pension333: The Joy of Six: Great Australian sport adverts

From Tina Turner to Pat Cash's recycling drive, our pick of the best sports commercials

1) The drinking team with a cricket problem

Australian cricketers have always enjoyed a drink. Speaking of his use of drinking as a motivational ploy during his time as the Australia captain, Ian Chappell said, "when you win you drink to celebrate and when you lose you drink to drown your sorrows and after about four or five beers you are not quite sure what you are doing anyhow."

This beer-soaked culture established many cultural norms in Australian cricket, a number of which were to the betterment of team harmony, but its legacy is also heavily represented in the annals of advertising.

If "I Feel Like a Tooheys or two" sounds familiar, it's probably because it came from The Mojo Singers of C'mon Aussie C'mon fame. With Steve "Stumper" Rixon as its unlikely hero, it also features the aptly named Peter Toohey. Rejected titles for this campaign included, I Feel like a Tooheys or 20. Yet for all its greatness, it will never give the Tooheys brand a get out of jail card for trying to convince us that Doug Walters has ever put a can of light beer to his lips.

It would seem more apt that originators of the Sydney to London tinny-drinking challenge like Doug Walters or Rod Marsh were given a beery career retrospective than this one for DK Lillee but it matters not, for even thinking about Lillee's career is apparently sufficient justification for celebratory ale. If not, Doug Walters will shout you one.

In subsequent years, the Mojo Singers and Castlemaine XXXX reminded us that if you are faced with a constant barrage of West Indies fast bowlers and the lurking presence of Greg Ritchie, alcohol is probably the best coping mechanism. It was certainly much more believable than "Captain Grumpy" adopting a posh accent and settling in for a nice cup of tea, anyway.

Many other Australian cricketers chanced their drinking arm, from Merv Hughes to a pre health-kick Shane Warne, but all were dwarfed metaphorically, if not literally, by the aura of a short, stocky Tasmanian opening batsman. For years after the famous 1989 Ashes flight from Sydney to London, David Boon refused to talk about his alleged 52-can effort, telling The Australian's Peter Lalor in 2003: "Never spoke about it. Never will." Despite drawing the ire of his coach, the opener walked unassisted from the plane and into cricketing folklore. With interest in the feat growing by the year, Boon eventually caved in to star in a series of VB commercials, while Talking Boony dolls went straight to the national mantelpiece.

Please do drink in moderation though, even Merv says so.

2) Simply The Best ? in a league of its own

When naming Australian sport's most iconic and successful advertising campaign, it is pretty hard to come to any conclusion other than Simply The Best. The formula was straightforward: huge iconic pop star + anthemic and accessible rock song + footballers smashing into each other = advertising gold.

Personally I have a preference for Tina's What You Get Is What You See her 1989 salvo that was a kind of Simply The Best prototype with a little more sass and the unbeatable combination of Cliff Lyons, Brett Kenny, acid-wash denim and huge hair. The following year though, a legend was born.

Rope-climbing, sweaty training montages, thick moustaches, Mal Meninga crying; the original Simply The Best commercial had basically everything you could ask for in a sports ad. It became such a phenomenon that the League didn't even seek to change things up, so the 1993 update stuck to the tried and true formula with bonus Jimmy Barnes. Luke Ricketson's claim that, "I'd just like to meet Tina Turner" also added some champagne unintentional comedy.

It wasn't just the fans who were captivated by the ads, sports branding experts still gush about the way "the song was so stirring, and Tina's delivery so emphatic that you couldn't help but be pulled in by it." It's quite remarkable that, even in the blokey world of sports marketing, the Tina Turner campaign cast such a lengthy shadow that the League didn't use a female voice again until this year's Jessica Mauboy-fronted effort, Rugby League's Got A Hold On Me.

Unfortunately all other rugby league commercials suffer from comparison with Simply The Best, but Ray Price could make a solid case with his efforts for Tooheys, and nothing makes me think "Lime Milk" like a Canberra Raiders jersey. The Hoodoo Gurus fell into the classic Status Quo trap of altering the lyrics to one of their famous songs for the advertising dollar and fell a bit flat, while Kamahl proved an unlikely forerunner to Tom Waterhouse, telling us all to get into the Footy Tab in 1996.

3) The noble game of advertising cricket

The marketing of Australian cricket may have become a constant source of gripes for pundits and punters alike in recent years, but the game has always been at the vanguard of advertising trends and subsequently boasts a rich visual history.

