Comms Council chairman: Tourism Australia should give their marketing budget to the Sydney Opera House
Communications Council chairman Anthony Freedman has lashed out at DDB’s There’s Nothing Like Australia ad arguing that The Sydney Opera House’s Ship Song film does a better job at promoting the country.
In a column in the SMH today, Freedman – who is also the CEO and founder of recently sold ad agency Host – said Tourism Australia should give its marketing budget to the Opera House. Freedman wrote the column as his personal views rather than the position of the Comms Council.
http://youtu.be/qpn6ijA8rrY
Comparing the two ads Freedman said:
“One film yet again plays out a hackneyed, dated and dumbed down vision of Australia, a cultural cringe that is neither appealing nor informative. Yes, I mean the current Tourism Australia campaign with the abysmal There’s Nothing Like Australia jingle,”
“The other takes a landmark so familiar one would think it hard to present it in a way that might actually force reappraisal. But it manages to deliver a beautiful film. It showcases the building, the diversity of its content and even the spirit of Sydney, maybe even Australia in a way that moves you,” he said.
Freedman is not the first to launch an attack on Tourism Australia’s marketing strategy in the SMH.
In May James Packer said people who visit Australia most want to spend time in the cities and that continued use of natural attractions and fauna in marketing material was outdated and targeted the backpacker market.
Andrew McEvoy, MD of the national tourism board, defended the strategy at the time, saying: “Images of kangaroos, koalas, the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, reef, Outback and Great Ocean Road might seem like a cliché for Australians, but we also show nightlife, contemporary Australian cities, and our enviable lifestyle.
“So why would we want to promote ourselves in a generic way in this increasingly homogenised world?”
The Ship Song project for the Opera House was created by ad agency The Monkeys – formerly Three Drunk Monkeys – and was voted by Mumbrella readers as July ad of the month.
[SURVEYS 18]
Anthony, you’re entitled to your opinion, but when you’re chairman of the Comms Council you need to think twice before you speak; or at the very least, assure us this is your personal opinion and not that of the Council. Apart from insulting the work of DDB, one of your biggest members and their client, you’ve politicised the Comms Council.
User ID not verified.
by all means praise the Monkeys’ film, but was it really necessary to denigrate Tourism Australia just to get your name in the paper and on marketing blogs?
There seems to be at least a couple of problems with this wafer-thin critique:
1. his wife is light years from being a member of the target audience, so is largely irrelevant and shouldn’t be in any way guiding strategy nor creative
2. it conveniently forgets that Tourism Australia has to satisfy a far broader range of stakeholders than The Opera House
it is also patently obvious that the above-mentioned criticism of the use of natural attractions and fauna was made solely out of commercial self-interest and as part of a broader PR campaign to undermine the problem gambling proposal.
User ID not verified.
I was actually very disappointed to read this article. I would never expect such a well respected captain of the ad industry to demonstrate such naivety. Does he approach all his clients’ problems with such a thoughtless and ill-informed attitude? If I didn’t know who Anthony was, I’d wonder whether this had been written by an over-enthusiastic ad school student.
The Ship Song is a beautiful piece of content worthy of the talent and glitterati within it, and of course the subject matter. It certainly will reframe the perception of the Opera House locally and will no doubt have a positive, although limited, halo effect for Sydney.
Tourism Australia’s global ad, although not my personal favourite (and why should it be? I live here, like Anthony), is of course based on a strategy that’s built from the truths of Australia (yes, like it or not, they are the truths); and doesn’t advertising work better when you just tell the truth well?
To sell Australia like the Ship Song sells the modern-day Opera House, would be very myopic and a missed opportunity to really leverage Australia’s true point of difference to the world – it’s people, it’s land, it’s attitude to life. That’s why you’d pay a bloody fortune to fly here and stay here. If I want the arts, I’ll save a few thousand dollars and fly to Paris, London, New York…the list of closer cultural hubs goes on.
I don’t think Host/Euro will be on the pitch for TA next time around after that mindless rant.
User ID not verified.
putting whether he should have or shouldn’t have written anything to one side – he’s 100% right.
i for one am glad that someone with Anthony’s standing has the guts to share his opinion in the name of improving the output of the industry he represents.
User ID not verified.
If we are trying to attract jingoistic dickheads and cliche hunters to our country then the current efforts are tip top.
The Opera House work is a view of Australia as I’d like to think it is.
User ID not verified.
Had the ship song actually been an original idea rather than a direct lift of a famous British ad for the BBC, then sure, it has merits . Eventually the pr gloss will fade and those with true talent and originality will come to the fore
User ID not verified.
David you’re missing the point. Anthony’s argument is not necessarily that we should use the Ship Song to sell Australia.
He’s simply saying that by chance, it actually does a far better job than the TA spot. It does a better job at doing something it was never designed to do.
Hiding behind the flimsy and lazy ‘truth’ that Australians want to sell their own country is pathetic. By all means use consumers to spread your message and engage with your brand, but ad agencies are employed to create ideas – something the TA campaign completely lacks. Using consumers to name things, to create ads, to sell things for you etc. can work, but it’s more often than not the fall-back result of an agency who can’t crack it.
User ID not verified.
There’s a vast difference between a piece of content that makes you feel good about the fact that you live a nice culturally-connected life in inner-city Sydney, and a campaign designed to sell the entire nation to a world of leisure and business travellers.
I think Anthony has embarassed himself by not seeming to understand this.
(Not a huge fan of the Tourism Oz work, but to use the opera house work as a counterpoint to it is very ill-considered)
User ID not verified.
I’m with David. I’m not with Anthony.
Two different briefs for two different audiences.
Ship Song might just work internationally, but mainly for a niche of cultural snobs. For the vast majority, the bucket & spade brigade, it’s about beaches, bush and roos.
One may feel it may be hackneyed, dumbed down and cringe-worthy, but that’s what the masses are buying into.
Well done Monkeys (and lesserly to DDB) for getting it out there – the SOH and TA are both excruciatingly bureaucratic.
User ID not verified.
Anthony is right and he’s not the only one making the claim. The adnews editor also said the same thing in his magazine earlier this month. The current campaign is shoddy stuff.
User ID not verified.
the average yank’s got no idea who the artists are in Ship Song. It loses it’s magic without the star power
User ID not verified.
Good ending. Anyhow have a Winfield….
User ID not verified.
I think the argument is more about what a god awful job TA and the tourism industry are doing at promoting Australia as it is about anything else.
For those that don’t know, the enormously dysfunctional TA and its more dysfunctional state and regional counterparts are spending in excess of $450M PER ANNUM, promoting Australia across the world.
It is the poorest managed budget, with the weakest set of analysis and scrutiny of any budget I can think of. Let alone a budget of that scale. It’s full of duplication, waste, excess and contradiction.
It’s laughable.
For TA it comes down to keeping states and government happy above all else.
TA need to be commercialised or the money needs to go to people with accountable, commercial structures that know how to spend and account for a dollar – airlines, hotel groups, flight and hotel aggregators – people whose businesses and outcomes depend on the outcomes.
As for there’s nothing like australia? it’s all been said before. Paint it by numbers pastiche with the right ratio of WA:NSW:QLD imagery and scenes with a sh*t awful track that reinforces this is a backwater with nothing new to offer.
Unless Australia invests serious money into product, and puts serious people into marketing its new products and some actual real marketing… It will continue to see a decline in tourism in real and relative terms, and be happy to blame it on SARS, the dollar, swine flu, earthquakes blah blah blah.
The ad is terrible and will produce not a cent of really provable ROI.
User ID not verified.