I went to Falls down Marion Bay way over the new year. It was orright. The Hives were of course a lotta fun and Franz, Cut off Your Hands and Mystery Jets were my highlights. I was pretty disappointed by the proportion of absolute tools in the crowd though. As is the risk with festivals, a lotta people weren't there to see the music but to get really drunk, push women over in the moshpit and throw myriad objects at the performers (what a disgrace, pretty disrespectful). I would sum it up like so: the bands on display would be played mainly on Triple J but the punters preferred listening to Triple M (and a lot of people just stayed at their campsites or in their cars most of the time getting shickered and listening to P!nk (yes I spelt that). Anyway, it was a little bit interesting for an expert 'piece of communication' I came across. On the way to Falls from the airport on the bus there was a tall red door in a frame slightly ajar propped up on the side of the road in a paddock. It was brand spanking new, shining and pretty big. A lot of people in the bus expressed 'what the fucks?' and such and most agreed it was just a piece of public roadside art like we are accustomed to in Victoria. There was no branding on this door so most of us would have forgotten it. When we entered Falls there was another identical red door by the path to the mainstage. It was unbranded except for a few random stickers punters had tried to vandalise it with. So this was still a bit of a mystery and may have even got some sad people excited. A few hours later I was persuing through my festival program and came across this...
The picture is obviously a re-creation of the red door we had seen physically a couple of times already and the circle was complete. Pretty clever way of getting that cut-through I thought, and giving a better chance of retention. I recognised the door immediately and read the ad and even considered myself a bit of a detective for putting the pieces together. If it had this effect on everyone then that is something very special and has definitely made an impact. I think it was good to keep the print ad short and sweet too like they did. It is concise, bold and impressive and the whole package has definitely irrationally raised the standard of UTAS in my mind (albeit that's not too hard).
Where they went wrong...
Some would say advertising at Falls would be the number one mistake, given most patrons were complete drunk douchefags (that's my new hybrid, spead it. or not). But Falls is an obvious flood of youths so it ticks off the target market. In a more complicated way I think this campaign went a little bit into overkill territory. I went from thinking "that was clever" to groaning and thinking "stop following me" when there were ads on the big screen next to the mainstage every minute asking me to befriend 'Red Door Man' on Facebook. On the ad there was a picture a the red door now with added red arms like a... man would have. A Red Door Man. It all came across as a bit lame. Still I tried to get into Red Door Man's letter flap but couldn't find him anywhere on facebook, after depressingly searching for about half an hour. I even had to question my sanity when a friend asked me what I had been doing for so long and I replied "trying to become friends with Red Door Man!!!" So there was no trace of this once ubiquitous door, maybe he was only available in Tassie but I doubt it, and when I went on the official UTAS site there was no link to finding the Red Door Man. Elusive as the Tassie Tiger he was.
Nevertheless I think the campaign beat the normal uni advert billboards with boring faces of various ethnicities posing in quadrangles smiling. So good on yer Tassie, you're punching above your weight again. Advertising unis is definitely a difficult beast and I think UTAS has done a fairly good job of breaking through and doing something different, but maybe they just did a little bit too much. I certainly won't be quitting my degree and going to The Map, but I might just tell a school leaver friend to try and find Red Door Man.
Apologies for not taking a picture of this, my dignity prohibited from me from looking like a tourist thinking he was capturing a piece of amazing public art while people around me snickered.
