1

Michael Kiely

Marketing Guru

When you want to multiply your ad budget by a factor of 10, you launch it with a stunt that grabs headlines.

The British invented stunt marketing: they projected ads onto the Houses of Parliament and even sent Sir Richard Branson in a tank down Broadway in New York to invade Coca-Cola’s homeland. So addicted are the British to staging stunts to promote product that they sometimes forget when to stop.

In this case the British equivalent of the Advertising Standards Council went a-stunting when it banned our bloody ad that aims to get the bloody bath-dodgers to come and spend their pounds out here. Well bugger me if bloody Johnnie Howard defended the use of the word ‘bloody’ in the ATC campaign. “It's a colloquialism, it's not a word that is seen quite in the same category as other words that nobody ought to use in public or on the media or in advertisements,” he said.

“I think the style of the advertisement is anything but offensive, but is in fact in context and I think it's a very effective ad.”

The hypercritical little bastard (sorry, Damien) had complained only the month before about the decline of good manners in Australian society, blaming the drop in standards on increasing vulgarity in the media.

Vulgarity? Australian society was built on vulgarity. It’s our stubbies and thongs culture that appeal to the Brits. You won’t find any nancy boy refinement out here.

That TV commercial tells it like it is. There’s no subtle subtext. Just ‘get your arse over here, cobber’. The target audience is not your Wagner-loving Covent Garden snob. It’s your Barmy Army bovver boy, attracted by the games we play on Cronulla Beach.

Australia stands proud of its vulgarity. No crawling to the marketplace with ‘shrimps on the barbie’.

Raw, unadulterated Aussie slang. It’s your young Alf Garnet who’s likely to be attracted to a babe on the beach using vulgar language. “Where the bloody hell are you?” implies she is drunk or blind and less likely to be discerning in her selection of male company. Brilliant!

I give the campaign six stubbie caps.

2

Graeme Chipp

Managing director, Growth Solutions Group

Whether it’s good luck or good planning, I would say the publicity ‘free kick’ given over the banning of the campaign would have brought a smile to all the faces at Tourism Australia.

It is hard enough to cut through the clutter with any new communications today. To get controversy in the land of Little Britain over this use of the vernacular seems almost too good to be true. Perhaps a targeted campaign to the ‘only gays in the village’ may have generated less controversy!

Once you sort through the hype and view the ad in the context of its overseas audience (easily viewable at www.australia.com with a now standard practice viral option to email a friend), it conveys all the proven and attractive, albeit clichéd, images of Oz.

The return to the big four icons – outback, reef, the Harbour and Skippy is clearly a safe execution after our last unsuccessful attempt to position Australia as a more ‘sophisticated offering’ with a bunch of personalities who had little real connection with the intended audience.

Whether it really connects with our foreign audiences around the tough challenge of evolving the Australian tourist story and attracting visitation and tourist dollars to other gateway destinations outside the Alice, Sydney and Reef triangle remains to be seen.

Given sufficient airtime, this ad should succeed in getting Oz onto the shopping list, but it is unlikely to move our image beyond the existing images of beach, desert and kangaroos. As a result, the marketing challenge for Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and other parts of the Australian offer has not got any easier.

3

Roger James

National President, Australian Marketing Institute

The key issue with the new Tourism Australia campaign is the [sorry] bleedin’ obvious – will the ads bring Australia into the consideration set of potential visitors and lead to action and response?

On the basis of the visuals and the tone of the ad, there’s a good case for it; great shots of natural beauty – and that ironic script.

The controversy over the final line generated loads of media coverage – a PR person’s dream. And was the controversy that serious? Of course not, given the relatively commonplace usage of ‘bloody’ across society (maybe a little less in the UK than here). The real irony is that the line without the word ‘bloody’ is pretty much the same (then there were the Canadians objecting to ‘hell’ in certain family viewing slots; not a lot of punch left in “So where are you?”).

More generally, maybe we should be asking whether the ad is a little one-dimensional in portraying Australia’s tourist attractions. Considering the number one destination for international visitors is Sydney, there’s very little of it in the initial ad.

But that’s churlish. We all know that a good communication will be focused and tight, and the clear theme of the ad achieves that.

Finally, does the ‘ocker’ characterisation grate a little? It’s a long time since Paul Hogan was a national icon. Again, the balanced view is that the accents are not too broad.

So in sum, the campaign has a lot going for it – the controversy will be forgotten tomorrow and we can be sure, in the UK at least, that many more people will be paying attention when the ad appears than they would have without the bloody brouhaha.

4

Andrew Little

Group managing director, DDB

I think this is a bloody great campaign. Who is actually complaining here? Some conservative UK politicians who back flipped almost immediately, a US family movement who probably don’t even know where Australia is and a similar movement in Canada who have a problem with the word ‘hell’ being shown in family viewing times.

The resulting PR has been absolute gold for Australia and its agency M&C Saatchi. I thought the agency would be on a hiding to nothing trying to beat the Tourism NZ work, but it seems they have done it. Besides being a gutsy pitch line to a conservative government they have immeasurably increased the effectiveness of a limited budget by global brand comparison.

I saw some spoof ads last week and they will no doubt be downloaded and add to the already significant momentum this campaign has built. As long as consumers, press and governments are out there talking about this campaign, it might just convince someone to jump on a plane and find out what the bloody hell is going on down under.

5

Ant Shannon

Executive creative director, Grey

Hhhmmm Australian tourism campaigns let me think… We have had a grumpy koala who hated Qantas. We have had an ocker comedian a.k.a Paul Hogan throwing food on a barbie.

Now the latest presenter chosen to talk up our great land, is a young bikini clad girl ‘swearing’ at our would be customers. Is this new advertising campaign something a responsible government should have approved? Is it actually going to work or are we turning off people by portraying an image that seems to cause offence? I suspect that what we are actually seeing is just another stereotypical view of Australia repackaged. The difference is that this time it’s packaged with a sting on its tail, in an effort to break through the clutter of new media channels and the thousands of ads that these now carry. From my creative view point, the new campaign has basicallt bog standard images, the type you would epect to see in a publicly funded tourism ad for Australia.

Whether these somewhat unimaginative images were specifically chosen to lull you into a state of semi sleep so the ‘bloody hell’ line has more impact, I don’t know.

But impact it has had. It now appears that there are only a few people on this planet who haven’t heard about this catchy campaign line. So, based on awareness I would enter it in the score sheet as a brilliant tactical campaign, but unfortunately one that does little to shift preconceptions about ‘brand Australia’