“Australian Interior Authority” campaign linked to Australian branch of ad company @DraftFCB

Posted July 8th, 2011 by djackmanson and filed in Advertising
5 Comments

Pic: More of those spoof "Australian Interior Authority" posters on Wickham St, Fortitude Valley

Ominous posters in Brisbane warning of a national-security dictatorship in the year 2021 are linked to a “communications agency” that has campaigned for Honda, Kraft, BP and Greenpeace. DraftFCB Australia is listed online as the registrant of the website www.australianinteriorauthority.com.au ; that web address appears on the posters.

The large, professionally-produced posters have appeared on a wall of Brisbane where posters for major music gigs are advertised. Twitter user James Bradley, known as @CityOfTongues also reports they have been put up in eastern Sydney. The phone number 1800 01 21 29 on the poster is active; when it’s called a recorded message for the Australian Interior Authority plays. The website shows a number of messages foretelling dictatorial laws to be enforced by the fictional Authority.



110707 Australian Interior Authority voicemail message – click on the player above or on this link to listen

Australian Interior Authority Website screenshot

This information is publicly available to anyone who cares to look. It was originally published on the reddit website on June 22 by a user called fumblus. The registrant of a website ending with .com.au can often be found by doing a “Whois” search at a site like AusRegistry. The search for the Australian Interior Authority website reveals DraftFCB Australia as the registrant of the name, and Adrian O’Hagan as the contact person. Mr O’Hagan is an employee at the Melbourne office of DraftFCB Australia.


Australian Interior Authority whois info

Mr O’Hagan has not yet returned a call asking about the campaign. Online speculation continues about who the campaign might be for.

ADDITIONAL: One suggestion is that the campaign is for the Australian branch of tobacco company Philip Morris, as DraftFCB worked for Fortune Tobacco (now merged with Philip Morris) in the Philippines in 2008. However, Philip Morris is a supporter of the Alliance of Australian Retailers, the organisation campaigning against plain cigarette-pack laws in Australia. A spokeswoman for the Alliance said the Australian Interior Authority campaign was “nothing to do with us”. Unless there is a split in the tobacco companies’ campaign against plain packaging laws, that indicates that the AIA campaign is for some other client.

5 Responses to ““Australian Interior Authority” campaign linked to Australian branch of ad company @DraftFCB”

  1. Ruben Schade says:
    July 8, 2011 at 2:21 pm

    An interesting twist to this saga. Like many people I’d suspected the tobacco lobby of organising this.

    No matter who its for though, they’ve certainly garnered plenty of attention for themselves. Reminds me of that Gabbo episode of The Simpsons!

  2. djackmanson says:
    July 8, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    Gabbo? Who’s Gabbo? I MUST find out! ;)

  3. Grant says:
    July 25, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    These have just appeared last week. Definitely something to watch.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kUs9gPW6f8&feature=related

  4. Truth Detective says:
    July 28, 2011 at 12:20 pm

    [...] Google – nowadays the most instantaneous detective of all – has lead most of us to discover fairly quickly that the campaign has been outed as NOT associated with the tobacco industry. Calls to the Alliance of Australian Retailers have garnered simply a shrug of the shoulders and a flat denial. My source is quite clear in its insistence: there is something more sinister at play than a continuation of the Nanny State ads. So whatever they are campaigning for… it sure ain’t tobacco. http://brisbaneblog.info/2011/07/australian-interior-authority-campaign-linked-to-australian-branch-... [...]

  5. boxes brisbane says:
    March 21, 2012 at 7:45 am

    wow how political – stay home after curfew

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