Tourism Australia has launched a new television ad in its ongoing mission to market the Land Downunder to the rest of the world.

The only problem? It seems many Australians find the ad embarrassing, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

Midnight	Saturday, you’ve got an eskyful of experience in the industry of promoting and marketing brands — did Tourism Australia really bugger this one up as badly as it looks to many Australians?
Saturday	yes and no. Without question the visuals will appeal to those curious about Australia – it ticks all the expectations boxes and looks pretty fabulous… and yet… this TVC really only works when played with the audio set to mute. Drawing on the last TVC promoting Australia that was also met less than positive reviews – where the bloody hell are you? Well apparently we are singing really badly all over the place. Visions of Simon Cowel sighing with deep relief that a) he was never involved with Australian Idol and b) he’s retired to judge more broader sight acts on X-Factor. Look, in a word the soundtrack is woeful. Just bloody terrible. An unappealing song, sung off-key, in broad cringe worthy boganish accents translates into an experience that is in no way attractive and I would have thought is not what we as nation would like to have projected to the rest of the world. This ad is like a blind date. Pretty to look at and then they talk and teeth are gritted. Pity. The big problem here is that not only is it just horrible but they miss a key element in a successful ad. The ad needs to have something, a personality, or perhaps a catchy song, and a tagline or pithy phrase that will enter into common everyday use. Good ads become part of the general popular culture and take on a life of their own. Drawing on geat Aussie tourism moments – the now ancient but still affectionatly recalled ‘Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie’ and instant recognition with Australia comes with the flute played by Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’. This ad however shares has none of this. The tag is hohum and this song, well let’s just say that I am confident that this won’t be hummed along by someone slaving away in Essex as they save for an overseas holiday. All I can say is d’oh! Looks like we’ve missed another opportunity to present the nation in the best possible circumstances. Rating – visuals 9 out of 10, audio – 1 out of 10 (well it’d be churlish to not rate it at all), tagline 3 out of 10 – so that is a grand total of 13 out of 30. Not even close to a shrug of the shoulders pass mark. FAIL.
Midnight	Okay, hate the soundtrack, get it, it really is pretty awful. But here’s a question for you Mister Saturday — do Australians have any real idea what overseas markets find interesting about Australia and Australians? I’m not saying that this ad demonstrates that Tourism Australia has even a fingernail grip on what will (or won’t) appeal to a tourist, but you have to think that the very things that might make an Australian cringe are the things that people find exotic and interesting about Australia as a destination. Looking at Tourism Australia’s own figures, tourism has been steadily increasing over the last 12 months, even through the "Where the bloody hell are ya?" campaign that so many Aussies hated. Are we missing the point that maybe ‘unpolished’ is exactly what people from other countries want to come here to experience?
Saturday	hmmmm you may have a point. Perhaps the rest of the world does see us as the last of the wild frontiers… but you know… with safe streets and plumb’ sewerage and cable tv.
Midnight	Tell you what though, if I was marketing Australia I’d stick to the central theme of "Come here because it’s on the other side of the world from all the shite that normally keeps you awake at night, working on that acid reflux problem you need all the meds to control." Or what about, "Australia, it’s okay to come by airplane, but please don’t come by boat. We have prison islands for people like you."
