An Energy Drink Company Came Up With The Worst Australia Day Advertising Campaign Imaginable
"I survived Australia Day". Really?
This year, Australia Day was marked more than ever by debate rather than celebration. Articles from Indigenous writers and activists, greater recognition of the decades-long Aboriginal resistance to the holiday, well-attended Invasion and Survival Day protests in major cities and online campaigns like #changethedate all contributed to a steadily growing awareness that lauding the anniversary of European settlement — a traumatic and tragic milestone in the history of Indigenous Australia — as a national holiday is more sadistic than it is benign.
With even major corporations like Google highlighting Australia Day’s inherent problems, and counter-celebrations like Sydney’s Yabun Festival going against the once-dominant Australia Day narrative, 2016 felt like the year when public perception truly began to shift — the beginning of a process of collective realisation that will culminate in Australia Day being unceremoniously banished from the national pantheon, eventually regarded as nothing more than an embarrassing, insensitive anachronism.
But that realisation is sure to be slow and uneven, as an advertising campaign by energy drink brand Maximus illustrates. A canvas set up by the company at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station as part of an Australia Day ad blitz invited people to pose in front of a giant bottle of Maximus sports drink, alongside the caption “I survived Australia Day”.
For context, ‘Survival Day’ is one of several alternate names for January 26 many Indigenous people prefer to use. A week ago, Indigenous media outlet NITV outlined their decision to refer to January 26 as Survival Day throughout their coverage, as the term emphasises that “despite colonisation, discrimination and comprehensive inequalities, we continue to practise our traditions, look after the land and make our voices heard in the public sphere. We survive.”
“For NITV as a channel, ‘Survival Day’ acknowledges the mixed nature of January 26. It recognises the invasion and our history, but invasion doesn’t frame us as a people. We are still here, our languages are still spoken and our cultures are strong,” NITV Channel Manager Tanya Denning-Orman explained.
It’s unlikely Maximus consciously chose to co-opt the rationale behind Survival Day to peddle energy drinks, but it seems fairly clear the insulting and callous nature of the ad didn’t cross anybody’s mind in the Maximus marketing department. A number of people have contacted the company via their Facebook wall to leave complaints about the ad’s insensitive nature. Maximus have not yet responded.
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Feature image by Sum Ambepitiya.