Tina Turner’s ‘What You Get is What You See’ TV promotional ad for the NSW Rugby League’s Winfield Cup featured players from the League alongside Turner singing her hit.

The campaign launched in 1989 and was a calculated attempt by the League’s management to clean up its image as violent, blokey and amateurish, and to attract female and family audiences. It worked. In the space of one season, the female fan base leapt by 70%.

This 1991 version of the ad shows all the elements that made the campaign go gangbusters. Dressed down in denim and a cosy red turtleneck but still flashing those famous legs, Turner sings her 1986 hit ‘What You Get is What You See’ as the rugby players train, horse around, and eventually hit the field while fans yell their approval.

The objectification of the squad is half raunchy, half comical: muscles are flexed, chests are bared, but there’s also a lot of wry grins and some sweet clowning with a toddler. Women fans are explicitly put in the picture, dancing with their babies, mobbing the stars for autographs and adding their voices to the cheering crowd. The visceral crunches of the game are thrillingly conveyed: come for the physiques, stay for the tackles.

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