Saturday	haha that last one just made me low hot coffee through my nose… based on that it’s a winner!
Midnight	Heh. The coffee-nose-snorting thing. Good times. But, let’s go back to the question of how do you market an experience like Australia? Obviously featuring a bunch of people who should never be heard singing outside a karaoke bar is probably not a great strategy, but what do you use instead? As you know, I’m no marketing expert, but it seems to me the glory days of Australian Tourism advertising were back in Paul Hogan’s lovable larrikin, "Throw another shrimp on the barbie" campaign. I kinda think the secret is somewhere in pitching Australia as "The Big Backyard", albeit a backyard where spiders, snakes, sharks, and people wearing Akubra hats with corks dangling from them are likely to ruin your picnic.
Saturday	Sure. The thing about the current ad is that the soundtrack sucked. The actual visuals I think are very strong, really speak to people about the diversity of the Australian experience and if I was an overseas visitor I reckon based on the visuals – Australia presents itself as a pretty good holiday option. It’s the soundtrack that sucks. And since starting this post, it has also been revealed that the song itself is almost identical to the ‘Mickey Mouse’ fan club song – see here http://ht.ly/1ToNO …..sure I take on board the ‘Big Backyard’ concept but honestly – the current ad ticks most of these boxes. Again – the concept and the visual delviery ar enot in question – it’s the soundtrack. It sucks.
Midnight	Agreed on the soundtrack thing. But I still wanna know — what would Darren Saturday use to sell ‘Australia, The Place You’d Really, Really Like To Visit’? Oh, and for extra points of difficulty, you can’t use women in bikinis. Or pictures of Ayers Rock (Ularu). Or anything to do with kangaroos or the Sydney Opera House. And sweeping coastline vistas shot from helicopters or planes should also be considered verboten.
Saturday	looks like you missed BBQ on your exclusion list – so I’d shoot a group of lads knecking some tinnies while standing around watching one of them burn some steak damnation style while perving at a gaggle of girls quaffing chardonay and giggling as they compared penis sizes of their respective partners. and then a crazed koala screams and launches himself from a nearby gumtree and launches himself on to the back of one of the guys and goes gnaw gnaw gnaw while a pack of dingos race in and growl at everyone to stand back while a kangaroo hops in – stuffs all the steaks into his pouch before legging it… as it were… and two wombats bring up the rear after revealing themselves underneath some of the ladies skirts.
Midnight	Okay, you lose points for mentioning kangaroos, but you make up points for bringing in the wombats. Like the use of dingoes, since most Americans are at least familiar with the phrase, "A dingo took my baby." Me, I’d have a guy standing on a headland surrounded by a bunch of doors. Every time he opens one of the doors, he’s "Somewhere else in Australia": he goes through one and he’s dressed in a Jackeroo outfit, and he’s jumping up on a horse and heading downhill like a madman a la "Man from Snowy River", he goes through another door and he’s in boardshorts and he’s diving off a yacht into (what’s left of) the Great Barrier Reef, he goes through another door and he’s canoeing down one of the red stone gorges in the Northern Territory, another door and he’s in rainforest in Far North Queensland, another door and he’s partying in Melbourne during Grand Prix week, and yadda yadda. And that’s what the slogan would be: "Somewhere else, in Australia". So, I think this conversation has justifiably fallen quiet, as Lord General Saturday has taken his battle-wearied troops on another suicide glorious mission, and is currently refusing to respond to military dispatches and appears to have set up a guerilla army that looks like it might be invading us back again, just for the hell of it. Got anything to add to the conversation? Use the comments section below!

