Australia's Baby Boomer Generation

In 1957, the manufacturers of Mortein inspect spray were looking for an advertising campaign that would demonstrate the efectiveness of their product, but without showing real flies crawling over food and babies' bed clothes, which would almost certainly have disgusted audiences. Australian advertising whiz Bill Graham had the perfect solution, an animated fly character called Louie whose behaviour conveyed the same point without giving the same offence. Further, Louie is an engaging, roguish personality. He is doomed to get his comeuppance, but he always manages to reappear in the next ad. This might explain some of his continued success: in a sense, the consumer is not involved in killing, and yet at the same time can see that Mortein is effective in removing the 'mighty unclean' Louie.

His occasional appearances since the first advertisement in 1957 seem hardly sufficient to explain his huge success and popularity. But huge it is. Well over 90% of Australians recognise Louie and know the 'Louie the Fly' jingle, and - which is more important - associate both the character and the jingle with Mortein. Each year 75% of Australian sales of fly sprays are generated between October and March. As a result, insecticide advertising also appears in bursts during the Australian spring and summer. Louie's great strength is that he generates instant recall of the Mortein brand name even after the long seasonal lay - off, while other brands must to some extent rebuild their image each year. It is some measure of the character's success that he spawned a cartoon series of his own in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

Louie has been revived in slightly different forms by a series of advertising agencies, with and without the famous jingle. These days, Mortein's advertisements depict Louie with a number of friends - cockroaches and other insects - whom he unsuccessfully warns about the power of Mortein. This overcomes Louie's one obvious drawback - the suggestion that Mortein is designed only for flies or flying insects.

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