I am watching Ted Lasso, which is about a joyful American football coach, Ted, hired to manage a struggling British soccer team by the new owner Rebecca, who got the team as part of a divorce settlement and wants it to fail miserably to punish her now ex-husband Rupert. Where I’m up to sees Ted in season 3, with the team AFC Richmond, up playing in the premier league again. He’s lost one of his coaching staff, Nate, to West Ham, now owned by the horrible Rupert.
Nate, is in the midst of a story arc where he doesn’t feel he is getting the attention or recognition his talents deserve. At his first press conference at the new club he calls Ted a ‘shitty manager’ after Ted takes the Richmond team on a tour of the sewers. Rebecca asks Ted to respond, which he initially doesn’t want to do. She makes him. At his conference he not only praises Nate and his many talents, but encourages the press to do better with their insults toward him (Ted that is) with several rounds of corny jokes about his slowness to pick up British terminology. In the end the press favours Ted’s ways over Nate’s, leaving Nate fuming.
This week SCA and ARN both employed campaigns of a similar nature around if you can’t beat them, join them.
On Friday afternoon, and I found the selection of the release of this interesting too, Melbourne’s KIIS 101.1, and only the Melbourne KIIS socials, put up a picture of their new Kyle and Jackie O digital marketing out front of a Dan Murphy’s (see below) saying:
“Thanks for making us the #1 8th most popular show”
I laughed out loud.
This move was coming after Kyle Sandilands made two major health announcements earlier this week. When discussing Kyle’s brain aneurysm Bruno Bouchet, Kyle’s manager and a regular part of the show, said that the medical team were confident of a successful treatment procedure. Kyle replied:
“We were confident of a successful launch into Melbourne and look how that’s gone. I want facts!”
I don’t think Kyle will be upset that I laughed at that line too. As Ted Lasso and Kyle Sandilands have shown, it’s much harder to throw shade at someone already holding an umbrella.
Still in Melbourne, but over on SCA station The Fox 101.9, Fifi Box had copped some criticism for a paid advertisement with her and Hit Network stablemate Carrie Bickmore shopping for homewares at Kmart.
The issue being, and I’ll quote a comment on Instagram:
“This is hilarious. These two do not shop at kmart 🤣”
And another:
“Fifi is not a good actor, cannot hide her disdain 😂😂😂”
Another running thread was that they couldn’t really be shopping because neither thought to get a trolley and only carried baskets! How many of you have gone to the supermarket or Kmart saying, “I’m only getting bread / what’s on my list. I don’t need a trolley!” and wildly exceeded expectations. That’s how I phrase it to my family by the way. My shopping exceeded expectations. But I digress.
Rather than get snarky about it Fifi took to her breakfast show with Brendan Fevola and Nick Cody to set the record straight. Fev played her (unpaid) mentions of Kmart over the years and then the trio put it out to their listeners to call if they’d ever seen Fifi in store.
One called saying she’s seen Fifi in a Kmart 20 years ago to which Fev replied, “Geez. You have played the long game.”
Which made me laugh. Then, after a few people mentioned seeing Fifi in the Richmond store, which Fifi said she visits “two or three times a week” a man called Malcolm called, who works in that particular Kmart. When asked for the truth of how often Fifi visits he said:
“All the time. I can’t count that high.”
What good, clean marketing fun from all concerned, turning some negatives into positives and pirouetting a spin that Gene Kelly (and Ted Lasso) would be proud of.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.