If the soothing sight of Richie Benaud having a shave or fixing himself a cup of Milo tells of a more genteel, if slightly dowdy time for cricket, the insurgency of Kerry Packer's PBL and World Series cricket was to alter that image forever. Despite the fact that Richie wouldn't let you read his book until you had a shave, he was on board the good ship Packer himself.

The Packer-commissioned C'mon Aussie C'mon is now so comfortably embedded in the national psyche that it feels as comfortable as an old pair of socks, but at the time it was a brash and bracing new look for cricket. Subsequent years brought us derivative efforts like Go Aussie Go and C'mon Mate, both of which, in paying their dues to the original, inadvertently hinted at their inability to surpass its impact.

For the public profile and bank balances of cricketers, the lowering of the commercial floodgates have been a very good thing. For the rest of us it has yielded a wide array of iconic and embarrassing moments to behold.

Max Walker tended to provide plenty of the latter, from tight jeans to sprinkler systems to the apparent pursuit of conflict diamonds, there were few advertising cheques that Big Max wouldn't cash. His former captain Ian Chappell once said "if you are busy trying to grin all the time, you can't think, which doesn't bother a bloke like Max Walker because he doesn't think anyway." After watching Maxie suggest that the ingestion of vast quantities of milk is the best solution to an upset stomach, I think we all might start to agree with Chappelli on that one. Chappell himself would surely struggle to even remember the "Intellivision" game system though.

Merv Hughes thought of both our skin and our stomachs, while Mark Waugh's apparent inability to spit out "Nizoral" put him in the same league as Mark Taylor, whose long-running presence as the face of Fujitsu belies the fact that he couldn't pronounce their name for his first few years of commercials, all of which they have apparently burnt.

You'd hope that Tony Greig never made a TV version of this ad but his Lion Insurance efforts were raised to iconic status by The 12th Man's parodies and will live forever. Likewise the constantly looming spectre of another Aussie cricketer fronting a campaign for Advanced Hair Studios. This was a career move pioneered by Greg Matthews and perfected by Shane Warne in a number of hair-raising instances. Or is that eyebrow-raising? I can't tell the difference, and Warnie just literally struggles to raise his eyebrows these days. Except when he promotes Twenty20, of course.

Perhaps the only more famous follicles than Boon or Warne's in the last 20 years of cricket were those on Ricky Ponting's goatee, and there is surely no image that more comprehensively screams "1996!"

In recent years it's been non-stop Shane Watson, from blasting holes in the changing room walls and endangering passing children to hitting your Nan for six. That's just really not cricket, surely? But in spite of years of all these years of brilliant, boorish and truly boganic cricket ads, there is still nothing that prepares any viewer for the audio-visual assault of Kerry O'Keefe's maniacal cackle.

4) And the big Ad Men fly

Mainly as a result of the AFL's unquenchable thirst to dominate all avenues of sports conversation throughout Australia, footy ads of more recent years have tended to be blatant exercises in chest puffing. Yes, we know there's "nothing like it" guys, but don't pretend that Americans genuinely care. Football's own cultural cringe has actually been a long-running theme.

It wasn't always like this though. In days of yore, we were happy for our footballers to sit on a bus and sing about Pies, though Bobby Skilton just seems a lot more charming than Luke Darcy. I'm also not entirely sure I'd want to eat from Dipper's kitchen, but Dougie and Thomo didn't seem to mind.

Like the game itself, the 80s saw football advertising move from the slightly shonky and amateur to ? well ? shonky and slightly more professional. But it wasn't all carbs; Paul Roos may never quit commentating on Swans games, but he certainly told us what to do with our cigarettes. Maybe with some of the savings from this decision we were meant to be stumping up for this footy video, a snip at $79.50 plus postage.

For ubiquitous stars of commercials, it's hard to go past Tony Lockett, when Plugger wasn't downing a Whopper he was having a punt or reliving the glory days of his career as part of the brilliant Steve Curry-fronted series of Toyota "Magic Moments" ads. Others to have been immortalised in that hugely popular campaign include Alex Jesaulenko, a dizzy Peter Hudson and the blood-stained Francis Bourke.

So whether it's the broadcasters themselves, Tim Rogers impersonating Shane Crawford impersonating Marcia Hines or Dipper getting a little bit too excited down at the Pokies, if you stick around during the ad break of an AFL game, there's still a fair chance you'll be entertained by the commercials as much as the game.

5) Joel and Benji Madden commandeer the cricket season

During the summer just gone we became aware that there is indeed something worse than having Doug Bollinger try and sell you a mobile phone and that is having the Madden Brothers try and sell you KFC.

