KWP: ‘We had to change tourism advertising again’ for new Adelaide spot
Agency KWP has released the third spot in its trilogy of ads in the Breathe series for South Australia Tourism, using singer Emma Louise and her astronaut alter ego discovering and exploring the city of Adelaide set against her cover version of the INXS classic Never Tear Us Apart.
The spot is a follow-up to Kangaroo Island ‘Let Yourself Go’ and Barossa ‘Be Consumed’, which both featured music heavily with Nick Cave and Eddie Vedder tracks, with the ad’s director Jeffrey Darling and KWP’s creative director James Rickard telling Mumbrella the ad was an attempt to “move on” the tourism advertising genre once again.
“It was pretty evident after Kangaroo Island and Barossa that the style we were creating was being mimicked by other tourism bodies and other advertisers outside that category,” said Rickard.
“So this emotive sense of communicating that hadn’t really existed before in that category is now being taken on more and more, so we had to change it again. That’s still the underlying truth of what we’re doing in Adelaide but we had to give the work more eccentricity and edge, but of course in-keeping with the brand because the brand of SA and Adelaide does have some eccentricity. We had to push that and bring that too life in a really fresh way.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBn47_hmOMg
“There’s obviously a family there,” said Rickard. “They’re different siblings, they’re not triplets they’re quite different in how they’re exposed and the language they have.”
Darling and Rickard said the Adelaide piece had to stand out; it had to be entertaining to get into the psyche of their target market.
“The reality is with our market is Adelaide isn’t on the radar. We’ve really got to stand out and punch well above that to connect,” said Rickard. “With Adelaide as a brand there’s extreme contrasts – beauty, leafy, vain, sophisticated half of the city and then there’s the other half of the city that’s quite grungy and edgy and youthful.
“But its the youthful exuberance that permeates the city and is bubbling up through it that we’ve managed to capture in the style.”
Darling said the process of creating the Adelaide spot had been the same the team had used in working on the Kangaroo Island and Barossa spots.
“We really get people to immerse inside it and that comes out of that immersion, that discovery of what a place is,” he said.
The Adelaide ‘Breathe’ commercial marks a first for Darling and Rickard, with the music track featured being chosen before shooting had even begun as opposed to it being chosen in the post-production phase as in the Kangaroo Island and Barossa commercials.
“The difference with Adelaide is the track was selected beforehand. One of the major reasons for that is the protagonist is performing the track in the ad,” explained Rickard.
Darling said they wanted to create more “immediacy” with the new Adelaide commercial, bringing the characters to life “as opposed to just looking at them from a distance,” he said.
“So our protagonist had to engage so one of the ways that we could do that is use them as the singer of the song in the story and genre wise we looked at cover versions of songs so we ended up doing a cover version of what is an INXS track.”
The track was produced by record producer, composer and engineer Nick Launay and Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie.
“Inevitably for the cover style we were doing, we needed something that was incredibly known so that we could really deviate from what it is, we could really create a different style for it,” said Darling.
Rickard added: “Make it unique and notable by the brand as opposed to just doing a cover of the song that’s identical. We wanted to attach our own personality to it.”
Darling and Rickard said the use of an INXS track in the ad coinciding with Channel Seven’s ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ mini-series, which tells the story of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, “is a happy coincidence”.
Rickard said: “That wasn’t the reason the piece was selected but that’s come as a happy coincidence. There’s probably going to be fans of INXS who are going to either love this cover or hate it.”
Music has always played a huge role in the SA Tourism ads with music by Eddie Vedder and Nick Cave featuring on Kangaroo Island and Barossa respectively.
“It’s amazing how much of a door opener Kangaroo Island was, once we actually got Eddie Vedder to connect. He said I’ve been to Kangaroo Island surfing, let’s do it. As soon as he came to the party, we had the credibility,” said Rickard.
“We wanted to use a Nick Cave track as soon as we put Kangaroo Island in front of him, he saw it wasn’t a crazy FMCG product bolted onto the end of it, that it was actually a beautiful piece of communication, and once he and The Bad Seeds saw that they said yeah, we’re on board.”
While it was the Kangaroo Island spot that awarded the team credibility moving into the Barossa campaign, it was not without controversy, after revelations that celebrities were paid to tweet positive things about the island and the ad.
However it was successful in terms of boosting interest in the island, with the SA Tourism Commission reporting that two weeks after the ad launched at the end of February 2011, searches for searches for Kangaroo Island on southaustralia.com had increased by 208 per cent.
Awareness of the ad in Sydney and Melbourne was measured at 29%, with 68% of the target market describing it as having “high appeal”.
On the success of the Kangaroo Island and Barossa campaigns Rickard said: “Records are being set.
“It is actually working, there’s no way that the SA government would continue to fund it, if it wasn’t working. We had to re-pitch the business, if it wasn’t working we wouldn’t be getting the business.”
While KWP has held the creative account for the tourism commission for the last decade it wasn’t until the body’s marketing director changed that the agency was allowed to bring its creativity to the fore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoMp-V_CRdc
Rickard told Mumbrella: “The biggest revelation was the introduction to a guy called David O’Loughlin who came to use via the agency world and became the marketing director of Tourism and he completely changed their strategic direction and enabled us and opened up the opportunity for us to do what we’re doing now and really tap into this emotional aspect of tourism advertising.”
