Tourism Oz claims bloody success

SYDNEY: Despite all the controversy, Tourism Australia's $60 million So Where the Bloody Hell Are You? campaign worked its socks off.

That was the claim by outgoing Tourism Australia managing director Scott Morrison. He told the Advertising, Marketing & Media Summit in Melbourne last week that visits to the australia.com website have increased tenfold.

“Our objective with this ad was to increase the value of the tourism industry over time, and we have well and truly met this objective,” Morrison said.

“We know that the knowledge of what sort of experience people will have when coming to Australia is very limited, so we’ve worked to show them authentic brand messages through this campaign."

The campaign initially attracted negative media publicity in Australia because of the use of the word bloody, then was banned from British television in March after being deemed too risqué for UK screens.

But Morrison described the ban as a PR dream, and the best thing that could have happened for the campaign. He hoped the campaign would run for at least another four years.

“We haven’t walked away from the icons to represent Australia in this campaign - this is just the hook to get people in. The places we’ve shown could be anywhere, and we’ve purposely done that because it’s all about selling the Australian brand,”

Some of the markets Australia is working to attract don’t even understand what "where the bloody hell are you?" means because there isn’t an accurate translation, Morrison said. The tagline has been kept in English in each market.

“Some countries don’t know what bloody hell means, and to be honest that doesn’t bloody matter. They understand they have had a warm invitation extended to them to visit Australia, and that’s what matters.”

Morrison had committed to speaking at the summit prior to his resignation. He has not yet announced what date he will depart the government authority or what his future plans are.

Morrison joined Tourism Australia in November 2004 from the NSW Liberal Party, where he was the state director.