A lighthearted campaign during the last home Rugby World Cup became an international incident. But why? Duncan Greive reexamines Telecom’s ‘Abstain for the Game’ ad.

You have to remember that 2011 was 12 years ago and New Zealand was a very different country. The All Blacks had been the best team in rugby for most of the preceding 24 years, yet hadn’t won a World Cup since the amateur-era debut in 1987. We derived a frankly embarrassing proportion of our self-worth from our men’s rugby team being good at men’s rugby (and none from the fact our women’s rugby team had won four straight World Cups by that stage). This made us, as a country, really weird and tense and grumpy.

And humourless. How else to explain the response to Abstain for the Game? It was just a cute, silly ad campaign, dreamed up by Saatchi and Saatchi as a way for Telecom (soon to be rebranded Spark) to have some fun with the rugby-mania which gripped the nation. Instead of seeing it for the loose, self-effacing idea it manifestly was, the thing basically blew up on contact, becoming a major news story which hit politics, travelled overseas and saw the whole thing dumped in the blink of an eye.

But to look at it now with fresh eyes it feels almost unimaginable that it took on such an enormously controversial dimension. It opens with a long shot of 90s-era All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick, set against an enormous New Zealand flag, rippling softly in the breeze. He’s driving a pink dodgem shaped like a fist, with a black band featuring the male/female symbols on it prominent on the right hand ring finger. Strings play softly in the background as he heads toward the camera, and they will swell markedly as he begins a stirring, Churchillian speech.

“Thank you,” he says, “you’ve taken the first step towards supporting the All Blacks in the great battle of 2011.” It’s a baffling sentence, context-free. Firstly, he’s congratulating you before you have made any commitment, or even know what is being asked of you. Secondly, due to draconian protections around the phrase “Rugby World Cup”, even sponsors which had an official association with teams or stadia were forbidden from even mentioning the cup unless they also had a sponsorship relationship with the tournament. Hence “great battle”.

From there, it gets considerably more strange. Fitzpatrick was an icon of the game, but as he had moved to the UK years earlier also held something of an exotic quality. To hear him speak at all was interesting. This is what he said: that we were “…selflessly stepping into the bed chambers of this fine country, throwing aside your natural instincts, and lacy lingerie”. He raises his eyebrows knowingly.

The music rose and pulsed, almost aroused. “Go forth, wearing your pledge band with pride, averting your eyes from temptation, and shouting from the rooftop ‘Abstain for the Game’.” He continues, rambling in this unhinged, slightly coy style (there’s text in the corner reading “for grown ups only”), before reversing his off little vehicle, and driving off into the distance. 

It was an era when new brand campaigns from the major New Zealand corporates were intensely scrutinised pieces of pop culture in their own right, and this one had scarcely aired before becoming perhaps the most reviled ad campaign of the new century. RNZ quoted fellow All Blacks captain Brian Lochore as calling it “crass, disgusting and degrading to all New Zealanders”. It was major news in Australia and was covered in Forbes, Bloomberg and USA Today. Prime minister John Key, ever a sharp reader of public opinion, said “I personally think it’s living proof that not every advertising dollar is worth the money spent”.

The idea was intentionally ludicrous on its face. Previous years had brought reporting and research suggesting that male athletes performed better in competition when they refrained from sex in the leadup to major tournaments. The idea was an extension of the “stadium of four million” concept, whereby New Zealanders would take in abstinence in solidarity with their team. The black rubber ring on the car’s finger was to signal their commitment – Fitzpatrick was also wearing one.

The scale of response essentially forced Telecom’s hand. Within days the blast furnace heat had forced them to apologise and abandon the campaign, torching the vast sums expended on creative and production. It became a symbol of the excesses of the ad industry, and proof that its execs were completely disconnected from the sensibilities of ordinary New Zealanders.

Yet to view it now, three world cups on (two of them resulting in All Black victories) and entirely divorced from the firestorm it set off, the campaign takes on a very different feel. It’s completely bonkers, sure, but very endearingly so. The idea that a brand as huge as Telecom would commit so wholeheartedly to something so massively odd and risky makes your heart swell a little. The execution is so earnest yet unavoidably surreal that it seems humiliating that we took it so seriously.

Perhaps the most comforting aspect with hindsight is that for all the heat, it didn’t impact agency Saatchi and Saatchi’s relationship with Telecom. They would stay together for years to come, and even manage the hugely important rebrand to Spark. It suggests that behind the scenes, both the brand and the agency copped the reaction on the chin, and assumed mutual responsibility and not casting about for someone to blame. That’s as it should be. The campaign was not at fault – it was us all along.

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Knowing what voters thought in real time was considered radical and dangerous in 2002. Now it’s the governing reality of our politics.

At its core, the idea seems snatched from a proto-Charlie Brooker dystopia. Politicians debate while an audience of undecided voters watches, and assesses the speaker live by turning a dial ranging from “very good” to “very dull”. The combined verdict is expressed as a crude “worm” graphic overlaid on screen as they speak to a massive pre-election audience. Everyone involved gets measurably more stupid throughout the experience.

