That was until a message arrived in my Facebook inbox\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that I\u2019m getting on I thought I should finally clear up the Weekbix misinformation provided by Sanitarium who basically don\u2019t really give a hoot about who created the campaign which established their pre-eminence in the cereal market at a time (1985) when they were about to go out the door backwards. I was an experienced copywriter and I had been Australia\u2019s youngest Creative Director at 21, a decade earlier\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
I was, to say the least, intrigued. I replied immediately, and began a slightly stilted exchange with short messages\u2026 but it wasn\u2019t enough! I had to know more, and soon I was on a video call to Australia, talking with Ralph Hogan, as his wife Janet, a fellow advertising powerhouse, listened in and threw me extra information.<\/p>\n
Former advertising powerhouses Ralph and Janet Hogan.<\/p>\n
Hogan told me he developed the Weet-Bix campaign in the mid-1980s, as he tried to get back into the advertising industry after a break from the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019d first entered advertising at age 20 and bounced around a number of agencies in creative roles impressive for his age, before going off to travel in Europe and then returning to set up a Sydney restaurant. He thought it would be a simple career but actually hospitality life was \u201ca shit life, really \u2013 terrible hours\u201d and he decided to get back to advertising.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But time had marched on and things had changed since his early glory days. \u201cNo one really knew who I was and I was on the wrong side of 30,\u201d Hogan explains. He\u2019d reached out around Sydney\u2019s agency scene and wasn\u2019t getting the red carpet re-introduction he\u2019d hoped.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But his luck changed at Grey Advertising, which held Sanitarium\u2019s Australian account. \u201cThey were on death\u2019s door with Sanitarium. The client was about to put the account out to pitch, and that\u2019s always when agencies just freak out completely,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cThey were given a month or two to come up with something new and they said, \u2018If you can crack this you can have whatever job, or work freelance, or part-time, whatever you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hogan\u2019s first instinct was to pursue a traditional \u201crational benefits\u201d campaign that would explain why household shoppers should choose Weet-Bix over the market leading Vita Brits. Actually, let\u2019s be honest, back in the 80s, agencies and their clients wouldn\u2019t have categorised these people as household shoppers but mums.<\/p>\n
In more 80s-style sexism, Hogan remembers the brief he was given said the ad should be a real \u201cwomb twitcher\u201d. It wasn\u2019t a term he would have used but it did give him a direction. \u201cThat guided me a lot. It needed to be emotional \u2013 something that would knock mothers off their feet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janet had recently entered the advertising world as the only woman creative at respected agency Mojo, and soon Hogan was relying on her as his sounding board.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had this vision of a sort of idealised Aussie childhood that I wanted to reflect in the pitch, and I found the main chorus quickly and then started to write the rest,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cI had this part about \u2018all corners of our nation\u2019, ultimately because I just wanted to use agency money to have a trip around the country, but Janet told me to just keep it simple, so I dropped that part.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the lyrics written, Ralph went to musician and jingle producer Pat Aulton and asked for a nursery rhyme feeling \u2013 a song that could be sung by kids in a playground like \u2018London Bridge is Falling Down\u2019 or \u2018Ring a Ring a Ring o\u2019 Roses\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cPat called me a few days later and played down this basic tune he\u2019d come up with, just using this sort of whistle sound on his keyboard. It was perfect, it sounded familiar immediately even though it was original.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said he\u2019d get it all recorded with a bunch of guitars, and other instruments and all that, but I said, \u2018No I think keep it simple and keep the whistle\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Weet-Bix ad\u2019s \u2018billabong\u2019 shot that was actually a spa pool<\/p>\n
It was time to make the key 60-second TV commercial and Hogan wanted some very specific idealised Aussie childhood images; moments that were the antithesis of his own past. \u201cI had a rough childhood. I went to boarding school when I was five years old and it was quite an unpleasant experience out in Western New South Wales with nuns, some of whom were evil, basically. In fact at one dinner I watched them shovelling vomit back into a child\u2019s mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janet interrupts Hogan\u2019s recounting of his Roald Dahl-esque boarding school experience with a distillation: \u201cI hadn\u2019t thought of this before, but maybe Aussie Kids was really an encapsulation of the childhood you never had?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hogan agrees: \u201cI was trying to find the beauty in nature and in people.\u201d<\/p>\n
A film crew from Ross Nichols Productions, led by director George Muskens, set out to capture these idealistic images of a range of Aussie kids at play, but when the footage came back, Hogan spotted something missing. He had asked for shots inspired by an image he\u2019d seen of a young indigenous girl from Northern Australia splashing in a billabong surrounded by native water lilies. It wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
Hogan says he was told they didn\u2019t have the money, but he insisted he needed the shot, so a compromise was reached. The crew had one day up its sleeve to get extra shots and if Hogan could arrange a location and set dressing, they\u2019d film his scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we called up a mate who had a spa pool,\u201d Hogan recounts with a chuckle. \u201cAnd I \u2018borrowed\u2019 a few water hyacinths from a local park, and we dressed up his spa and shot it there.\u201d<\/p>\n
A callsheet from the final Weet-Bix shoot day shows Ralph Hogan will supply the water hyacinths and a pool is in place as a billabong.<\/p>\n
In 1985, the ad hit TV screens and was an instant success. \u201cIt just rocketed Weet-Bix to number one,\u201d Janet remembers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this sort of common wisdom that you can\u2019t own a generic position in the market, but that\u2019s bullshit,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cOf course you can, if you\u2019re good enough and the work is good enough.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Aussie Kids campaign effectively gave Weet-Bix ownership of the breakfast sector in Australia, not just burying its previously market-leading competitor Vita Brits, but also taking a big chunk out of the whole cereal market.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a call from a friend at Kelloggs\u2019 agency one day,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cHe said they had every frame from the Weet-Bix ad printed out and up on a board and were trying to figure out what they could do to challenge it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, it wasn\u2019t just Aussie kids who identified themselves as Weet-Bix kids thanks to Hogan\u2019s work. Kiwi kids were also chanting the Sanitarium jingle around school playgrounds. <\/p>\n
So how did the campaign jump the ditch? \u201cI honestly have no idea,\u201d says Hogan.\u00a0He only learned his ad was being adapted for New Zealand when musician Pat Aulton called and told him he\u2019d been asked to remix the tune for Kiwi kids. Hogan didn\u2019t like the idea. \u201cI just thought it was lazy. Why not take the idea and make a truly local version, make it something that really reflects New Zealand?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hogan and Janet went on individually, and as a creative duo, to deliver more iconic advertising through until the early 2000s. They were responsible for the Meadowlea margarine ad (\u201cYou ought to be congratulated\u201d) and some very racy commercials for Voodoo stockings. They formed their own freelance agency and began an advertising co-operative, Oddfellows, before leaving advertising. But years later, their impact on Aussie and Kiwi culture lives on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ad man on how he came up with the iconic 80s commercial and why he was surprised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1032,156,108220,111,139,69,1066,138010],"class_list":{"0":"post-232506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-advertising","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-kiwi-nostalgia","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-pop-culture","15":"tag-weet-bix"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}