Marketing the Monaro

"Monaro is a wolf in wolf’s clothing,” reads the blurb in Holden’s Little Red Riding Hood-themed magazine advertisement (below) of early 1969. “But nothing a girl can’t handle. On an afternoon off, or a trip to grandma’s, Monaro is as easy to drive as it is to live with.”

Way-out advertising concept, huh? Yet this was the late sixties, an era of massive social change. A time when Holden and other car companies moved from conservative, often prim and proper theming to creative marketing messages reflecting the revolution underway across so many aspects of life. In that sense the ‘out there’ nature of the theming comes as no surprise. Especially as displaying a fast car with a female model has always been a simple formula to attract male attention.

Legendary fashion photographer Henry Talbot (Right)

Except, this advertisement is not targeting men. If you think Monaro GTS and GTS 327 were brought to market to appeal solely to blokey blokes, you would be wrong. It’s easy to view these nameplates today as adorning testosterone-targeted machines, but that would be to ignore the considerable time and effort Holden put into marketing the Monaro at launch time as a fashion item to women. This included an expensive and multi-faceted advertising campaign in The Australian Women’s Weekly.