With the Summer holidays so close you can almost taste them and Australian Tourism recently making a splash globally with their new “Come and Say G’day” campaign, advertising guru Jules Hall (pictured below), CEO of B&T’s recent Indie Agency of the Year award, The Hallway Agency, has compiled his list of top Aussie tourism campaigns of all time.
He unpacks why the ads were so effective in getting people to pack their suitcases and head Down Under and lets you in on a few little-known facts about the campaigns.
The Hallway Advertising Agency has created successful campaigns for Tourism Fiji, Tourism Queensland, QANTAS and Travelocity.
Here’s what Jules has to say about the brand new $125 million 2022 Australian Tourism Campaign, ‘Come and Say G’day!’ featuring Ruby the Roo voiced by Rose Byrne.
“It ticks a few of the marketing boxes – one of the challenges of tourism marketing is that you have to talk to multiple markets. So, there’s a few tricks that they’ve leant into.
They’ve used the two characters, and when you use characters it’s very easy to create a narrative and tell a story. Advertising is all about making people notice your destination and then remember it, so they’ve used the characters nicely.
It taps into a bit of nostalgia. The ‘Come and Say Gday’ line is actually the same line as the very famous 1984 campaign with Paul Hogan. Then there’s the soundtrack, which is the remix of the very famous Men at Work song Down Under –the marching tune for the famous America’s Cup winning team in 1983.
Couple with some quintessential Australian scenery, there’s a few winning components at play and it should work very well.”
THE TOP AUSTRALIAN TOURISM CAMPAIGNS OF ALL TIME
- The Original ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign – 1984
Paul Hogan was our biggest Aussie star on the planet and this ad was long on Australian culture, almost stereotypical.
This ad designed just for the American market, and Paul Hogan was really able to play with the American/Australian cultural nuances, opening up a world of humour that was totally relatable to the US audience.
Soon after Hogan appeared on US television screens, Australia became a must-see destination. Within three months, it rocketed from No.78 on the most-desired holiday list for Americans to No.7.
Arrivals doubled over the first three years and for four years the growth rate was more than 25 per cent annually.
It’s also worth noting that the famous Paul Hogan line we remember as, “throw another shrimp on the barbie” is actually “I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you.”
- ‘Where the Bloody Hell Are You?’ – 2006
This $180 million campaign got people talking for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes there’s a real benefit to an ad being banned – and ‘Where the Bloody Hell are You’ got banned in the UK and Canada.
The Canadians weren’t happy with the use of ‘hell’, and the Poms weren’t comfortable with ‘Bloody hell’.
They managed to negotiate to run it after 9pm in the UK – but that was certainly a talking point.
This campaign was Scott Morrison’s big legacy when he was in the seat at Tourism Australia – and gave him his nickname ‘Scotty from Marketing’
Finally, it propelled model Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) to stardom.
- ‘Crocodile Dundee remake’ – 2018 starring Chris Hemsworth
Hemsworth teamed up with Danny McBride as Brian Dundee, the somewhat mishap son of the legendary Crocodile Dundee – lured to Australia to feature in the follow up movie to his old man, except it’s not.
The ad was a clever throwback to Australia’s most famous export – Crocodile Dundee, with a great story line, brilliant humour and a massive star-studded line-up in addition to Hemsworth and McBride. Almost every big-name Aussie made the cut – Hugh Jackman, Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe, Isla Fisher, Jess Mauboy and Ruby Rose.
The awesome, authentic scenery featured in the campaign was second to none – overall a brilliant representation of Australia.
