Jamie Hanton

Last year Westpac bombarded our screens with a series about “Fred”, a fictional employee (or at least we hope so) who leads a normal moronic life.

Quite what Westpac hoped to achieve with this campaign is hard to distinguish. Perhaps it was getting into line with John Key’s typically flaky views on climate change, saying, “Hey, John, we’re average too! We understand the importance and severity of the issue but we’d like show everyone that setting a good example looks a little too Green / Labour. You know, a little too nanny state. People don’t need leadership in times like this, they need to know that personal responsibility is what matters.”

So then, why do we have Fred the eternal bumbler showing us his shambolic life over three excruciatingly unfunny scenarios?

In the first (Westpac Sustainability Ad - Setup) he pretty much blanks his young son as he comes in the door from work.The rest of the ad is dominated by his sweetness and light son as he sweetly suggests how Fred might be able to rectify his sins against the environment. Why is it we are so uncomfortable with strong male familial role models? Why do corporations succumb to the lowest common denominator ignorant male to make a point? It cannot be a coincidence that Fred bears uncanny resemblance to dunderheaded, but substantially funnier, Fred Flinstone. In fact, Westpac have run the same man=stupid play in two of their other cringe-worthy ads.

Wouldn’t there be greater comedy opportunity if Fred had to explain to his son the problems with unsustainable living? Oh wait, that kinda happens in the second of the series (Westpac Sustainability Ad - Carbon Footprint) - I say kinda because Fred still tries to outgun the guy in the muscle car at the start of the ad, and then as he passes him ‘throws up the goat’ like the classy guy he is.

In one respect it’s good to see Westpac being faithful to the integrity of Fred’s character. Even after his son explains the evils of garbage the third ad (Westpac Sustainability Ad - Cleanup) sees Fred try and place a Popsicle wrapper in the bin only to be defied by a gust of wind (damn you pesky nature!) - Fred turns to walk away but is confronted by a group of boys. That’s right Fred, society will force you to conform to its totally unreasonable civic expectations. Sorry pal. Fred then persists in trying to escape from binning the wrapper until a wall of people physically block him from leaving the beach. The John Key vs. Copenhagen allegory is irresistible here. Just replace the angry mob with the electorate and the ocean with the COP15 conference.

The final ad in the series (Westpac Sustainability Ad - Money Matters) shows the chaos that ensues in Fred’s house after the gas and power get cut off because his wife didn’t pay the bills on time (doesn’t Fred work in a bank?) surely he could have setup a couple of APs in a jiffy rather than lazily delegate the tasks to his wife who is surprisingly dizzy, god knows how their son became so socially responsible, time to blame the schools again I suppose…I’m not really sure how money management fits into the sustainable theme but hey, when did relevance stop a good campaign?

I have to wonder what Westpac were thinking, even facetiously using an imbecile character to front any campaign given the $10M issue last year.

It also seems that around the same time as the awful sustainability ads Westpac dropped a couple bombs across the ditch with a bizarrely titled campaign called Factor 50 - at least if we’d got the Factor 50 jobby then I could just be bemused instead of having my feathers ruffled.

Tags: Advertising, Banking, Westpac