Personally, I love it. I'm a red-blooded American and I ask people "where the bloody hell are you?" all the time. I can see problems with this line if they were trying to make it work in another language with a radically different culture, but the U.S. is close enough to Australia culturally that I suspect the campaign will give the vast majority of people a good chuckle.

And I agree with you, they ought to start bringing bloggers down under. Just look at how well it worked for Colorado - http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com/evangelism/

I've got a passport and can fit into small spaces if you want to take a cycling expert to help reach that target audience.

I would agree that the tag might present some challenges. Teresa has a good point about the cultural similarities, but it still makes me wonder. I too use the phrase and think it is funny, but setting my own bias aside it makes me wonder about the broader audience. If nothing else, maybe it will weed out the types of people who won't have a good time and will entice the more "fun loving" people of the world. That can't be bad... can it?

Love the idea of a cycling blog tour. What a great viral marketing strategy! Australian Tourism hope you're monitoring the blogosphere.

Teresa thanks for the heads up about "Bloggy Mountain High" sounds like lots of fun. http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com/evangelism/

in the news here all day yesterday is the fact that the ad has been banned in the UK for swearing. 'bloody' has become part of our slang here and I've even heard my mum say it - but different parts of the world have different ideas on such things.

Funny thing is - that the media company behind it is apparently over the moon as it's getting lots of press in the UK. They'll release a 'non bloody' version of it for the Poms but just by being banned they've guaranteed massive success on the campaign.

Blogging for tourism campaigns seems like an incedibly logical idea. The concept of blogs, written in a chronological order, works perfectly for journalling an individual vaction. For the tourist organization, the many and varied events can be announced and described on the blog. The boost to tourism through blogging has enormous, and relatively untapped, marketing potential.

They've already won the battle... they are getting so much exposure and press from this campaign. I mean, CNN is covering the story for cryin' outloud...

Somebody over there was very, very smart.

Noticing more and more bloggers as press stuff starting to appear, which is a positive sign. Also, nice to see some of the MSM quoting bloggers here and there.

BTW, loved the title Toby and hope all is well in your neck of the woods :)

Wayne - You are right on the $ (once again!). PA Tourism did an interesting program last summer http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/2005/08/biz_blog_profil.html. However, other than that, the Netherlands deal that Henry Copeland at BlogAds set up, and what "Bloggy Mountain High" is doing (tho that sounds more in-line with a conference promotion than a pure tourism strategy) http://www.blogbusinesssummit.com/evangelism/) I'm not aware of any one who is using blogs to promote tourism. Anyone know of any other tourism blog strategies?

Like Darren said the campaign was bannned in the UK but as of today has just been allowed back on air over there.

The ad has claimed so much exposure overseas and in my opinion has been a huge success. Here in Australia there has been a lot of press on the opinion of the ad coming from other countries, particularly the UK, and it's clearly caused quite a stir,

Great marketing!

The ammount of publicity that this simple campaign has got is phenomenal... so much so that it leaves itself ripe for the picking...

Here's a spoof of the TVC on you tube... hitting some home truths there.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3RGkNHr17OU

latest news is the ad has been banned in Canada for showing beer consumption and saying 'we've bought you a beer'... or something.

The developers of the ad are gloating over it being a massive success due to it being banned again.

kind of reminds me a little of a link baiting campaign - say something a little controversial and create a storm in a teacup to get people talking.