Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip with sound shows a 1962 television advertisement for Holden cars. It features a vox-pop style interview between television sports presenter Tony Charlton and John Fisher, member of the Hawthorn team in the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League). The interview takes place in a parking lot outside a football stadium and in front of Fisher’s Holden FC sedan.

Educational value points

• This clip shows two well-known personalities being used to sell Holden sedans, a marketing device widely used in advertising where lucrative sponsorship deals often include media appearances. Hawthorn winger John ‘Fish’ Fisher would have been recognisable to viewers and also had a soft-spoken trustworthy demeanour. To strengthen the sales pitch, Holden used sports broadcaster and 1960s media personality Tony Charlton as the interviewer.

• The interview is in the style of a ‘vox pop’, a term that comes from the Latin ‘vox populi’, meaning ‘voice of the people’. Vox-pop interviews are often used to obtain popular opinion on a specific topic by the interviewer soliciting a statement of opinion from a member of the public. While traditional vox pops are often spontaneous, this advertisement features a recognisable sporting personality who was preselected to provide trusted testimony about Holden.

• The Holden FC, the car featured in the clip, was released in 1958 and replaced the popular FE model. The FC featured cosmetic changes such as chrome trimming, a redesigned interior, and several mechanical and engineering upgrades including a more powerful engine and smoother driving performance. The FC was the first model to incorporate front turning indicators.

• Intergenerational loyalty to the brand is a feature of this advertisement – Fisher cites his father’s possession of a Holden as one of his reasons for choosing the car. By the 1960s the children of Holden’s initial loyal customer base were buying cars. The generation had grown up with Holdens, and family tradition was a strong factor in their purchasing choices.

• In 1962, when this advertisement was made, Holden had been the market leader in Australia for 15 years. Also in that year, Holden reached a significant production milestone with the release of the millionth Holden – a Euroa Gold EJ Premier sedan. The EJ was totally different in appearance from the FC model and had a lower, wider, more streamlined body as well as improved brakes, suspension and transmission.

• Holden’s relationship with Australian Rules football was an example of the way in which popular cultural or social events such as sport are used by advertisers to promote their products. Australian Rules is a particularly popular sporting code in Australia’s southern states and Holden’s assembly plant and testing grounds in Victoria planted part of its target audience firmly within this demographic.