Stressed out?
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia is to be marketed as the antidote to the stresses and strains of modern day life with a series of new tourism advertisments created by the filmmaker Baz Luhrmann to kickstart the moribund tourism industry into life.
The advertisements, revealed to the tourism industry last night at the State Theatre, mark a radical departure from standard tourism advertisments, which tend to let the locations steal the show.
In Luhrmann’s advertisments, it is busy professionals and the transforming experience of a visit to Australia that form the narrative.
Drawing on themes from his upcoming romantic epic, Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, the advertising aim is to sell the country Australia as a transformative experience, one that is unlike any other.
In one execution for the American market a professional woman is shown tramping the streets of a rainy New York on the verge of a meltdown as she and her partner desperately try to bring back a sense of joy to their lives.
“It’s always work. You’re not the same person I fell in love with,” says her partner down the phone, as a plaintive score plays in the background.
It is only through the intervention of a little Aboriginal boy – one of the actors in Luhrmann’s film, Brandon Walters – that she is persuaded to take a break.
Walters whispers in her ear: “Sometimes we have to get lost to find ourselves, sometimes we have to go walkabout.”
In the final frames of the advertisement – or mini-film as Tourism Australia is calling it – the couple are shown swimming in a billabong in what is obviously a regenerative experience.
The theme of getting lost, spiritually that is, will be a constant in the ad campaign. While other press ads will feature the more traditional rock, reef and Harbour Bridge images, tourism chiefs are hoping to persuade potential holidaymakers with emotive messages rather than more rational triggers.
Further details will be unveiled today at a function in Sydney when Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson will hold a press conference to explain the advertisements, backed by a $40 million media budget.
Holiday visits are at a 10-year low. The number of holidaymakers that came to Australia in the last financial year has fallen by nearly 5 per cent to 2.5 million.
Will this reverse Australia’s tourism decline?
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