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Australia's tourism chiefs turn to Hollywood for help
2008-10-08
Australia's tourism chiefs have turned to Hollywood for help in promoting the country as a holiday destination after their last campaign -- which involved swearing at potential visitors -- failed. That attempt to boost visitor numbers, featuring a bikini-clad model asking "where the bloody hell are you?", was met with bemusement in many countries and was briefly banned in Britain after being deemed offensive. The new campaign, launched Wednesday, is designed to capitalise on the upcoming release of a sweeping romantic epic -- "Australia" -- set in the outback and featuring Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The film's Oscar-nominated director, Baz Luhrmann -- an Australian like the two actors -- has made two mini-movie ads which tell stories of stressed city-dwellers who "go walkabout" in Australia. The campaign is "cinematic in style, is based on a story with a beginning, middle and end, is sophisticated and highly emotive," Tourism Australia spokesman Nick Baker said at the launch. "The idea stems from Baz's film, which tells the story of Nicole Kidman's character, Lady Sarah Ashley, who has lost her sense of self but who finds adventure, romance and her true self when she comes to Australia." While Kidman and Luhrmann do not feature in the ads -- which run for 90 seconds and 60 seconds -- they include a young Aboriginal actor who plays a part in the film, Brandon Walters. The movie, a love story in which Kidman's English aristocrat falls in love with Jackman's outback cattleman, is due for global release on November 26. The new ad campaign has been welcomed by the Tourism and Transport Forum, an industry body which said the number of holiday visitors to Australia dropped by 4.7 percent last year compared with the previous year. "The stark fact is that since the 2000 Olympics, Australia has been losing ground as a holiday destination, in a fiercely competitive global tourism market," said managing director Christopher Brown.
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