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Bad Brand ‘Personality’
I was watching Breakfast yesterday morning and they had a segment on Tui taking on the Church over their ‘Yeah Right’ Billboard campaign.
The Tui ‘Yeah Right’ billboards have been around for Donkeys years, and often stir up controversy… Which fits right into the Tui Beer brand ‘personality’ of being plain spoken, slightly mischievous laddish types.
They’ve done a good job of pretending to be just ordinary blokes partaking in a bit of guerilla marketing, of being unafraid of breaking the rules and stirring up trouble. For example, a 2 minute google search turned up this one, which mocks a hugely controversial murder trial here, where the guy on trial claimed to be doing a paper round while his dad shot up the entire family:
They’ve done a brilliant job of making us believe we’re all a part of it and people now go out of their way to wear ‘yeah right’ tshirts and make their own banners and suggest official banners etc.
And a church somewhere in the country has been posting their own ‘yeah right’ banners outside their church for something like 8 years. I think the only change from Tui’s signs is that they’ve swapped their branding for the word ‘spirit’, and their blatant copying cannot be passed off as anything else.
Well, Tui discovered these billboards and came down like a tonne of bricks, and suddenly their happy-go-lucky image is thinly stretched over threats of legal action and demands to remove the signs for infringement of copyright.
I reckon that was an EXTREMELY bad call. I’m sure it will blow over and no one will notice, but the image of a couple of blokes sitting round a box of Tuis cracking jokes has very much been replaced with one of a bunch of corporate suits strategically planning a campaign and caring deeply about boring things like ‘bottom line’, ‘copy rights’ and all sorts of things that they outwardly MOCK on the billboards.
The guy from the church sort of figured this and despite being not-particularly well spoken, did seem to make the Tui guy squirm when he called them up on not having a sense of humor.
I wonder what they thought they’d gain over kicking up a fuss? Seems like they had a lot to lose.
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
May 28th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
The billboard in question was a thinly veiled threat towards atheists. IIRC the exact wording was:
“Atheists have nothing to fear. Yeah, right.”
Given that the same … class … of people had previously blocked the far less offensive ‘probably no god’ bus campaign and campaigned hard for the right to hit children I think that DB’s legal department have done us all a favour.
I’ll stop there, shall I?
May 28th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
It’s only a threat if you feel anxiety or fear that you should believe in god as an insurance policy… Which sort of doesn’t make you an atheist after all?
I feel like we should approach each battle separately. I can happily walk by a religious billboard telling me I have to worry about my post death experience if I don’t accept Jesus into my life… But I can’t ignore hitting kids. I don’t think we should confuse the two and I don’t think we should judge every member of an organisation by the actions of others in the organisation (I think maybe because it’s Friday and I’m feeling forgiving… Or because these things end badly)
I also think that the answer to church member’s trying to stop and atheist billboard, is to not then restrict their own freedom of speech. I can clearly see a downward spiral there.
Also, given that they DID cause havoc over bus signage, wouldn’t Tui have done better to post a counter sign down the road and fight the battle that way?
Maybe it’s because I don’t think the Church in NZ has a huge level of control over us… Maybe I’m underestimating them?