Running the marketing of Australia must be one of the most thankless jobs in the world.
Most of your 22 million stakeholders are going to have a view on your strategy, and of course feel entitled to express it.
No wonder there’s been a long gap since “Where the bloody hell are you?” died.
The evidence of how heavily it weighs was on display at today’s launch of the new position “There’s nothing like Australia”.
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Admittedly, it did momentarily make me think of the Wizard of Oz…
But one of the slides they presented was informative about the pressures that must mount. It was a list of the 14 mandatories that applied before they locked down the line.
I didn’t have time to t scribble down them all, but of those that I got, many were sensible – things like “rallying point”, “authentic”.
But many did smack a little of fear of public backlash – things like “not polarising”, “not colloquial” and, perhaps most extraordinarily:
“A line that is defensible and that won’t attract negative comments before we have a chance to properly launch it.”
Cripes…
But I think they’ve pulled it off and managed to avoid scaring the horses. Certainly the mood I picked up at the launch was positive. And my colleagues on our sister travel title Thumbrella are already getting tentative thumbs-ups from smaller travel operators who can see how they might apply the position to their own businesses.
It also seems like a smart move not to launch a big TV ad today. It means that by the time judgement comes on that, everyone will already be used to the “There’s nothing like…” line.
It’s certainly a sign of PR lessons learned from previous blowtorchings.
But that was the (relatively) easy bit.
Now comes the real test: will it attract visitors?
Tim Burrowes