Forget Lara Bingle. Forget Baz Luhrman, Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
Don't tell DDB, but the perfect campaign for Tourism Australia is already in the can (at least that’s what the Welsh wonder strategist Garry and I think), the only issue is that it’s actually owned by a major Aussie corporation.
You see, the much castigated and celebrated launch ad for CBA’s Determined to be Different campaign isn’t a good ad for a bank. It's actually a great global communications tool to entice tourists to our traveller dollar-starved land. Its larrikin, wacky and wonderfully self-deprecating (you can’t get more Aussie than that!), so it should appeal to a broad range of tastes.
Kids will love the prospect of crazy quad kart koalas on speed; parents will dig the heroic image of a whip-cracking dusty Croc Dundee jackaroo under a starry southern sky.
Just bang on a different V/O, change the logo, bang it up on YouTube and insert a URL with a thousand free trips to Oz prize draw. Let visitors create their own tourism ad using all the footage, as the entry and PR-spinning mechanic!
And if CBA donated their Yankee ad footage to the people of Australia, saving us all and Tourism Oz a swag of cash…well, it’d be a bank PR person’s dream.
Remember: the social media scene is buzzing with the concept of file sharing, mashing and rebadging existing content.
The CBA and TA should be the first to spearhead a new era in ad content sharing; the PR rewards - online and offline - could be massive. And it’d spare the world the soppy misrepresentation of today’s Oz by Luhrman and darlings!
If anyone wants to cut a new V/O, we'll happily feature the best reworkings of the ads here on marketingmag.com.au.
Then we'll just wait and see whether DDB follows our lead.
