Gruen Nation, ABC review: smug, backslapping, boring

As the ABC’s window onto the world of advertising, over the years Gruen has taken many forms.

First there was the original strength formula, AKA The Gruen Transfer; Gruen Planet reached beyond detergent commercials and fake ads for cannibalism to examine big picture government public relations, while Gruen Sweat looked at sport, only without mentioning the results or the gameplay or injuries or anything like that.

But of all the attempts to refresh a format that’s been basically unchanged for over a decade, the most pointless rebranding has been Gruen Nation. Traditionally dusted off when an election coincides with the need to run as much Gruen as possible in a year – don’t worry, after the two episodes of Gruen Nation there’s ten more of regular Gruen coming up – it’s a rare opportunity to hear the panel talk about something even less interesting than ‘influencers’ and ‘branding’ and ‘marketing strategies’.

Strap yourselves in, they’re looking at politics.

In theory this should be corporate synergy to make Barbenheimer look like GoggleMaster. The not-so-buried subtext in every episode of Gruen is that advertising is the secret force that rules the world; individual ad campaigns might fizzle, but advertising itself shapes our thoughts and guides our behaviour in ways mere mortals cannot hope to comprehend. With politics, finally they have a subject worthy of their dark arts.

Watch the Gruen Nation trailer.

Unfortunately, as someone pointed out in this week’s episode, the reality is a bit more mundane. Political advertising always looks cheap and shoddy because all the advertising guru’s highly regarded – by them – skills are largely superfluous in a political campaign.

Political parties work hard to come up with a basic message, which they then express as cheaply as possible so they can spend as much money as possible on putting the ads on as often as possible. It’s all about quantity, not quality … something we’ll no doubt be reminded of during those three whole months of non-stop Gruen we’re getting in 2025.

If it were somehow possible to live a life untouched by advertising – you know, like a rusted-on ABC viewer – then there’s often something to enjoy with Gruen. Occasionally host Wil Anderson’s all-too-human incredulity at the venal nature of the marketing millionaires on the panel comes forth; sometimes someone says something that, stripped of context, is funny or interesting.

But in the real world, advertising is a constant annoyance at best and a constant dull shrieking coming from every screen that surrounds us at worst.

Gruen is like a show where oil executives or high-level supermarket managers or anyone else who gets paid to make our lives worse sit around talking about how cool and exciting their business plans are. Then again, the ABC also airs Insiders, which is basically the same smug back-slapping session only for right-wing political types, so clearly they like the format.

Aside from the ABC’s insatiable desire to keep Wil Anderson on our screens, why even bother with Gruen Nation? Much like advertising itself, it adds nothing to the conversation.

Australia’s extensive political coverage is already all about marketing and advertising: the nightly news is focused entirely on how well the leaders and their parties sold their message that day, with political editors delivering solemn campaign reports that might as well have been written by media managers.

Gruen: silent trumpets

And what about the real face of political advertising in 2025: those relentless Trumpet of Patriots text messages? They’ll probably be the most memorable campaign of this election, yet they barely got a mention in Gruen Nation – possibly because discussing Clive Palmer’s party in any kind of depth would have exposed the central rift between the Gruen panel and their audience.

To the panel, these annoying texts are part of the job, to be applauded for the way they’ve grabbed attention or at least admired for the way they’ve got people talking. For everyone else, they’re an infuriating intrusion, a painful imposition we just want to stop. Like advertising in general.

In that light, Russel Howcroft’s full-throated approval of the LNP’s message means as much as Todd Sampson saying jargon like ‘positioning is all about context’ or influencer Hannah Ferguson letting us know in that influencer voice where you can’t slow down or pause for breath in case your audience wanders off that she still gets asked for ID in bars and communicates with her friends entirely in cringe memes. Don’t worry, they definitely haven’t muted her in the group chat.

They’re all salespeople that the ABC invites into our homes so they can peddle the myth that their business isn’t a parasite we all spend much of our lives avoiding whether it’s by ad-blockers or changing the channel or simply looking away.

And every time Gruen returns, their act seems just that little bit less convincing.

Gruen Nation airs Wednesdays at 8pm on ABC and iView.

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