Winfrey: Australia’s investment in getting me here will pay off
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has promised that Tourism Australia’s investment in her visit will deliver an “immeasurable” return.
Sitting next to Tourism Australia boss Andrew McEvoy at a press conference, Winfrey said: “I know that there’s a lot of talk and concern in this country about what this will mean for Tourism Australia, and there will be councils measuring how many people came, and did the rates go up and all of that.
“Let me just tell you… it is immeasurable what four hours of a love festival about your country broadcast in 145 countries around the world can do. What I know for sure is that what will happen is people who can afford to come this year, people who never even thought about Australia, didn’t know where it was, are going to go Google Earth it. In other people the seed will be planted in their heart ‘We’ve got to get to Australia’.”
She referred to the sponsorship arrangement as a win-win.
Less encouragingly for one of her sponsors, Telstra, she referred to the telco as “Less-tra”.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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There is no doubt what so ever that this is going to pay massive dividends for Australian tourism. $4 mill investment, $400 million in equivalent on ad time, and then the multiplier effect with visitors expenditure and there are no doubts this is a sure thing. Oh add to the fact that anything Oprah touches turns to gold
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Who was behind the strategy? Damn clever.
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How can anyone be so sure unless you can analyse both pre and post tourism research both offshore and onshore?
Example was “Paul Hogan” campaign in 80s, great success, but was it the adverts or Paul Hogan’s profile through film, and repeats of his comedy program on US tv?
Some seem to think that commissioning Oprah is more about fawning to our big US brother (or sister) hoping that something will eventuate, and big face events for corporates onshore.
Sure the big winner no matter what will be Oprah.
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Can’t knock the investment. $4m for the coverage will be terrific.
What we haven’t had sight of is whether tourism Australia, Qantas or others will be following up with a response driving campaign (discount flights etc.) to get people to act.
For all of the brilliance of the Queensland Tourism campaign, it lacked a clear call to action and reason to act. Tourism of Australia need to learn from this.
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$4 million is chicken feed
It’s a fantastic spend – well worth it.
You’d pay 10 times that (or maybe 100) to get nowhere near as much air time or media exposure in the states alone, let alone around the world.
Whether u r an Oprah fan or not – it’s a bloody good investment and cheap as chips for a country as well.
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So they spent $4m – big whoop. It’s not the biggest spend in the world and the returns will be significant. I’m more concerned they spent more than $40m for the Soccer world cup and only got one vote. Perhaps the Tourism Australia team should be tasked with bringing large events to our shores to drive economic development opportunities.
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Never thought of it as 4 hours in 145 countiries, well said Big O.
But I’m not too sure about her assumption that everyone is going to Google Earth Australia – perhaps getting out an atlas or looking up on wikipedia would be more appropriate?
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I reckon it is worth $5 million to see Hugh Jackman getting slapped in the face by the Oprah House!!
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