The Pitch: Waltzing with Matilda and cultural connection

Excuse me New Zealand - would you like to dance?

Whether we like it or not, we're spending more and more time waltzing with Matilda.

Nightly in our living rooms, New Zealanders are exposed to an increasing number of Aussie ads. But it's not just Australian ads for Australian brands - often it's Aussie ads for global brands.

It makes perfect business sense of course - the same product, consistent packaging and TVC production efficiencies all result in increased budgets for precious media exposure. This argument when combined with the geographical proximity, the ethnic origins and the cultural similarities that exist on paper between the two nations makes a compelling case.

The theory is hard to argue with, but many I suspect intuit that some of those efficiencies delivered from running Australian TVCs in New Zealand might be false economies. Thanks to a ground-breaking study by FCB New Zealand and Australia, I now have tangible and credible evidence that my intuition was right.

Brands do not live in a vacuum but in a cultural space and culture is not natural or innate; it is fabricated, constructed by those people who use it. Advertising and indeed brands themselves borrow from and co-create culture.

If an ad talks to category values or even brand values, but does not connect culturally, - often the case with Aussie hand-me-downs - you end up creating a strong product but not a strong brand.

Equally, if a brand that has connected culturally suddenly fails, the impact on the consumer's relationship can be sudden and severe, a scenario that can occur when the advertising creative ceases to be locally produced and emanates from across the Tasman.

FCB's aptly named Legends and Tensions study set out to better understand our own (and conversely Australia's) cultural conventions and values, and in doing so has uncovered an insightfully rich source for reinforcing and communicating not just the brand, but also ourselves and our world.

The key finding is that while Australia and New Zealand share common core cultural values (or legends) at a macro level, these are nuanced quite differently at a micro level and importantly, more often than not, it is the differences not the commonality that matter.

Getting the legends right is often the easy part. Understanding the tensions within the culture requires much deeper understanding.

All cultures have sore spots - issues and history that evokes popular debate - and these tensions should not be avoided. Indeed, the area of conflict indicates the real or emerging truth in a cultural value. The reality is that while similar legends or cultural values may be apparent in both countries, the underlying tensions do not manifest themselves in the same way.

Australian culture is built around tackling these tensions head on, hence the colloquium "brash Aussies". Understated New Zealanders, on the other hand, skirt around the tension, acknowledging it but never really resolving it.

The chasm between the cultures is a significant pitfall for marketers and agencies creating ads for the two nations. Australian culture emanates from resourcefulness born of great resources; New Zealand's from ingenuity born of scarce resources.

So if you think that your brand can waltz with Matilda in the public arena, consider the huge divide between the two cultures perhaps best summed up in each country's anthem: God Defend New Zealand vs Advance Australia Fair!

* Nick Baylis is CEO of advertising agency FCB.