Do his roots show?

And how. Premier Kennett recently left locals "crying in their beer" when he printed 40,000 beer mats at tax payers expense to advertise his website. Oh, there was such a to-do about it. Old Jeff just couldn't understand why. After all, he was only trying to give his people better access to their leader. And what better medium to reach an Ozzie through than the beer mat? It's cheap, the audience is cheerful and the popularity of the pale golden liquid ensures penetration levels that are a media person's dream.

But, unfortunately for Kennett, the attitude of many residents of Victoria toward our hallowed profession is, shall we say, Victorian. "They're replacing public debate with advertising," lamented one traditionalist. He is just one of the many Victorians who don't understand why the Kennett governmentneeded to spend 99 million dollars on propaganda last year. And did Mr Kennett really have to change the state slogan from, "The Garden State" to "Victoria -- On the move"? Actually, it's quite a clever line when you think about it. Especially since it appears most often on car license plates.

There were others who were more kindly disposed to creativity for profit. One college student, upon hearing that I write ads, responded enthusiastically. It seems that he had seen a TV programme where "a shaken soda bottle that popped its top", was used as an analogy to explain the Big Bang theory. He thought it could make "a great commercial for Schweppes or something". So he made me a gift of his big idea. Said I could use it for one of my ads. Ta, Joshua.

The heights, quite literally, to which advertising can be taken was brought home to me even before I landed in Melbourne, Victoria's capital. First of all there was the Qantas barf bag, which carried an ad for National Photos. The ad invited you to usethe bag as a reply paid envelope to mail your film rolls for processing. That is, one presumes, if you didn't use it to do the other job. Messy thought.

On a pleasanter note, there was the in-flight video. Catch the Phantom of the Opera, it said. Tickets could be booked right away, on board. (And what a great show it was). Events marketing played a big role in Kennett's brand-as-state strategy. There was the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show running simultaneously while I was there.

And of course, there was the wine. I was given a brochure on the Wine Regions of Victoria. It told me about the state's great wine-making heritage. How in 1869 one of its wines won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exhibition. And how one French judge even disqualified a Victorian wine thinking it was "a French wine in disguise".

A severe economic depression put paid to the industry and only recently has it been revived with the help of a tremendously successfulmarketing and advertising programme. (How successful? Just imagine: it got millions of Australians to put down their beer mugs and pick up wine glasses!)And so I found myself taking a tour of Moet & Chandon's Australian operation (one of Victoria's 200-odd wineries). I learned that since there's no more space left in France, and the Victorian soil and weather are conducive to wine-growing, they are expanding here. I must admit that the modern wine-making equipment left me a bit cold. It just didn't have the romance of oak barrels stored in dark, dank, limestone caves.

The tour cleverly ended at the doors of the on-site restaurant. There, for a price, one could sample the wines. The absence of limestone caves notwithstanding, they tasted very, very good. So I taste some more. And I looked outside and saw miles of undulating vineyard. (It wasn't the effect of the wine. Honestly. The land did undulate.) So, I drank a toast to good old Jeff. To his application of advertising principles for the good of a people.And I wondered which of our ad men I would choose, if any, to steer our ship of state.

Sumanto Chattopadhyay is associate creative director, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising