What the Bloody Hell Were They Thinking?

[4thofeleven]

'Bloody hell' ads a disaster: PM
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has described the controversial Where the bloody hell are you? tourism campaign as a "rolled gold disaster"...
...The number of tourists visiting Australia from the three countries that had most exposure to the campaign - Japan, Germany and Britain - fell in the months following its launch.

For those unaware of the campaign, it was a rather expensive advertising campaign for Australian tourism, using the slogan "Where the bloody hell are you?". Of course, it turned out - to the complete surprise of no-one except the bozos who came up with the campaign - that 'bloody hell' is much stronger language in most of the rest of the world than it is here. Both the television ads and billboards were banned in the UK and Canada, while in Singapore and several other countries, the slogan ended up having to be replaced with just "Where are you?".

The tourism minister responded to these... issues with the slogan by dismissing the British response as 'ludicrous', and the government continued with the campaign, apparently feeling that the campaign being seen as offensive by the countries the majority of our tourists come from was simply a minor flaw in an otherwise perfect tourism campaign that could be safely ignored.

On the plus side, 'needlessly offensive and pointlessly confrontational' was probably a step above using Paul Hogan as our international spokesperson...