Daft quote from Obermier re Next G ads

Remember those Next G ads with Bob Geldof, John McEnroe and Dustin Hoffman?

No ... ok.

Well anyway ... outgoing Telstra Marketing bigwig Bill Obermier has thrown in a reference to them when discussing how awesome the Next G network is with The Australian's media section.

I was a little befuddled at the rationale of using these international names, but according to Obermier Australians often don't value their own creations until they have achieved recognition overseas.

So as a result they used 3 celebrities to show the Australian public that the Next G network was robust and worth our time.

From the article:

"In an effort to gain that overseas validation, Telstra created the Next G campaign featuring the likes of Dustin Hoffman, John McEnroe and Bob Geldof -- all complaining that the mobile coverage they were getting was not as good as Telstra's. Obermeier says the ads actually tracked well with consumers, despite claims by critics that they were indulgent.

Even worse, the ads were attacked as false and misleading by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), and had to be altered.

"My biggest disappointment is that whenever we tried to really tell people about the experience, we have been shot down by the ACCC," he says.

"But the reason we did that was that there tends to be a need to have international validation -- it was way before Next G was really understood -- and that is why we had them saying this would not happen in Australia."

Are Australian's are that dumb they will accept international validation from big name celebrities who have never used the service and are being paid to read off an ad script ... it's an interesting mindset. Personally I've never looked to McEnroe or Hoffman for validation on my purchases in the consumer tech arena.

Maybe The Oz is twisting his words ... or maybe this is what he thinks works in this market.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24013493-7582,00.html