IN TRANSLATION : Being the metro, petro or retro-sexual male in NZ

In a country whose history is still largely dominated by colonial and wartime stories, and where most icons are still more masculine than feminine, communicating new roles for men and women without being self-conscious or genetically nave is not easy.

A cursory review of recent efforts suggests

The recent ads for Tui and Burger King look to be straight out of the pages of lad magazines that provide simple humour for an uncomplicated audience. In the short-term these ads, like the international Lynx TVCs, will probably do very well. Increasingly, young NZ males are switching off from the long-term or anything too complex.

I suspect, however, that neither commercials will have anywhere near the longevity as Hallensteins' long-established It's good to be guy campaign, which celebrated being a male with a degree of wit and charm, without necessarily having to always bring the blond mute bimbos into the frame.

While these ads are happy kicking back on the couch in their man cave with Ralph and his Big Boys Toys, elsewhere men are still being cast as the domestic incompetents.

Some years ago Telecom hosted a mini-soap opera featuring a seasoned corporate goddess ensconced in her clifftop retreat. After a morning's shag to the soundtrack of pounding surf below she deftly telecommuted in to her board meeting while her grateful boy-man painted her toes beneath her work-station.

Unless you happened to be living in Piha at the time (and thus were struggling to make a voice call let alone connect to a teleconference) this ad was a great sexy tilt at the local corporate warrior culture.

More recently this sophisticated story of role reversals have been replaced by another few renditions of the "silly daddy" tune. The original version of this idea hailed from the world of branded nappies; these disposable diapers were so easy to use even a dad could change his kid's nappies. Now he needs a cheap mobile-calling plan to figure out from his partner when to feed a crying baby or what type of self-tapping screws are needed for the renovations.

At a time when more men are playing a bigger role in caregiving, it doesn't make a lot of marketing sense to continue to portray them as the hapless domestic dope.

But this is the strategy that the latest New World campaign has adopted, with a truly bewildering twist. Having relegated dad to the back of the car for buying stuff that was not on their shopping list, New World Woman lapses from Feeling Good about supermarket shopping to being a space-cadet. Expectations that women can do anything can be a bit unrealistic, even for the suburban super-mum, but the extended portrayal of her as a dithering twit won't win sympathy let alone empathy.

Even more bewildering are the last two ads from the BP Connect/Wild Bean campaign. While Nescafe Gold in the UK and Moccona in NZ may have established brand success on the sexual threesome of man-woman - and coffee, Wild Bean has decided to throw this script out of a fast-moving car.

Their coffee does taste surprisingly good , particularly at 5am. But if you were to ask the early-morning truckies, fishermen, sales reps or late night partygoers the "coffee or the girl", 90% would say the girl.

The solution was quite simple, he could have bought two takeaway cups of coffee, or ordered for a home delivery. Instead he deservedly wakes up alone, in his fake wood-veneered bachelor pad.

So, within this more recent context of male role regression, role confusion and the odd gender experiment, how do two ads from the mid'-90s, Lion Red's What it is to be a Man and The Gas Company's modern family stack up?

From a marketing perspective they probably wouldn't help sell more beer or gas connections. But both now look remarkably like the types of ads that are increasingly appearing within the fastest-growing category of advertising expenditure: Government-sponsored social marketing campaigns on how to live healthier more civilised lives.

Perhaps that is the underlying strategy of the industry. The Auckland offices sell to the base instincts of the male and female consumer, and then correct any damaging stereotypes via the agencies' Wellington offices.

Murray Campbell's alter ego (as a TNS Global regional director for Asia-Pacific & Latin America) has nothing to do with his authorship of this column. You can contact him at balmain@xtra.co.nz.