Internal Comms Team:

Rebranding Australia is off to a start. (Need you guys to think of an adjective. Not a ‘great’ start, clearly, and ‘flying’ is — could someone look up ‘flying start’, see if there’s anything in it?) Anyway, terrific job so far.

You know the tagline, Australia: Open for Business. The PM’s been road-testing it locally and overseas, to some success. So —

Look, it’s had no success. Overseas media are comparing the Australian government to suburban hucksters, saying Tony Abbott is our George W. And the public has turned on us like rabid dogs. We need to win people back through a wide-reaching campaign that makes it clear we’re here for the rich and successful, the Australians who keep this country afloat. It’s a powerful message and there’s something wrong if we can’t sell it. Brand Australia, with PM Abbott at the helm, should be as authentic and inspiring in people’s minds as McDonald’s. (Might be worth a collaboration of some kind?)

For visuals we’ll stay with the flag since the PM’s face seems to rile people. But the flag has potential: the Party is amping up the Englishness of Australia by reintroducing titles like Dame and Knight (I’d think we can agree that’s a much-needed step for the country); playing to the popularity of the past by encouraging women to stay out of politics, keeping marriage for normal people, putting religion back in schools; and focusing on our history/origins by treating foreigners as the criminals they might be. We’re solid with our branding as far as an image that calls to mind the positive aspects of nostalgia and xenophobia.

But the government’s core strength is selling, turning a profit, winning. It’s what everyone we know and respect does; it’s what we can deliver to the Australian people. We have to get the message across that we’re here to make money for those who know what to do with it, which means getting maximum benefit from our natural resources (the Great Barrier Reef and Tasmanian forests — completely underutilised areas) and promoting employer-focused work practices. Australia has a lot to exploit and we don’t want anything to get in the way of that.

We’ve abolished the mining tax, carbon tax, cut funding to schools, hospitals, foreign aid, science and environmental research groups, freeing up funds for better use. We’ve delivered a budget that stops the unemployed, sick, disabled, students and elderly from taking advantage of their situation by claiming welfare payments (which, frankly, has been tolerated by the rest of us for too long). We’ve cleared the path to ram home our Open for Business slogan with blinkered conviction until the public forgets there’s anything other than commerce that deserves attention. But they’re not buying it.

A few ministers have suggested we highlight the connection to Margaret Thatcher: Open for Business calls to mind her relationship with England’s aspirational classes, echoes her ideas about money trumping conscience, and the value of short-term gains. Not sure if we want to push this too hard since her popularity is hard to compete with. She’s a model for us all. And her father owned a shop. (Is it worth exploring one of the PM’s daughters opening up a small business, maybe the daughter he got the $60,000 scholarship for? This might lend us some of Thatcher’s ‘working people’ credibility.)

Couple of issues to keep in mind going forward with the branding:

1. The public has labelled us ‘liars’. Some people are very literal and there’s nothing you can do about that. They’re bleating about broken promises. But they don’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. We need to encourage them to stop dwelling in the past.
2. They’re fixated on social equity matters, ignoring the fact that if you shore up the position of those at the top, money will trickle down to everyone else in due course. If they’re deserving.
3. Our program of cuts and constraints isn’t getting the plaudits it deserves because people aren’t buying that there’s a problem. Admittedly the economy is in kick-ass shape, with low unemployment, one of the lowest debt levels in the world, and the Labor government got Australia through the GFC in stronger form than anyone else. However, we need to create a new narrative, one in which Australia is a basket-case in need of relentless, ruthless reforming. Simultaneously, we need to get the economy into terrible shape so that something we say is true. The second part is going ahead well.

Given the lack of enthusiasm for ‘Open for Business’ we thought it’d be worth a quick look at some older taglines — as an exercise — to see if there’s anything we can mine.

Australian Liberals, John Howard, 2007, ‘Go for Growth’: This is roughly the same territory we’re exploring except rather than growth we’re focusing on cuts, shrinkage, and parochialism. We do know the unemployment rate, inflation, and number of public demonstrations is growing so we have some growth in common with the 2007 mob.

British Conservatives, Michael Howard, 2005, ‘Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking?’: We like the ambiguity and playfulness of this one. We, too, work at keeping things from the public (especially in the area of offshore detention centres — good work, guys), but our concern is that people might ask what we’re actually thinking. And, currently, it’s best not to shine a light on that. Some blogger/tweeter/asshole would be bound to compare the PM to Hitler. I think we’re all pretty tired of that.

Australian Labor, Gough Whitlam, 1972, ‘It’s Time’: We tried working with this in our election campaign but met with limited success. That’s possibly because the 1972 line was backed with ads, speeches and the like explaining what it was time for (change, reform and so on, then implemented), whereas we were coming more from the area of it being our turn to have a go. The public didn’t seem as interested in that because, as you know, they’re selfish pricks.

National motto of France, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’: No. There’s no mention at all of the needs of the business community. Also, it has a strong whiff of the old Australia, the one we’re going to wipe from everyone’s memory.

British Conservatives, Harold Macmillan, 1957, ‘Never Had It So Good’: Love this. Australians have no idea how good they’ve had it, and how committed we are to changing that.

Better still is the British Labor Party tag, also 1957, which offers an uncharacteristically upbeat message from them. I think the wording will resonate with the public, and we should push to get this message out. It’s an old line but it speaks to what we’re doing, in every possible way. Australia: ‘Never Been Had So Good’.