Fairfax launches new position – Independent. Always.

‘Seek out the truth’: no specifics. Just fluff.
No copywriter worth their salt punches out an ad full of motherhood statements. Who’ll search for the true author of this ad?

‘We might all think the same way, and we might all vote Green, but by God, we’re doing it independently…”

It’s almost 30 since I created ads for Fairfax titles, from the SMH to the Fin Review at indepenndent creative agency MN&C. All of them were based on compelling human insights, told with a creative leap. Even though we often only had an hour or two to get a radio script approved for the lead Saturday feature, we still managed to win a swag of awards.

Obviously the new improved fast moving digital era Fairfax sees more value in giving an ad brief to an in-house journalist. I assume the briefs for award winning journalism are being outsourced.

The last round of work looked like it had the clients hands all over it and now they have just decided it’s easier to make the stuff themselves.

Like almost everything they turn their hand to recently, utter dribble.

And the art direction! I nearly fell of my train seat when I turned the page.

Much prefer this to the ‘Know no boundaries’ campaign which didn’t even make sense. I think now is a good time to emphasise commitment to independence with the Murdoch press, led by the Tele, more partisan than ever. The art in the ad above looks average but I do like the ‘Independent. Always’ text they have added underneath the print masthead, as of today. Good font too

Look at you guys, pouring shit on Fairfax because they had the temerity to not use an ad agency. Get off your high dudgeon will ya, ya poor things.

Gee Tom, are you a journo whose sources are Twitter feeds or a marketing manager who gets their marketing insights from chat rooms and art direction from 99 Designs? I doubt you’re a copywriter, advertising is the art of communication and juxtaposing shit with high dudgeon isn’t going to resonate with your target audience here.

I simply speculate, if Fairfax wants to fill an ad space (assuming the business has a fixed costs/overhead/lost-sales opportunity/inventory and /management head-hour value and the journo/art department head hours are factored in) experience would predict pre-campaign benchmarking and post research would show a low ROI for this effort.

In the absence of access to such independent results tracking, I look forward to seeing a huge lift in circulation and ad sales as an alternative way to make a final judgement, I suspect we will simply see another example of the UNpower of mediocre advertising.

Smart managers outsource to specialists, perhaps Fairfax thinks they can only maintain independence by keeping everything in-house.

I love Fairfax’s independence. Especially their glowing paid advertorial of the NBN recently…

Makes me think of The Independent.
Not a bad concept though.

I don’t object to them not using an ad agency (I don’t work for one) but the art direction is truly woeful (it’s circa 1970) I’m not sure the copy even makes sense.

When they say “what of media organisations?” do they mean what of other media organisations? Because Fairfax surely is one.

I like what tom wrote – enough said.

it’s either out of high dudgeon, or off a high horse :p

I think it looks great! Nice little stab at Murdoch Limited.

Nice to hear about Fairfax’s “independence” when they indulge in endless copy sharing which includes printing in The Canberra Times articles from Herald journalists saying what a hole Canberra is.

This seems an old idea told badly, I fear. I so wish that Fairfax was better than this.