]]> http://www.voodoologic.org/2010/06/25/visit-australia-we-promise-not-to-sing-at-you/feed/ 0 http://www.voodoologic.org/2010/06/17/australia-desperate-and-dateless/ http://www.voodoologic.org/2010/06/17/australia-desperate-and-dateless/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:48:48 +0000 Murray @ Midnight http://www.voodoologic.org/2010/06/17/australia-desperate-and-dateless/ Wherein our Heroes discuss cancelled plans, international relationships, the Impending Invasion Of Tasmania, and the inner workings of martial art movie fight scenes, a bit.

US President Barak Obama has cancelled a second consecutive Presidential visit to Australia on the grounds that he needs to ‘stay home’ and ‘do some stuff.’

It’s slowly becoming obvious that instead of owning up and admitting that the US doesn’t want to spend time with Australia any more, the relationship is going to die an agonising death of a thousand cancelled plans and unreturned phonecalls.

At what point should Australia accept the inevitable and start seeing other countries?

Midnight	So, Saturday, it’s always hard when you realise that a relationship is going nowhere; is it time Australia started putting itself out there on the international scene again? Or can we reignite our relationship with the US by expelling a few diplomats and threatening to invade Tasmania (don’t think for a minute that they don’t have it coming)?
Saturday	well to be fair – the entire Gulf is covered in oil at the moment and his economy is still threatening to go tits up again, he’s still managing two shitfight theatres of ‘war’ that he has bene gifted and the North Koreans have gone and arc’d up again… I think it’d be fair to say that Australia is the least of his worries.
Midnight	Yeah yeah, but that’s my point. Australia just isn’t exciting anymore. When was the last time Hilary Clinton came here to try to talk us out of going Colonial on some tiny pacific island nation? Never! Look, it may be toxic, and no-one wants to see Australia labelled as ‘high maintenance’, but why don’t we at least pretend we’re trying to invent some crazy new weapon that can wipe every living thing off the face of the planet? I bet our dance card would be full after that! And we can point to Tony Abbot as an early prototype.
Saturday	but do we want our dance card full… can’t we just be left alone… we need space… stop crowding us… we’ve got your number, we’ll call if we need to. It’s not you, it’s us. give NZ a buzz, they’d be delighted and we know they have nothing planned for this weekend.
Midnight	It’s easy to say that, man, and I get it. We want some time to figure out what we really want in an international relationship. And no-one can miss the fact that we’ve been flirting heavily with China, and before that it was Japan.
Saturday	well as a general rule the Asians are so less demanding than the Americans… and we cna laugh about all sorts of cultural misunderstandings…
Midnight	Well… I don’t know about this… I’m no expert on Australasian affairs, as you well know, but I have watched a fair few Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies, and my impression is that Asia is much less demanding right up to the point where you’re losing fingers for putting milk and sugar in the ceremonial tea, or being invited to commit ritual suicide because you’re no good at waving swords and circling around while the Kung Fu Hero deals with all 30 of you one at a time. Actually, not to sidetrack, but why is it that Kung Fu bad guys never figure out that if 3 or 4 of them jumped the Hero at once, he’d be truly Phuket?
Saturday	becuase they like nothing better than a good queue
Midnight	Funny, they like a good "cue" too. Or at least, the couple of times I played some Asian guys at the pool hall down on Ann St in the city, they did. They were all, "Aha ahahaha, it is good, you almost sunk one that time," and then it was "bam bam plonk bam" and I was mostly "So… that means I don’t get another turn, right? I mean, you kinda sunk all the balls, which doesn’t seem very fair," and they were like, "It is not to be concerned, we will play another game, but first how much money do you have in your bank account?" and I was like, "This time I will bring my A-Game," and they were like, "You have an A-Game?" and I was totally, "Anything’s possible"; but it turned out not everything is possible and there was much laughter and happiness, particularly since I had quite a lot of money in my bank account.

Want to take part in the conversation? …What, really? Well! Add your insights to the comments section below!

Okay Voodoonista, what went wrong against Germany, and do we have any real hope at all for surviving the Group round?

This is an open conversation follow-up to Who are you tipping to win the 2010 World Cup?, please join in!

‘The Conversation’ is an ongoing dialogue between Voodoologic’s co-conspirators, Darren Saturday and Murray @ Midnight.

Join in on The Conversation in the comments section below!

The 2010 World Cup — the largest single sport event in the world — is about to kick off in South Africa, and we here at Voodoologic Headquarters plan to watch at least a few games and maybe also make a couple of radically misinformed comments as the Cup progresses.