The stunt was used off and on from 1996-2011, but had an outsized influence on the 2002 election in particular – the aftermath of the debate is available on NZ on Screen, and is the only prime-time worm footage available online. The debate thrust United Future from shrugging indifference into government, with an impressive eight MPs. Looking back on it now, in the era when everyone carries a multimedia publishing platform in their pocket, it’s quaint to imagine that public opinion was so opaque. Yet this narrow glimpse of it could and did change an election.

To get a sense of how the worm behaved, what it liked and loathed, it’s worth looking at a single statement. The Alliance’s Laila Harré ripped through a list of broad and uncontroversial goals: a decent public health system, high quality education etc. The worm loved it. She was onto a winner.

Then she wobbled. “Yes it costs.” The public didn’t like that. The worm turned. “But if the wealthiest paid a little bit more…” A chorus of boos erupt, and the worm plunges deep into “dull” territory, never to recover. There’s a clear message here: tell the public what they’re going to get – but do not, under any circumstances, mention that it might have to be paid for by someone at some point.

If you want to make the worm happy, there are easy ways to do it. Act leader Richard Prebble has an idea. “We’ve got to stop letting violent criminals out of jail.” The worm is aroused, it’s heading toward the upper reaches of the stratosphere. Then he pulls out the heavy artillery. “If you do the crime, you should do the time.” The worm breaks its moorings, it flies directly into the sun. Truly, it seems to break the machine when Prebble breaks out the crime-time rhyme, like it’s about to do a burnout and donuts. An all-time, unmatchable worm peak is unlocked.

Still, while Prebble hits the high, he also plumbs lows. The worm’s true master is United Future leader Peter Dunne, who with his aggressive centrism and addiction to “common sense”, seems to hypnotise the worm. It sits, entirely tamed, floating serenely above the line. Neither rocketing into space nor ever threatening to dip. “It’s time to take a clear stand against decriminalising cannabis,” he says, as a young Bill English watches him swallow 5% of National’s support whole.

Six years earlier, the worm made its debut during the first MMP election. Its most notorious moment came when then-PM Jim Bolger had the temerity to acknowledge that “death is always associated with healthcare”. (I would love to watch that debate, but TVNZ’s news archive is meagre – a section of TVNZ+ with a complete archive of election debates would be an extraordinary yet low-cost piece of public service.) The worm hated Bolger’s uncontroversial and obviously true statement, and Bolger hated the worm. “I think it’s a total irrelevancy that has no place in intelligent discussion,” he said at the time. 

He’s correct, obviously. The idea that five settings – “”very good”, “good”, “normal” (!), “dull”, “very dull” – could map to the complexity of politics is asinine. But also, knowing how regular voters are responding to policy and personality in real time is transfixing. It’s understandable, watching it back, how that one relatively small and visual change to the debate ended up having such a shattering impact. In 1996 it became a constantly-covered talking point, up to and including accusations of partisan plants in the audience. In 2002 it rocketed Dunne from deserved obscurity to bringing a handful of bewildered MPs along with him to parliament.

Now here we sit 21 years on, and the worm is but a memory. TVNZ retired it after another controversial turn in the 2005 election, and while TV3 revived it in 2011, its predictive power proved limited as it called the debate for Labour leader Phil Goff, soon to be trounced by his opponent John Key. 

But while the worm is gone from our screens, it is still with us in a way. In fact, it feels like we live in the worm’s world now – you never have to wonder what anyone thinks about anything a politician says. That final year, 2011, is around the time that social media went mainstream and became a giant always-on, all-of-population worm. It’s when tech became the staging ground of elections and our lives, rather than an occasional diversion. 

In this way, our political environment feels profoundly shaped by the worm even now. Few issues raised lately are all that different from those debated in 2002, nor the solutions proposed. The desire for awesome public service remains, as does the revulsion at the idea of any new tax to pay for it. We are dealing with a profusion of smaller parties and a much-diminished vote share for the purple majors. We are still electing Winston Peters. It’s like we’re forever frozen in that moment, with no major party willing to deviate from a relatively small policy envelope.

There are some things which have thankfully changed. TVNZ’s 2002 debate coverage was entirely staffed by white guys – Paul Holmes, Peter Williams, Colin James, Chris Trotter, Mark Sainsbury and Cliff Joiner. Seemed fine at the time. Other elements perhaps deserve reviving – having all parties on stage for one debate at least allows you to see them as equals, which feels democratic and very much of a piece with MMP. It refreshingly implies starting each election with a clean slate. 

Still, the most depressing note of contrast is just how rare and arresting it was for live public opinion to be part of our politics. Within the TVNZ broadcast, lecturer Juliet Roper expresses dismay over the worm leading us away from the debate of issues and onto the politicians’ on-screen performance. This had arguably been happening since the dawn of television, but still seems to have accelerated in what has been accurately described as the “vibes era of politics”. 

While there have been many great things about the rise of social media and user generated content, it has downsides too. It can feel like comments sections of political stories at present are a giant and chaotic rendering of “very dull” or “very good”. 

It can also feel like our would-be prime ministers are so hyper-aware of this dynamic that public statements and policy announcements are largely driven by a combination of polling, focus groups and the pulse of social media sentiment. As a result, the room for bold policy which might change our political reality gets tossed before it’s even launched, lest it get a negative early read from voters. Meet the new worm, even worse than the old one.

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