The Gruen Transfer

“Named for Victor Gruen, who designed the very first shopping mall. The term describes that split second when the mall’s intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken… the moment when we forget what we came for and become impulse buyers.” – Will Anderson

Around this time last year I was home in bed suffering from my first case of stomach flu, when my mum told me about a show on ABC called the Gruen Transfer. With nothing else decent on television I decided to watch it. 

The Gruen Transfer is a panel discussion show created by Andrew Denton and presented by comedian Will Anderson. Each week Anderson is joined by panelists Russel Howcroft and Todd Sampson, who are both industry insiders from the world of advertising. Together they discuss TV advertisements; and the science and techniques behind them. 

Left (Todd Sampson), Center (Will Anderson) and Right (Russel Howcroft)

The show is broken up into various segments which include “How Do You Sell”, “Ad of the Week” and my personal favourite “The Pitch”, where two advertising companies are given the task of creating an advertisement for an unsellable proposal, service or product which is determined by the show’s host; the results are often hilarious from both parties. 

In my opinion The Gruen Transfer is light entertainment at its finest. The show is intelligent within its interesting discussions but without being too serious or boring. It’s funny, as many of the commercials discussed provide plenty of humorous material for the panelists. 

Russel Howcroft and Todd Sampson are just absolute perfect choices for the show as they are almost polar opposites in their opinions, they disagree 90% of the time and it’s great to watch. 

Love him or hate him, Will Anderson is a fantastic host. He’s quick with his one liners, makes valid contributes to the many discussions and most importantly he knows when to be funny and when not to be funny, as the panel does at times talk about some pretty serious and confronting issues. 

At the time I started watching, the show was running a four episode special that focused primarily on the 2010 Australian Federal Election and advertising campaigns from past elections, here in Australia and overseas. This brief series was known as The Gruen Nation which was just as good as the regular series.