Australian marketers should be rubbing their hands together over the latest bombshell from Trumpian America. After worshipping at the altar of American capitalism for most of the last 70 years we have finally seen a turning point where Australian made products may soon be more exciting and interesting to consumers than those from across the Pacific.
We can thank the Baby Boomers for taking up everything American so enthusiastically. Known as the Coca-Cola generation (Coke factories opened here in the late 30s) post war kids were obsessed with American culture that was brought here by the GIs. From Coke, Fanta, Tab, and Pepsi to Juicy Fruit and PK chewing gum; from McDonalds and Burger King hamburgers, to American TV shows like My Three Sons, I Love Lucy, and Leave it to Beaver we became converts to a type of sanitized US morality where idealised Mom-and-Dad-and-three kid-families ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes over red check clothed dinner tables and everyone drank Puritanical tumblers of milk instead of beer and wine.
And so it grew like a disease – Levi jeans, The Beach Boys, Elvis, fluoridated water, an obsession with painkillers – and somehow, before we could blink we became the unofficial 51st state. Our cars were American rip offs (yes the Holden was Australia’s first car but it was for all intents and purposes a General Motors Chevvy and our Falcon GTOs and Valiant Chargers were just Fords and Chryslers with different badges). We even started building Spanish style ranch houses and filled them with appliances such as dishwashers and microwaves that generations of Australians had been able to do quite happily without.
But our era of Americanization may be over.
We have already seen that Labour’s campaign for re-election will seize on our slap in the face over steel and aluminum tariffs (even while we are paying our allies more than $500 million a year for submarines that may never be built) as a chance to give new air to their $22.7 Billion Future Made in Australia policy.
Normally this sort of patriotic cum nationalistic behaviour would have been criticised internationally. Since World War II, the world economy and its trade relationships have been driven by a theme of free trade, collaboration and open borders. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. In fact Australia’s balance of payments with the US was in their favour – we buy more from them than they buy from us – which makes the punitive tariff regime even more bizarre and hurtful.
But thanks to the Trumpian typhoon, all free trade bets are now off. If Making America Great Again means returning to the nostalgic 1950s where the US was the supermarket of the world, every country now has the right to hunker down and think about themselves too. This is a profound shift. Since the Keating days of financial deregulation we have tried to be open traders on the world market. We don’t subsidise our farmers, even though the US and Europe do. We didn’t subsidise our car industry (see where that got us). We don’t subsidise our airlines (although Rex might be a new test case). We’ve tried to play a straight Aussie bat. But the gloves are off.
The US purchase of our steel and aluminium represents less than 1% of our exports so there is every likelihood we will be able to swing that surplus to China or Europe. But for our many other manufacturing businesses this is the time to turn to new markets – our own people.
According to Trading Economics our Top 10 imports from the US in the last financial year were: machinery, vehicles, electrical equipment, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, aircraft/spacecraft, mineral oils and lubricants, precious stones and metals, chemical products and cosmetics. But there are also millions of dollars heading off shore for products we can produce ourselves – rubber and plastic goods, meat, fertiliser, beverages and spirits, soaps, dairy products and so on.
So from a micro point of view, where are the opportunities? Albo fell just short of saying replace your Jim Beam with Bundy…but watch this space. Australian winemakers could certainly do with a hand and while we don’t drink a lot of US wines (our imports are mainly French champagne and NZ Sauvignon Blanc) every bottle that comes from the Barossa or the Yarra is another dollar that stays here. Sadly we no longer make vehicles but Chinese and Korean car manufacturers could easily suck up supply from disgruntled Tesla and Ford Ranger “truck” drivers. Or is this the catalyst to revisit our own sovereign vehicle industry? If we can make Bushmasters for Ukraine in a small regional city such as Bendigo, surely we can make simple, cost-effective electric cars in Australia’s Detroit – Adelaide? And if AUKUS goes pear shaped we might just have to!
More than 90% of our pharmaceuticals come from the US (and Europe), which became blatantly a sovereign risk during COVID. Our own smart but struggling pharma companies (not those owned by US multinationals) need a huge shot in the arm in the next Federal budget to make them more competitive and us more self-reliant. The Budget is also a time for the Albanese government to put its money where its mouth is and favour Australian owned businesses in federal supply tenders.
This is the time for Australia to grow up and out of its forelock tugging hangover from the 1960s and assert ourselves as a country in our own right. We happily gave up our blood ties with the UK for America, after the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin. We realised that we couldn’t rely on our mother country anymore. Now is a similar realisation. We can’t rely on Uncle Sam anymore either. It’s time to be a true Pacific nation and start building close economic, political and defence ties with our neighbours – Indonesia, SE Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines and of course India and China. The best place for this to start is through the soft diplomacy of tourism. Is it time for Australian tourism to focus even more attention on our nearest neighbours, to market our close proximity and relatively cheap flights? And should we reciprocate by extending our travels beyond Bali to other parts of Indonesia; beyond Japan to China and South Korea?
And what can we, as marketers, do to support this new era?
Without being too jingoistic, Australian businesses could do worse than focus on their Australian-ness. After the Trump shock marketers could play an important role in encouraging self belief and much-needed national unity – celebrating our cultural diversity, and what brings us together as a nation, rather than focusing on our haves and have nots? Appealing to the greater good of our community and highlighting the very Australian attributes of the way we do business – open, transparent, relaxed, friendly, collaborative – can be our new positioning. Our product manufacturers can also derive a point of difference from geographic proximity to market (remember carbon miles) and leverage benefits such as the freshness, cleanliness and traceability of our ingredients. Lets get back to proudly proclaiming we are Australian owned.
For years we have resisted this type of patriotic marketing as anti-free-trade, narrow minded and just a bit naff. But now all bets are off. Buy Australian. Buy better.
Listen to Australian music. Read Australian books. Watch Australian movies. Use Australian streaming services (Stan not Netflix). And maybe once and for all get off the US-owned (un)social media platforms that are stealing our focus and radicalising our communities.
Finally my own jingoistic pitch. If you’re planning to use an agency this year or put your business out to tender, think about how you can support Australians and independents. There are a plethora of small to medium independents who can deliver Australian creativity using Australian knowhow, and whose meagre profits keep the money rolling through the Australian economy.
Just a thought.