Midnight	Most of the Voodoonista (yes, both of you) are probably unaware that our resident bookie and standover merchant, Darren Saturday, is a rabid soccer fan. So, Saturday, who do you like to be in the Cup final, and how do you rate Australia’s chances in Group D, particularly going up against the powerhouse side of Germany in our first game?
Saturday	well they are calling the Brazil headlining group G as the ‘group o death’… because every world cup must have one where theoretically anyone could advance but I’d argue that the Australian group has group death all over it. In fact with Group G – Brazil and Portugal with advance without much of a sweat leaving behind the Ivory Coast and the lowest ranked nation and let’s face it ‘curiosity’ outfit in the form of North Korea. Despite some team members playing in the K-League and J-League… they don’t have a chance in hell. Not much of a group of death if you ask me. Without question everyone you talk to… well everyone with a passing interest in football, will concede that Germany will advance from the real group of death, group D, and in fact Germany will also ease effortlessly through the quarters depending on their draw… but the other three group D members of Australia, Serbia and Ghana are all very competitive. Ghana was the only African nation to advance from group last cup and are a huge crow fav’ – these guys play a wonderful free flowing style and their joyous celebrations are fantastic. I think they have a good chance. Serbia play a fairly unattractive but brutal style of play and are by no means an easy team to play against. Any other team hoping to grind out a draw with Serbia will have to work hard and I suspect the Serbians to attract plenty of yellow cards as they inflict player injuries. Australia. Big problem for the Aussies is that this team is very similar to the same on that did so well in the last Cup – eventually going down to eventual cup winners – the filthy soap opera acting cheating Italians. Those guys would try to get a penalty by dropping like a marksman had taken them down everytime. Basterds. But you know… pretty stylish and getting French hero Zidane to headbutt one of them and without that went cup glory… well done I guess. This is the problem – the Aussies are fielding an old team. Not much in the way of fresh talent after four years and this is a concern going forward. And relying on Bresciano and Kewell who are both still carrying injuries is distrubing . On the flipside these guys have been there before so they should be more confident and self-assured and certainly their campaign through Asia has really conditioned them for success. My feel is that Australia would be lucky to get a way with a draw with Germany, they may get a win or a draw against Serbia and hopefully won’t suffer too many injuries and they should sneak away with a win against Ghana if the football Grods are merciful. How does this translate into group advances – well 1) Germany 2) Australia 3) Serbia 4) Ghana – with Australia and Serbia probably being split on points difference. Depending on the draw after that, Australia might advance through the quarters but will probably get smashed in the semis. The final/ In a sense I hope not because I think outfits like England and Brazil would just slaughter them in all honesty and that’s be bad for the game. The big question is – with the ‘success’ of the A-League at home, can the Socceroos present new Neills, Schwarzers, Kewells for the future? Hmmmm.
Saturday	oh forgot… my tip for the world cup? kinda hard to say yet until we see the group advances but on paper England should win but they will no doubt have a thorough on pitch meltdown as is tradition since 1966. If I was to put money down on the counter I’d probably back Brazil or Spain. Certainly if it is one of those two in the final they’d have to be odds-on fav’s. Argentina as a possible bolter in spite of the fact that they are being coached by footballing cheat and cocaine fiend Maradona.
Midnight	It’s interesting that you mention Australia’s performance at the World Cup in 2006, which was almost the birth of soccer as a truly ‘national sport’ in Australia. By which, of course, I’m not saying that soccer wasn’t popular in Australia before the 2006 World Cup, but it was during that campaign that I started to hear people who’d probably never taken an active interest in the sport begin talking about it. So, we’re looking to England to either take the Cup, or lose it in such a spectacular way that it will take weeks for the strained look of horrified anguish to clear from the faces of English football fans. Australia will be lucky to make the semis, and will probably be hustled out of the Cup at that point while one of the soccer superpowers steamrolls its way to a finals berth. And we should all be taking acting lessons from the Italians. Lastly, as you know I have a fondness for underdogs and I have followed Cameroon in the last 2 World Cups (mostly because I like screaming "Go the Cameroonies!" at random intervals). This time round they’re sitting in Group E along with the Netherlands, Denmark (who knew they were two different countries?) and Japan. Despite upsetting the hell out of me by taking Gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, I still suspect Cameroon will deliver by putting in a great effort but being exited well before the semis, if they even manage to survive the first group stage. Go the Camerooooonies!!!
Saturday	Yay! 5 of Germany’s first pick players are out injured during the lead up to the big game! Okay I know it is kinda insensitive to revel in other’s misfortunes but seriously – it’s the world cup AND it’s the Germans! C’Mon! For Group E I think The Netherlands will go through without much effort and Japan won’t qualify out of the group at all. This is in spite of an impressive effort against England over the weekend. Although they did lose the game with not one but two self-goals… awkward moments expected to be had in the dressing room after that match… anyone care to explain? This leaves the second place for moving out of the Group between Denmark and Cameroon. On paper there is very little seperating these two teams and certainly in terms of big game experience you’d probably have to give a slight nod to Denmark. Having said that I think Midnight is spot on in that Cameroon are one of those underdog favorites, not unlike Ghana in Group D, and in many ways this team have nothing to lose and everything to gain in terms of expectations. If they don’t make the cut it wouldn’t be hugely shameful but if they did most fans would be delighted for them. There is however no chance Cameroon will get past the quarters – they just don’t have the enough skilled talent to draw upon and I think they’ll tire very quickly.
Midnight	Nice wrapup there, Saturday, and I assume the Aussies are hoping to capitalise on the potential weaknesses exposed by Germany through injury. I think the only thing left to say is "GoooOOooo the Camerooooooonies!!" (again), and also to mention that we’ll probably kick this Conversation off again once the Cup is underway.

Got some thoughts on who might win the 2010 World Cup? Join in on The Conversation in the comments section below!