They're a weird mob

I just watched this ad on TV. "Where the bloody hell are you?".

It interests me how Australia presents itself to the world - any country for that matter. My thesis is about nation branding. While I appreciate the clarity of positioning for a mass market and the commercial does a very good job of it, it also reinforces stereotypes and cliches. Along the way it commits the sin of omission - real cultural diversity is ignored as is a sense of reality. In a way it is a mirror image of the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign - and almost every other nation brand advertising campaign.

Having worked on the Australian Tourism account it also interests me that the strategy for the campaign before this one was based on the premise that Australia had become a bromide - too well known to the extent that visitors felt they had done everything that there was on offer; the theme imposed by Canberra was 'See Australia in a new light'

Maybe after a while you can't fight the narratives you have constructed over a long period of time. I wonder how Nino Culotta feels about it all?

Comments

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Shoulders of giants

"A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience." "Life is just one damned thing after another." (Both from Elbert Hubbard - look him up on the wikipedia . If it's wrong - change it)

ThoughtSpurs

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