Best Australian Ad of the Year So Far: TradeTools Doesn’t {Heart} Julia

I love this ad.  I would marry this ad.  Hell, I would gay marry this ad.

PDF of actual ad from yesterday’s Sunday Mail at link; text of the prize rant below for clarity:

COMRADE JULIA Has Taken Over TradeTools???

Thank goodness NO!

But if she did, the following scary changes would quickly happen:

1. We’d have a doubling of our back room office staff with rostered days off, possible 9 day fortnights & committee meetings to decide on which fair trade coffee we should all begin drinking! Every store would have a children’s crèche of course. Selling tools would immediately become a strangely secondary issue for Julia.

2. With all of those extra staff to pay, that amazingly none of us here realised we ever needed before, Julia would think it quite okay to begin increasing all selling prices at TradeTools. She would absolutely believe that all customers would fully understand that our cost base had markedly increased, but be amazed when many started taking 24 years of hard won business elsewhere in confusion & frustration!

3. If she saw on TV that some lone Northern Territory sadist murdered his dog, then cut it up using a jigsaw, Julia would immediately ban the sale of all jigsaws! We’d then have pallets full of jigsaws everywhere & thousands of tradesmen [sorry ‘tradespeople’] would need to find a probably much more dangerous alternative. This is something Julia would be totally mystified by, especially as she didn’t really know what a jigsaw actually was or did in the first place!

4. If Julia ran TradeTools, she would quickly notice that our mining company customers seemed to be doing quite well, particularly as they were buying so much equipment. Due to this brilliant observation, she would think it totally acceptable to single out all these successful mining companies then charge them a lot more for our huge range of products over what we charge all other customers. She would then wonder why on earth all the miners thought she’d gone bonkers? These intrepid miners would immediately begin looking for alternative suppliers of course, a real mystery to Comrade Julia who’d totally fail to understand their sound commercial reasoning? Maybe she secretly loathes successful entrepreneurs from Australia’s most successful primary industry ever in our history?

5. Julia must secretly despise power tools as they use electricity from power companies that she loves to disparagingly call “big polluters”. This is even though she is a large power user herself but seems to hypocritically believe that electricity is in some strange way evil, even though it basically powers our entire world. Julia resembles a vegetarian who hates vegetables on this issue! She would then make an alliance with some flaky inventor in order to source wind or solar powered drills & saws. This dynamic duo of rocket scientists would then wonder why nobody wanted to buy their new enviro powered drills & saws, even though they only cost twice as much, were twice as big & had half the power? Julia has legendary confidence in her inner city ability to know what is best for Australians after all; must be her previous left wing legal training coming into play, like a misguided but politically correct wrecking ball?

6. Julia would promise not to introduce price increases just prior to being elected as boss of TradeTools, shortly after knifing the previous head honcho in the back that is. Immediately after becoming boss though, she would completely renege on this price promise, bleating about having never really meant it anyway, or some other such nonsensical drivel involving cars & roads. She would then mysteriously ask for mass consultation, even though her mind was already & obviously made up for us years ago. This confusing approach is a real winner & guarantees absolute staff & customer loyalty. This is, of course, according to supremely confident Comrade Julia & a few loyal sycophants, few of whom have any real world genuine business experience to speak of?

7. We’d have an enforced equal opportunity employment policy & she’d wonder why so few women were interested in working in noisy, dirty power tool stores that require containers unloaded, machinery assembled, plus other many feminine favourites such as welder & nail gun demonstrations. By this time the turnover would be plummeting anyway, which she would probably consider a triumph as there were initially too many blokes in greasy overalls at TradeTools anyway! As Julia is a clever speaker, she would make all of this sound trickily reasonable. But some people trained in the law can be very charming, even when they are totally wrong & have no idea what they are talking about or the real world havoc they seem fond of creating!

8. Comrade Julia would ban the term ‘shoplifter’ & replace it with ‘forgetful customer’. She would encourage TradeTools staff to take home ‘forgetful customers’ & lovingly introduce them to ways that are not so ‘forgetful’. Trouble is, most of her hard working staff arrived home soon afterwards to find all of their furniture stolen! Julia promised to phone up tool store owners in third world countries in an attempt to uncover a ‘forgetful customer’ solution. She was shocked by their angry & crude responses!

9. We’d spend much of the week attending occupational workplace health & safety courses as Julia, in her wisdom as our Nanna, would never believe that any of us are truly capable of using our own common sense & survival instincts. It’s amazing that she knows all this even though she wouldn’t know what 75% of what TradeTools sells actually does. This training would give the new mix of TradeTools guys & girls something to do as there would be far fewer customers left to serve by now anyway. This is a good old left wing strategy that always works, until the real world hard earned money runs out, as it always mysteriously seems to. Surprise surprise!

10. Julia would have the most expensive builders she could find build temporary looking workplace safety training rooms in every TradeTools car park. This would involve squandering previously accumulated profits to overpay her builders who would then supposedly spend their windfalls in the adjoining TradeTools store on tools. Trouble is, they thought she was actually raving mad & instead bought all their workers overseas holidays or new plasma TV’s. There was plenty of space in the car parks after all, space that throngs of once happy TradeTools customers previously parked their utes all over.

11. Julia would insist that we all wear hard hats & high viz shirts all day, even in the lunch room! That must be just in case one of us trips over a broken biscuit or, worse still, gets bumped by an ever so dangerous refrigerator door?

12. After all this, Julia would think it quite acceptable to see TradeTools running at a loss every year but would promise that she would return us to profit in 2 years time. How on earth she knows this should be an absolute inspiration to a few of us at TradeTools & must present an excuse for much needed celebration. However, this is seen as naively optimistic by all the many experienced staff not fooled by Julia’s erratic behaviour, fudged figures & misplaced utopian idealism. Plus, seeing as the world’s economy resembles an unfolding slow motion train crash, anyone predicting profit earnings in 2 years time must surely be considered unfit to govern anything of any consequence. Let’s be brutally honest & admit that ‘Comrade Julia’ could never run a medium sized private company like TradeTools; think about it, it would be absolute madness to even let someone like her try. Neither has Julia ever understood the now well proven rule that socialism is wonderful, until you run out of somebody else’s money! So, most of us at TradeTools really do now wonder why on earth we have someone broadly like her waddling around trying to run Australia? And we all hope something’s done before it’s all too late!

From Most Of  The Hard Working & Heavily Taxed Staff At TradeTools.

FFS, go buy something from them. NOW.  And their contact details are here, should you want to send them some positive feedback.

UPDATE:  Also, best running commentary on Julia’s carbon tax announcement so far?  Via a friend:

Shhh.

Sit up, eyes to the front and listen to Miss.

Miss is speaking in crayon so we all can understand.

UPDATE II: Our Lady Norah of the Neologisms – “Misfortune 500”.  Heh.

UPDATE III:  timlink (thanks!)