The quality of advertising in regional Australia lags about 15 years behind the quality of spots produced in capital cities. Local advertising can be frustratingly bad.
Townsville suffers from a paucity of quality ad producers. Too many advertisers rely on quick fix production from the local networks. There’s a massive gap in the market for a creative video producer to come in and change that status quo.
There are three local advertising phenomena that I think are particularly odd.
1. Patio World v Superior Patio Systems – how is it that two competitors in a very narrow niche can afford to wage a long running advertising battle. One featuring an annoyingly catchy jingle – the other featuring a good looking girl the local paper rated as one of the region’s most famous faces. I don’t get it. Is it a perpetual motion loop where one advertises and the other can’t be out done so they advertise and the other can’t be outdone so they advertise… To end this viscious cycle both would have to stop at the same time – otherwise there’d just be one patio company out there on the airwaves.
Rachel - the face of Patio World
2. There’s an ad for a local computer repairs company where the young lady requiring computer repairs calls up using an iphone – and in what could be described as a continuity error – is calling up about a beige computer tower that looks like it was built in the 80s or bought at an ex-government auction.
3. There’s a Kip McGrath Tutoring ad that has just started running locally that I think was probably actually produced in the 80s. This is not a figure of speech. The tutors feature moustaches and are wearing brown. It’s like one of those dodgy, dodgy corporate training videos. I know economic times are tough but rerunning ads from 20 years ago to cut costs is ridiculous.
Comments
Beige computer towers don’t mean anything. I know one of my family’s computers has a beige computer tower, and everything inside it is 2006 or newer. Although it’s not one of those 80s looking towers.
And yeah, I’m pretty sure that Kip McGrath ad was made in the 80s. The early 90s at the lastest.
Ahh – but you don’t own an iPhone… maybe it does mean something afterall.
Have you seen the ad? The computer being fixed looks like it should be running Windows 3.1.
Wouldn’t there be a patio saturation point at which time there are no more houses that require patios? What will happen then…
Then local TV station revenues will drop by about 20% I reckon.
ha! I just realised when I read your post that there are TWO patio companies! I did build a patio last year, and Patio World (or the other mob, whichever one I rang when it didn’t occur to me they were different) wouldn’t do the job because it was too small. When the market is saturated, then they’ll be laughing out the other side of their face, won’t they.
One of the Kip McGrath ads involves Windows 3.1 on a computer screen.