New Zealand’s television commercials were once miniature works of art, a point of national pride. What happened?
One of the best parts of doing our My Life in TV interview series over the last few years was chatting to celebrities about their favourite local television ads, a medium in which Aotearoa has traditionally excelled. Impassioned instalments included Rose Matafeo on the childhood anguish of Telecom’s faxed Pohutakawa tree, Suzy Cato singing KFC’s Hugo & Holly ditty from the 1970s, Jeremy Wells listing off basically every 80s ad ever, and Marlon Williams on the intricacies of 3B’s “suffer and cry” chafing balm opus.
“Sometimes I’ll just go onto Freeview just to watch the ads to see if I can get that hit again,” Williams added. “But I seldom do.”
He’s not alone. In 2025, the humble ad break has become a bleak place that can reduce even the most chipper viewer to a pair of sobbing cartoon bumcheeks. For example, the KFC promotional universe could not be further from Cato’s utopian vision of farmyard animals having fun in the sun. This month it was revealed that KFC’s Hacker ad has received 50 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, including concerns that it freaks out kids and makes light of cybercrime. It is now one of the most complained-about ads of the year.
None of these complaints address my primary concern with this ad, and indeed almost all current ads, which is that they a) look ugly and b) make no sense. I recently saw a version of the KFC campaign where the “hacker” crossed live from his bunker to a reporter standing outside a KFC, suggesting that either a) the KFC hacker has siphoned enough from the hot chicken deals to start his own fringe media company or b) the KFC hacker is already a part of the mainstream media, which deeply erodes his countercultural cachet.
That’s just the beginning of the confusion in the local ad universe. Across social media and Reddit, people seem equally baffled and enraged by Spark’s It’s Better With Spark campaign. In it, two road tripping friends, played by comedians Janaye Henry and Liv Parker, have their car sliced in half as Parker is sent on an extraordinary journey up hill and down dale thanks to Henry’s incredible Spark coverage. People have been left so bamboozled by the ad that Henry was recently forced to unravel the unbelievably clear meaning of it on her Instagram story.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’d still take a car sawn in half or a five-years-too-late Look Sharp hacker aesthetic over the Skinny campaign with AI Liz. As I wrote in March: “Liz got paid a talent fee and won mobile credit for life, but that seems like a woefully inadequate reimbursement for handing over your entire likeness to a telecommunications company to flog phone plans.” They still send me into such a blind rage that I can’t ever remember anything that happens in them, but I’m told it is something to do with hundreds of Lizzes on a viking ship.
The techno-hell doesn’t stop there. One NZ is still trying to get us to care about that young fellow finding his Scottish (?) parents who met in an 80s juice (?) ad. The 2Degrees campaign about teenagers being bombarded with nasty notifications has gaslight levels of a MAFS groom wearing loafers and no socks. There’s a memorable one for some kind of app where Rhys Mathewson spits milk back into the bottle, but could I tell you in one million years what it was for? To quote another ad also skating on thin ice, that’s Nunya Business.
Even beyond telcos and apps, ad breaks feel like a slow descent into madness. Why does the kid in the new Michael Hill Jeweller ad a) have a Veruca Salt accent and b) hint that she wants a diamond? For Christmas? In this economy? How does the little loverboy kid in the ASB ad already know that his future wife struggles with cold feet, and therefore saves up his pocket money to buy her monster slippers? Why does Tina from Turners sing “Paekakariiiiki” when she is clearly in front of the L&P bottle in Paeroa, a place over 500km away?
Getting served up ads on services like TVNZ+ and ThreeNow isn’t much better. As if I need more reminders of the state of my near-geriatric womb, I frequently get served an ad featuring a giant wide-eyed baby which stares lovingly into the camera for what feels like 127 hours. “Want help to have a baby?” Fertility Associates offer in the final slide. It’s basically always that, or a Clear Blue ad, or a Reel from an RTD brand lazily repurposed inside a big static image, or the same Steinlager ad repeated three times before the app crashes out.
That’s not to say that there aren’t glimmers of hope. The ad in which countless Toyota drivers muse about whether or not they might actually be in a Toyota ad feels appropriately self-aware for the moment. The Qantas ad which shows an increasingly-ageing granny walking through arrivals to her increasingly-ageing family would have Don Draper crying into his cufflinks. This is a curveball but I’m especially fond of this one for Temptations, mostly for the shot of the paw turning up the mixing desk, and the final frame where the cat’s eyes ping out big time.
All this and yet I still face every ad break with a sense of yearning for the old days, not unlike a certain two-time Silver Scroll winner desperately searching Freeview for his next ad hit. Maybe it’s just a symptom of getting older, or having a broken internet brain, or all those other things millennials like to whinge about these days, but I long for the heady days of the Bugger ad, the Crunchie Train Robbery, and little kids making DIY plans for the weekend. We need to get back to the fun, frivolous shores of togs, togs, undies, because right now we are lost at sea.
