Tui brings back 'yeah right' campaign with billboard making a dig at Philip Polkinghorne

Tui Breweries' famously provocative "Yeah Right" advertising campaign has made a return with a billboard referencing the recent trial of eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne.

Last month, an Auckland jury found former Auckland eye surgeon Polkinghorne not guilty of murdering his wife, Pauline Hanna. Last Friday, less than a fortnight after the verdict, DB Breweries, which owns Tui, went live with its Yeah Right campaign referencing some of the trial's dramatic revelations including Polkinghorne's meth addiction and accusations that he regularly hired sex workers.

The new digital billboard read: "Back to being a respectable meth smoking, sex worker-loving doctor then. Yeah right."

The campaign has attracted a handful of complaints through the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the criticism of at least one marketing expert and generated online discussion. However, the brewery is doubling down on the Polkinghorne reference with more billboards and topical references to come.

Discussion fueled by controversy is the goal of the "Yeah Right" campaign, according to Fraser Shrimpton, the marketing director of DB Breweries.

Shrimpton wrote in an email to RNZ that the Yeah Right revival is in response to making beer brand marketing fun again, stepping away from the recent "do it by the book" approach and walking the precarious line of cancel culture to bring Kiwis a good laugh.

He said they weren't "afraid to say what we've all been thinking" and were happy to "push boundaries".

Along with the campaign, the brewery launched a 24/7 phone feedback line - 0800-TUI-YEAH-RIGHT - to receive public comment on the campaign. The few calls it has received have been mostly positive, Shrimpton said.

It took eight weeks and 80 witnesses for the verdict to be delivered in the Polkinghorne trial. Crown prosecutors argued the couple were unhappy, that Polkinghorne lived a secret "double life" with prostitutes and meth. These combined led him to kill Hanna during a violent, possibly drug-induced struggle, and then stage it as a suicide, they argued.

Laying out the defence's case, Ron Mansfield KC, said it was "easy to get distracted" by Polkinghorne's meth use, relationships with Australian escort Madison Ashton and other sex workers. But at it's core, there was no evidence of a struggle, Hanna was suicidal, and her death was self-inflicted, he said.

Another Tui billboard message appeared to reference rapper and businessman Sean "Diddy" Combs who was arrested on a host of charges including sex trafficking. The billboard's message: "Surely that's the last of the Hollywood sex pests".

The popular campaign was last in action in 2016. Marketing and advertising expert Dr Bodo Lang told RNZ's Midday Report he expected Tui Breweries and its parent company DB Breweries to cop flak for the advert.

"My sense is that this particular execution, this particular billboard referring to the trial, it is very judgmental, it's extremely personal and it's really just grumpy, and there's nothing funny about it.

"I'm a fan of the 'yeah right' campaign, but I think in this particular instance, they just got it wrong."

A brewery taking a judgemental stance didn't sit well either, he explained.

"They're making a very personal judgement, and portraying him as a sinner, which he probably is.

"Alcohol brands cause $9 billion worth of harm in New Zealand every year. So, it's from one sinner to another I guess."

Whether the campaign generates beer sales is moot, he said.

"Advertising is usually meant to sell. I don't think this will be selling many units of Tui beer directly, but I think it certainly will be a talking point."

A post on the social media site Reddit with an image of a billboard with the controversial advertising statement generated more than 300 comments.

Some commenters said that they enjoyed the topical reference of the billboard calling it "brilliant." Others called it bad taste, accusing Tui Breweries of making light of what many in New Zealand see as a miscarriage of justice not just for Hanna but for female victims of crime in general.

A representative for the Advertising Standards Authority said the agency had received a "small number of complaints" for the "Yeah Right" billboards.

The phrases and subjects current in the "Yeah Right" campaign will be refreshed with new ones in the coming days.