10 Years On: Looking back at Dick Smith's banned Australia Day ad

Cast your mind back to January 2013. Julia Gillard was Prime Minister (although both Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott would also hold that title before the year was out), Thrift Shop by Macklemore was virtually inescapable, and Dick Smith was furious that an Australia Day ad he’d filmed was being deemed “too offensive” for primetime.

The ad promoted Smith’s brand of Australian-made food products – a brand that would eventually be closed down in 2019, supposedly due to the "extreme capitalism" of Aldi (according to Smith).

Styled on the iconic Sam Kekovich lamb ads, Smith’s ad was created by comedian Dan Ilic, and featured a whole host of characters – from farmers to asylum seekers arriving in Australia on a boat – grinning and talking about how much they love Dick.

At one point, a woman announces that: “There’s only one Dick I’ll be eating on Australia Day,” whilst a farmer and factory worker follow up with "I love Dick."

The sheer amount of innuendos got the ad slapped with a PG classification, therefore making it unsuitable for the 6pm news on Australia Day – despite Smith booking $100,000 worth of ad space during the bulletins. This didn't go down well with Smith, who threatened legal action (that never eventuated). 

"Apparently you can’t have lovely old ladies saying 'dick'," Smith said at the time.

"I'm angry. I don't like this being censored when it's just good fun."

After the media storm came and went, Illic admitted that the pair had leant into the outrage, saying in an interview with Nine News that “We kind of pretended that it wasn’t a laughing matter for a couple of days to spark media interest.”

10 years down the line, and as Alex Don, account lead at Common Ventures tells Mediaweek: "Even if the campaign could be made today, would you want to? Dick Smith had great philanthropic and by-Australia-for-Australia credentials but cheapened them through innuendo and finger-pointing that was neither clever, insightful nor provocative. If your brand is going to choose any hill to die on, you can do a lot better than a dick joke."