes, and we won’t do well at the Olympics.”
Gruen co-host Russel Howcroft also weighed in: “I think that’s a really important part of the big Australian mining businesses and the other big businesses as well. They should invest in Australian sports, etcetera, and Australian culture. And I’ve got no issues with them advertising, I think that’s a good idea.
“But at some point in time someone has got to knock on the door and say, Mrs Rinehart, no, this is not a good, this is not a good execution. Because you, in an advertising sense, you’re competing against BHP. BHP do some really good advertising. Like, you know, it’s up there. Rio Tinto is now advertising. Their advertising is up there. And of course other corporate brands, like a Shell for example, they do very good advertising.
“So, there’s an advertising competition element to this as well, which I think has been ignored by Roy Hill and those that are advising Mrs Rinehart.”
Click here to view the Gruen episode on ABC iview. The discussion on the new Roy Hill ad begins at the 25:20 mark.
7 Comments
OK but so, whodunnit?
This is very disappointing even as a Powerpoint presentation. Solid word on the street, was that it was delivered “internally”. If you would like more advertising goodness, check these out https://www.royhill.com.au/twiggy-forrest-and-gina-rinehart-stick-their-boots-in/
In house apparently or should I say abhorrently.
The only person whodunnit is Mrs Rinehart. She signed off on it, she voiced it, and you best believe she wrote it. This isn’t just heinously produced (yes, with obvious oversight direct from the client), it’s a scream into the void from the Id of a corporation with more money than sense, decency or the ability to form a compelling narrative without ending on a literal threat to the Australian people.
Throw this trash right in the bin where it belongs. We don’t have to begrudge anyone from working on a job in a bloody tough production environment, but we can point with absolute judgement at the rotten head on top of this stinking corpse of an ad.
Well said @it’s gross, couldn’t agree more. There’s the usual thinly veiled greenwashing, then there’s…whatever this is. It looks like no creatives were harmed during the process, but what an egregious display of arrogance. On brand for her I guess. Horrific.
Ummmm. Did they… read this review before they posted it?
Horrible person advertising something that doesn’t really belong to her at all. We should advertise nationalising the mining industry. Look at Norway. That’s how it’s done.