Darling added: “He’s just put a whole confidence in that area.”
On their hopes for the new ad, the duo aim for the reachable, saying they’ll be delighted if its received half as well as Barossa. “And Barossa caused a stir so hopefully this one will two,” said Darling. “The deal is getting people conversing about it.”
They are also hopeful this new ad will receive less criticism compared to its sibling ads. “This will have its share of critics again for different reasons, but I suggest they come fewer and quieter as time goes on because we’re proving it with good results,” said Rickard.
And what’s next for the pair and their collaboration with the SA Tourism Commission?
“We see the state as very much a layer cake, and we’ve started those tiers – Kangaroo Island, Barossa and Adelaide – and we’re looking towards the next one already. As it stands for the moment we’ve already started the seed for the next one,” Rickard said.
The Adelaide ‘Breathe’ commercial is running across TV and cinema supported with digital, print and editorial.
Adelaide ‘Breathe’ Credits:
- Agency KWP! Advertising
- Creative Director/Writer James Rickard
- Art Director Michael Gagliardi
- Agency Producer Di Willson
- Account Manager Tristan Glover
- Production Company Moth Projects
- Director Jeffrey Darling
- Executive Producer Sarah Blair
- Producer Kate Sawyer
- Editor Adam Wills
- Post Production Kojo
- Grade and Compile Marty Pepper
- Music Never Tear Us Apart, INXS
- Performer Emma Louise
- Producer Nick Launay
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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The TV ad every creative would love to make.
TVC porn.
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Wow. Brilliant. Light years ahead of the competition.
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Outstanding Trilogy showcasing this wonderful business and leisure destination. Can’t wait to see more….
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Great spot and part of a great series of spots. Nice one.
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I love the spot, it’s edgy cool and creative.
This ad is all about the execution as there is hardly much it an idea in it, so the success of this ad should be attributed to the director and the talented team at KOJO.
As an Adelaidian logging on to Facebook, I see all the rage and anger from locals about this ad. I imagine of course because this ad is a giant lie.
Adelaide is about as far from edgy and cool ad it gets. We are the conservative city of churches, who brought are responsible for Family First, Cory Bernardi, Christopher Pyne and Don Farrell.
This creative however paints a beautiful picture of what the city could become should a few young creative leaders ever break down the walls of the all-male, senior citizen aged ADELAIDE CLUB that runs the city.
Of course, the downside will be tourists who are deceived into visiting Adelaide will realise after they buy an expensive airfare to get here, the moment they arrive when they find Adelaide has one of the worst public transport systems in the developed world, the city is a ghost town after dark and there is bugger all to do here – but those are only short term issues. It’s much easier for the state government to make an ad making the city look cool, rather than investing in anything that would actually make it cool.
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Wow! So far… positive comments 🙂 Stay tuned!
For the record, I do like.
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Why is there so much footage of the singer?
There could be more shots of the Astronaut or something FROM adelaide – the singer is from QLD!!
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The ad really sparks emotions for me as an Adelaidian but I’m not sure if it will lure people to visit. Adelaide has all of the edge and grunge mentioned in some of the other comments, you have to dig a little deeper for it though. Will the ad get people to dig a bit deeper and discover how great Adelaide is?
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@ Adelaidian – couldn’t agree more!!!
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A little disappointment actually. I don’t know if this is just because the bar was raised so high for the previous “Be Consumed” TVC, but this looks like a music video. Its no longer about SA, but more the singer doing a cover of an INXS song shot in SA
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Can someone please better rationalise all the praise? Lovely aesthetic, but this says nothing about the location. All I could decipher was a church spire, a sports arena, a rather bleak looking beach and an art gallery.
What’s my motivation for going to this place and what exactly is this ad saying?
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Makes me want to go to Sydney.
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I’m confused. Where are all the churches?
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Nice music video. Crap tourism ad.
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Adelaide. Come for the booze, stay for the LSD.
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“Adelaide: Australia’s toilet”
This is what people around the country are saying about the city…
I moved from Adelaide last year to escape the bleak outlook, but once I was interstate I found that people had no outlook on SA, as in they call Adelaide a hole but cant put anything else to the city after that. It is almost as if Adelaide literally doesn’t exist outside of SA.
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Let’s put a massive bet on that the next ad will definitely have break dancing or body popping in it of some sorts. You’ll see.
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This gives me no sense of what Adelaide is about whatsoever. I get the intention to stylise, but without context it’s an irrelevant montage. As a comparison, take for example the Vic, “Run Rabbit Run” work. It was heavily stylised but clearly identified its target audience (couples). And clearly gave me a sense of both the place and the sort of experiences I could look forward to. It was an adventure. This is just visual masterbation with a soundtrack (unless you happen to be a gay cosmonaut with a penchant for pastel spacesuits).
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Obviously no one here is familiar with Jeremy Geddes work… I think creative director James Rickard probably is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VBn47_hmOMg#t=64
http://www.google.com.au/imgre.....38;ndsp=21
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This is the worst add I have ever seen or heard, it is disrespectful and annoying
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can the inxs song in the commercial by emma louise be purchased.
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