Article by Mark Di Stefano courtesy of the Australian Financial Review
It’s a fun happenstance of Australia that there’s no love lost between its first and eighth-richest citizens. Particularly as the loathing between Gina Rinehart and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest doesn’t generally play out in public, leaving it to us to divine the moves and counter-moves that seep out.
Take the recent (very strange) advertising that started appearing on television this week, for what we’ll dub Gina Inc.
It’s fantastic! The one-minute version opens on the morning mists over rugged bushland, cows in the foreground, then cut to two silhouette figures walking horses.
They’re revealed as Hancock Agriculture CEO Adam Giles and Amy Zempilas, wife of Perth lord mayor Basil Zempilas and Rinehart’s bootfluencer-in-chief. Violins soar, oh my word, that’s the soundtrack from The Man from Snowy River made famous during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Someone call Jean Baudrillard.
Then it’s a montage of Action Adam tending to a rural property, decked out in Rinehart-owned Driza-Bone. Angle grinding, banging in a fence. But this isn’t just work wear – no, not at all. Now he’s in a suit, around the boardroom table making his colleagues laugh. Then there’s a beaming Rinehart.
Then Action Adam is in a tux and Zempilas is in sequin evening wear. They’re walking the red carpet at (we think) Rinehart’s 70th birthday in Perth. Camera pans out, Zempilas gives it a strut in Rossi boots. Classic stuff.
The final shot shows the logos of the full Rinehart experience: Rossi, Driza-Bone, Atlas, Roy Hill, Hancock Prospecting, S. Kidman & Co. and 2GR, Rinehart’s wagyu beef producer.
Pause a moment to think about the strangeness of this production. Rinehart has more money than God, and yet instead of hiring actors, she’s letting her inner circle be front-and-centre. Whose idea was that? The star is the former NT chief minister, the other is the Instagram influencer-wife of the man who dreams of being WA premier. What signal is she sending about those who come onto her payroll? Is there a lesson here for others?
But it’s where the TV ad is airing that’s also got people talking. Rather than blanketing airwaves, the Gina Inc. spot has been sighted multiple times only on the Kerry Stokes-controlled Seven network, and not on Nine, the publisher of this newspaper and the new home of the Olympics.
Last year, among the guests at Rinehart’s neon rave in the Pilbara was Nine CEO Mike Sneesby. His name stood out because he’s not a natural mover in her circles. We heard at the time that his attendance was because Nine was negotiating with Rinehart about buying advertising around the Paris Olympics. Her sponsorship of the AOC meant she was front-of line to buy spots around the Games. Did that go well? Sure doesn’t look like it.
This week news reached us that R.M. Williams, the boot maker co-owned by Nicola Forrest and her estranged husband, is ready to mobilise. R.M. Williams has been making the uniforms for the Paralympic team since 2010. It’s recently signed on as a Nine Olympics partner, buying a ton of TV ads, and offered Nine employees 15 per cent discounts. Those ads will stress how RMs are “Made in Australia”, which we can’t help but think is a veiled dig at how parts of Rinehart’s Rossi boot production takes place in South-East Asia.
Selling boots seems to be a lot more fun than the green hydrogen capitulation over at Fortescue these days. Maybe more profitable too.
