Thirty years after Paul Hogan fronted his infamous “Shrimp on the Barbie” ad campaign promoting Australia to the world, Tourism Australia and new global alliance partner Virgin Australia are back telling Americans to get themselves Down Under with a multi-million dollar marketing effort.
Although fourth behind China, New Zealand and the UK for inbound visitor numbers, just over 500,000 Americans visited Australia last year – up from about 100,000 when Hogan fronted his TV ads in 1984.
Tourism Australia wants to double US tourist spending in Australia from the current $2.5 billion to $4.5-5.5 billion by 2020.
“We think the opportunity for growth from the US is big,” Virgin chief customer officer Mark Hassell told the Financial Review. “There is a challenge that Australia rates highly as one of the destinations they [Americans] want to visit but it’s often ‘some day’. We’re creating a campaign that turns that some day to now.”
TV ads are still part of the current month long promotional effort in the US between TA, state tourism bodies, Virgin and its US code share partner Delta although newspaper campaigns and an alliance with Google are part of the new promotional strategy.
The Google effort aims to lure Americans’ attention with a competition to win 52 Australian holidays via an interactive Google Maps project where they guess where featured destinations are and drop a pin on the map to be eligible for the holidays competition.
“From our point of view it’s a great opportunity to not only collectively showcase Australia but also what we bring to the party with our partner with Delta,” Hassell said.
Virgin Australia stepped in as Tourism Australia’s airline partner in late 2012 after a spat between Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and his former Qantas boss Geoff Dixon, who serves as Tourism Australia chairman. Joyce dumped his airline’s $40 million marketing alliance with Australia’s peak tourism body over his concerns about a conflict of interest Mr Dixon had through his involvement with a consortium led by John Singleton and Mark Carnegie agitating at one stage for a Qantas takeover.
Virgin Australia quickly moved to take on the Qantas deal.
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