Corporate cultural cringeBy NICK MOONEYYou'd think that companies that advertise themselves as proudly Australian corporate citizens would show a bit of loyalty in advertising. Those wonderful pictures of birds of prey Optus uses in its latest TV and newspaper ads - well, none is Australian. The wonderful hovering image is a European kestrel (not our delightful Australian or nankeen kestrel) as is the head shot so prominant in newspaper ads, the diving peregrine falcon looks very like one of the American subspecies and I'm sure the head-on image is an American prairie falcon. I bet the footage was bought from an overseas company. There is certainly excellent footage available of our equivalent birds and trained specimens are available for filming (leggings on at least the TV peregrine shows it is a trained bird) so how about some 'local content' Optus? While I'm at it, why would the Queensland government-sponsored Wide Bay Water ad in a recent Weekend Australian which talks glowingly of Fraser Is but features a picture of an American bald eagle! Our magnificent white-bellied sea eagle, so much part of that same Fraser Is landscape, not good enough? It gets small and local as well. Several Tasmanian businesses have the word "eaglehawk" (a historic name for our wedge-tailed eagle) in their name but regularly use, yet again, the American bald eagle as their logo. That's just plain sloppy. Although the Tassie Devils footy team has been very supportive of efforts to deal with real devils' disease issue I wonder why the logo is two lions (they are - I've seen them roar on TV) and not devils. Surely its time we took the plunge with local pride. There are planty of excellent images of Australian birds to advertise Australian products and services so how about a bit of corporate pride.
Nick Mooney Sunday, October 24, 2004 |