Canberradvertising

Television is called a medium because it is neither well done nor rare. - some bozo

Obviously the owner of the quote above hasn't ever seen Canberran television. Whether it's the superawesome State Focus show that deals with important stories, like the inspirational stories of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who came good after battling drug addiction and male prositution or a Canberra-born band who are releasing their first CD (in Sydney). Why they choose to put this magic on at 1:00am on a Tuesday morning is beyond me.

And, like everywhere in the world, us Canberrans have locally made ads. The ones that are made with no budget, one camera, and are devised, shot and edited in one afternoon. The ads that run by the adage, "That'll do!" so the cameraman can hit the pub early on a Friday arvo.

Canberra's most well-known advertising personalities are the kids from the Blumers law firm commercials. The campaign began with a damsel in distress being tied to railway tracks or chased by giant bees or swallowed by a whale - you know, the typical sort of shit that women get in trouble with. Seriously, the amount of times I've been called up by chicks who say, "Hey Mister Evil Breakfast, you know how last week I got swallowed by a whale, and we joked about it and said how random that was, and that it was fairly unlikely that I'd be in that situation again? Well, guess what happened..." Anyway, there's a kid in the ad who puts his undies on the outside (thus becoming a superhero) and saves the chick by beating up the bees, untying the rope or grinding pepper onto the whale to make it sneeze, thus saving the day. Apparently that's what Blumers lawyers do - grind pepper.

But now there are more pieces of advertising awesomity to add to the Blumers walls. Allow me to delve into director mode.

Scene 1: We open on a kid reading a book. The book is entitled "Clumsy Charlie and the Rabid Goat." The kid doesn't move. Nothing moves. After 25 seconds, cue sound effects of a man being attacked by a rabid goat. The kid looks up from his book and says, "Call Blumers."

Brilliant. Brilliant.

Canberrans aren't afraid to recycle their ads either. Like the Local Liquor ones that come around every Olympics with the guy riding his exercise bike, some guy weightlifting (or something) and another guy in a shitty backyard pool. For the record, I know all three of those guys. I'm pretty fucking tops. Anyway, that ad is at least 8 years old.

But the greatest serving Canberran media mogul is Kingsleys Chicken. They have one of the greatest fast-food chains in all the world (fillet burger with gravy AND coleslaw will be my final meal if I'm ever on death row), and they spend exactly zero time and zero money to create their commercials. I think one of their ads had a Thunderbirds kind of submarine floating across the screen, with voices that said, "Come on Brains, we need to stop that nuclear bomb!" "Roger that. Fire depth chargers." BOOM. "A job well done, let's go and get a chicken burger." Their latest efforts have included the introduction of an American accent on the first syllable of the word "awesome" in their catchphrase, 'unbelievable chicken, awesome chips', and skating the copyright line by using Warner Bros. cartoon characters and the Loony Tunes logo. I guess if WB ever decides to sue them, they'll just team up with Blumers and grind some pepper on Daffy Duck. Case closed.