Making the seamless leap from Peta-sympathisers to slavish devotees of the Cult of Colonel Sanders, it wasn't just cricket fans who were steamed at the Maddens' new gig. The commercial marriage of KFC and cricket over the past few seasons has left a grease stain we may never be able to wash away.

First there was "Big Bash with the Bucket Heads". Because the Madden brothers are totally low key dudes who don't like drawing attention to themselves at all, they chose to pull up at the gates of the ground in a pimped out SUV that had the moniker "Good Times" splashed across the side. Hint to the marketing people: the more you tell people they are having a good time, the less they believe it.

They then met up with "The Cricket Master", a man so heavily dedicated to the game that he wears a red KFC t-shirt to games. Moving on from this faux pas, our man then tried to engage the lads in that great Australian cricketing tradition; wearing a KFC bucket on your head? This was a bridge too far even for the Maddens though and I can't really blame them.

"That was amazing, bro!", is a phrase I literally never want to hear spoken at a cricket ground. Subsequent Madden claims that "I feel like I could get out there and play, I really do," made us all fantasise about one of them actually going out there and facing an over from Dale Steyn without pads on. Okay, we'd let them wear a KFC bucket to protect their heads.

"Hanging with the Cricketers" aired fairly late in the summer when many of us thought we had exhausted all our reserves of Madden hatred. We were wrong.

Some people claim that Ricky Ponting's slip-and-slide dismissal to a Jacques Kallis yorker was the visceral, saddening moment that his international career truly died. On the contrary, the end had come when we saw him gurning away next to Joel and Benji in this commercial.

Having been told that street cricket has different rules to normal cricket, one of the Maddens (who really cares enough to nail down which is which?) helpfully informs us that they don't know the rules of cricket anyway. This remains about as surprising as a Mitchell Johnson leg-side wide

But of all the Madden monstrosities, "Barefoot Bowls with Slats" was my favourite. You can imagine this ad was the result of a focus group session that revealed KFC and Cricket Australia's target demographic didn't mind a bit of the old barefoot bowls, a truly disturbing societal trend. What you can't imagine is any kind of focus group in hell that thought that Slats should team a navy blazer with red floral board shorts.

"I'm a little self-conscious," says a Madden. Please keep in mind that this is coming from the mouth of a man covered from head to toe in piercings, tattoos , hair dye and the kind of clothing that Alice Cooper would have considered a bit garish.

There are longer 'uncut' versions of some of the Madden japes on YouTube. Don't watch them. Even when doing so in the name of research my skin literally crawled off my body because it was too embarrassed on behalf of the game of cricket.

6) That's Australian gold my friend

If the recent spate of performance-enhancing-drug scandals have done anything, it has been to reemphasise the virtuous character and values we project onto our brightest stars. Australians also love a winner and there is no surer sign of sporting success in Australia than getting your face on television commercials.

Any Olympian will tell you that the pride of winning a gold medal that make all the years of training worthwhile, but getting yourself onto a Uncle Toby's ad doesn't hurt, either. While the current image of Australian swimming presents as something other than completely wholesome, stars of recent generations like Kieren Perkins, were like gold dust to brands looking for a healthy image.

Andrew Gaze was another example of the risk-free Aussie role model, evolving into everyone's loveable, do-gooding neighbor. He starred alongside the future Mrs Lleyton Hewitt in this Kellogg's offering, as well as reminding us to drink in moderation and as the years progressed, watch out for back pain. Unlike Trevor Hendy, he was unable to score any work that was sound-tracked by Deep Forrest.

In the word of tennis John Newcombe was a trailblazer on and off the court, this ad for K-Tel setting the tone for a lifetime of leveraging his famously mustached face into serious sponsorship dollars. Newk could fix you up with some dosh but there was every chance he might also pinch your camera. And while the 1987 Wimbledon title was one thing, when I think of Pat Cash, I actually just think about the benefits of recycling or the wonders of lean beef.

For others, the visible waistband of a pair of Bonds undies might evoke images of Pat Rafter, but the less that's said about his US Open final opponent Mark Philippoussis blasting away a hapless kid with his Dunlop racquet the better. But at the end of the day, there is no better feeling than winning, just ask Greg Norman. But if you're stepping into his Holden Statesman, just make sure you're wearing some Reebok Pumps.

Russell Jackson

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2013/jul/09/joy-of-six-australian-sport-adverts

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