“Geoff Dixon as CEO of Qantas pointed out that one of the challenges for an Australian airline is that Australia is only on the way to Antarctica.”

Yes, we’re on the way to NZ. Even some Amricans go to NZ via Sydney, and whinge endlessly about the 34 hour trip.

Autralia is on the way to Asia if you’re travelling from Tassie.

It’s also on the way to Bali or Sri Lanka if you hail from Whakatane. It’s on the way to South frica if youse live in Hawaii. Gee, Geoff, the possibilities are endless. Just keep your planes airborne, OK? Let others ponder the mysteries of tourists’ choices.

‘Australia’ sounds a lot like a 1950s film called ‘The Overlanders’ made by Ealing in Australia and directed by Harry Watt. It was also about a massive cattle drive in World War II. It’s a really good film and has Chips Rafferty as the anti-John Wayne. When action is called for Chips hooks his leg over his saddle pommel, rolls himself a ciggy and has a good old ponder. By the time he’s worked out what to do, the emergency is over. It also has very feisty, stockwhip cracking heroine. Good fun.

Hey Nabs, it was a maxim was it not, that the only good things that came out of Victoria were some highways heading north?

In a feat of promotional magic, Tourism Victoria has turned Melbourne’s once grotty laneways into the coolest spots on the continent.

http://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/melbourne_details.php?id=9408

Cooler even than the Hume Highway.

Let’s face it, we’re just fuckin’ smarter than the rest of you.

Hey Nabs, it was a maxim was it not, that the only good things that came out of Victoria were some highways heading north?

(before Iemma of course)

Hmmm. I thought it was a very Australian way of retelling a classic story about teenagers caught up in major gang warfare. It’s the difference that makes a difference.

We don’t see it here, but abroad Tourism Victoria has some very sharp ads, with clever media buys, flogging exactly that point to Euro gap year backpackers. Queenstown NZ for the physical thrills and Melbourne Australia for the beats and cool bars.

But seriously, faux-schnobbery aside, there’s bands. Music, bands, and pubs.

Im going to be brutal:

1. Australian pubs are wihtout exception complete and utter rubbish, possibly the worst in the world, except for Melbourne pubs - which are completely f*cking brilliant; and

2. the rest of this wide brown country is a f*cking desert for live music.

There.

OTOH if you like swimming, dont come down. The Beaches are absolute rubbish here.

Yup. Every other state is flogging visiting and posing in front of objects, counting coup with photographs on a building, a rock, a reef, a beach or a desert.

Whereas Victoria’s flogging an experience - deftly niche marketed to domestic tourists, backpackers, the business convention market and baby boomer second honeymoons. Which is why, after a decade of a very cleverly segmented but holistic campaign, Victoria, with none of the natural advantages of other states keeps enjoying steady tourism growth.

Let’s face it, we’re just fuckin’ smarter than the rest of you.

Jus’ sayin’

… my favourite post-colonial nation, Taiwan, still hasn’t got it right, despite extraordinary natural beauty (tallest mountains east of the Himalayas)

I hate to be a know-it-all (as I’m clearly not, I didn’t know this until I looked it up) but the wikipedia list of mountains by elevation has any number of peaks east of the Himalayas that are higher than Yu Shan (Mount Jade - 3952m), the highest peak in Taiwan. There are a bunch over 6000m in South America and Puncak Jaya in Indonesian west Papua at 4884m is almost a kilometre higher than Yu Shan.

Jus’ sayin’

We can tell them that Australia is only on the way to New Zealand. Problem solved.

I wish that it could be more accepted that the problem isn’t branding, but merely exchange rates, and that isn’t being solved except by recession here or a boom elsewhere, massively reduced interest rates, the end of all mining, or a return to a fixed exchange rate. But if the debate continues throughout the media, is it likely that a voice saying “Sometimes advertising is completely useless and a waste of money” would be published/broadcast?

I agree.

The bulk of punters drift to where it’s cheap. For example, US tourism to Europe has clif-dived in 2008 with the cliff-dive of the US dollar. Europe haslost none of its innate allure.

How *do* you market/represent/thematise a post-colonial culture?

In addition to observations made by others, I’d query who “you” is in this question.

I think this comment by Richard Green is very astute:

the campaign becomes an effort to validate the culture, rather than sell it.

Why are any of these ads on Australian media? All who see them already live here or have forked out the readies to get here as tourists.

Clearly these ads are designed at least in part, at public expense, to make us feel good about ourselves.

And don’t knock the Melbourne String ad. Tourism to Melbourne has grown rapidly because Melbourne has subtlely sold itself as Not Australia.

You can’t get much more post-colonial than that: “Come to the place that isn’t the place you’re coming to.”

Of course even a good government-sponsored ad campaign would be a giant WOFTAM because the tourism industry’s travails are all about the high Aussie dollar and the oil-driven cost of air transport. The upside of this is that a lousy campaign can’t do much worse.

And I suppose that in the scheme of things it’s a pretty minor picking of the taxpayer’s pocket compared to the larceny some industries manage.

UR DOIN IT RONG