The crowd can smell when you’re bothered: A lesson for Angus Taylor

The brands defined by viral moments are rarely defined by the moment itself. They’re defined by their reaction to it.

Qantas didn’t lose its reputation because flights were cancelled — it lost it because customers could see the company’s irritation at being held accountable. Optus didn’t become a byword for corporate failure because of the data breach — it became one because of the defensive, legalistic response that followed. The lesson is the same in both cases: the crowd can smell when you’re bothered. And once they can, they won’t stop.

Political leaders are brands too. And Australian politics right now is a case study in what happens when a brand can’t laugh at itself.

If there’s one finding to take from the ANU’s latest election study, it’s that the Liberal Party has a generational problem. Every previous generation started left and drifted right over time – the reliable political lifecycle. Millenials and Gen Z (unable to afford property without help from mum and dad) are refusing to follow the script, they’re staying stubbornly port-side.

The Libs are seen as out of touch – in policy (“is climate change really a thing?”), in brand and in personality. Not since John Howard strode out in his Green and Gold trackies — a meme to this day – – has a Liberal leader held genuine cultural currency. The three Liberal PMs since have not helped the cause. Onion-eating Tony, Mr Harbourside Mansion, and “I don’t hold a hose” ScoMo. Whatever their policy merits, none of them passed the pub test.

The author, Matt Rowley

Meanwhile, when Albo deplanes the PM’s jet in a Joy Division T-shirt, Sussan Ley confects outrage about it being an anti-Jewish reference. Everyone else thinks: “cool tee.” It’s not that the Libs are wrong to push back — it’s that the pushback reveals a tin ear. You can’t win a relatability contest by being offended by a counter-culture T-shirt.

But opportunities do come along.

One came to ScoMo in the form of what looked like the dirtiest of falsehoods — the rumour of him being “caught short” at a suburban Macca’s. I was running Pedestrian Group, publishers of the original “Did Scott Morrison Shit Himself At Engadine Maccas In 1997? An Investigation“, during his Prime Ministerial tenure, so I had a front-row seat to its trajectory.

First published in March 2019, the story became the joke every Australian larrikin was in on. Because it was never addressed, the whiff of it lingered right through to the election loss in May 2022.

Whether it was true (it wasn’t) wasn’t the point. The crowd sensed that it bothered him, and that was enough. There is no more reliable way to keep a joke alive than to visibly refuse to laugh at it.

A simple “candid” photo-op — a wink-and-a-nod outside the Engadine Golden Arches — is all it would have taken to flip a persistent slur into proof of a critical human quality: a sense of humour. When KFC ran out of chicken, they ran a full-page ad that read “FCK.” The fastest way to neutralise a negative is to own it. ScoMo missed a trick.

That same opportunity now exists for Angus Taylor.

New Liberals leader Angus Taylor on Facebook

In May 2019, his Facebook account replied to its own post saying “Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus.” It was explained away as a staffer error and became a meme of Engadine proportions.
At the time of writing, there were 4,100 comments on Taylor’s Instagram announcement to run for leader. At least 3,674 of them were a variant of “Fantastic. Well done. Great move Angus.” That’s a 90% meme-to-engagement ratio. Most political social media teams would spend a fortune for that kind of organic cut-through. It’s just never arrived in quite this form before.

An AI-powered think tank (created by General Strategic, my advisory) co-opted it as advertising creative on the largest billboard outside Canberra Airport. The line has taken on a life of its own.

You can visualise Taylor and his team gritting their teeth at every one of those 3,674 comments, or every time it’s referenced by an opposing member of parliament, which is precisely why they keep coming. The perceived irritation is the fuel. This is despite the fact that his team gave out mugs to the press gallery with the quote on it. That’s no longer where cultural currency is made.

Now, imagine Angus’ first question time as Opposition Leader. A friendly backbencher lobs something predictable. Taylor responds: “Fantastic. Well done. Great move, the Honourable Member.”

Social media divides instantly into two camps. Those who say “good on him for laughing at himself.” And those who suddenly find their favourite joke has lost its edge.

Net result: the meme is defused, and Angus Taylor becomes a degree more human. Which, given the generational arithmetic the Libs are facing, is not a small thing.

Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus.

Matt Rowley is a partner at General Strategic, an advisory that “helps clients creatively solve complex problems”.