Abstract

Is it as good? Branding Australianness the Bushells way

In February 2006 the McCann Erickson advertising agency assumed responsibility for the iconic Australian tea brand, Bushells. In terms of media presence, the brand had, for at least a decade, definitely suffered from a drop in visibility. As marketing magazine B & T Weekly remarked on the McCann Erickson deal, 'Can anyone even remember what the last spot for Bushells was? With a market share of less than 10 per cent, Bushells' performance was decidedly lacklustre. Within just three months, then, the agency launched a television campaign aimed at restoring Bushells' resonance with Australians. According to account director Simon Cheng, the new campaign was designed to break what had been a costly hiatus: 'I guess it has sort of lost touch with Australians. The whole idea behind this campaign is reconnecting with.contemporary Australians.'

The campaign resurrected one of Bushells' most memorable lines from the 1980s: 'Is at as good?' Indeed, the advertisement exhumed more than just this; it showcased a catalogue of well-known images, compressed into a surreally narrated scene: a campsite, peopled by familiar Australian identities, from history, popular culture, cinema and sport. More specifically, the advertisement appropriated a scene from one of the most popular Australian movies of the past ten years, The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997). The scene in question sees Darryl Kerrigan, the film's affable protagonist, take in the tranquillity of his Bonnie Doon holiday-house, and muse 'How's the serenity?' Bushells takes a Kerrigan-like figure to survey his peaceful campsite and say, 'Ah, this is as good as it gets'. The advertisement draws a thematic link to the film, and an affinity to its values and ideals. This paper considers just how apt this approach was for Bushells' most recent depiction of - and appeal to - contemporary Australianness.

Susie Khamis
Macquarie University