Australian Government Canberra – Is The Brand Tarnished?
Those of us (in Australia) who have ever watch free to air television or listened to the radio, will have heard various bulletins from the Australian Government for upcoming elections or Government-backed campaigns – all of them end with the same very quickly spoken “…authorised by the Australian Government Canberra…” such as this one:
This is the sign-off from the Australian Government stating they support the statements or information portrayed in the media leading – like you signing a document, posting a blog article, a signature at the bottom of an email, intros to videos, credits, etc. Even in medieval times, people in high up or powerful positions would have had a stamp or ring which had a unique symbol on it which only they had possession of (or someone they entrusted their mark to), and when used with hot wax, formed the seal of approval when affixed to a letter or parcel – used to identify the sender and notify the recipient that they have genuinely received it from the sender as marked.
Today, modern successful businesses spend billions of dollars worldwide (ref) on marketing, in attempt to make their brand known, exposed, visible to the world. Many different strategies are used to achieve their marketing goals using an array or technologies from television, email, newspapers, radio, Internet ads, billboards, digital signage, the list goes on…
The Australian Government, in effect, is no different – like I stated earlier – used for promoting various political parties leading up to an election, to road safety campaigns. The big difference here is, who pays for the Government’s advertising expenses – which I’d like to remind you, are very high (see here and here). Loads of tax-payers’ money is spent annually on various government advertising campaigns – some of it in the past quite effective, some not so.
So what happens when the government spends a fortune on an election campaign when they’ve just served in leadership – banking for office again, but the public have been unhappy with the leadership from their current round of service in office? Let’s just say a political party has just served a term in office and haven’t for-filled the previous election promises – where’s the real value in the election campaigns when they have lost the trust of many voters?
Sometimes I can’t help but feel when I have lost faith in our politicians – which is happening more frequently lately – that by losing faith in the government, policies, financial & infrastructure, and funding decisions;- I feel that the government is tarnishing the Australian Government ‘brand’ both locally and globally. We see constant poor decision making from all parties, making bad financial choices, lack of infrastructure upgrade plans, and appears to have lack of regard for lower and middle class residents – I know this is becoming more visible across the globe as the wealthy continually squeeze the honey pot, but this is 2018 – we should be better than this. Our politicians are meant to be expert leaders and good decision makers, but I continually see evidence to contrary.
Our government branding is meant to be a sign of quality, integrity, leadership, and ingenuity among the Australian people and the rest of the world! Seeing our brand tarnished from the ‘inside’ by paid politicians who are meant to be upholding it frustrates me. If large popular brands such as Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, etc. acted poorly making bad decisions of all sorts like our government does, their brands would be tarnished and eventually, in financial ruin. Our government won’t be in ruin due to regulatory and compulsory taxes on its people – which is expected, but this is no excuse for the government to perform poorly and continue to waste tax-payers money on these decisions followed by false marketing tactics.
I’d be keen to know how you feel about this topic, so please register and comment below…
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