Luring visitors to SA has never been simple
If taxpayers are ever taken for a ride with fanciful or overambitious, indulgent tourism promotion, we have a right to ask uncomfortable questions, writes Mike Smithson.
Tourism marketing is a tricky, expensive and competitive beast which always comes under intense public scrutiny, which it should.
So, when the state’s latest showpiece Simple Pleasures campaign was launched at the Art Gallery this week I, for one, had plenty of questions for the chief of SA Tourism.
By design the campaign moves away from traditional marketing that relies on one theme and a “single hero TV commercial”, which in this case was just as well.
Tourism Minister Zoe Bettison described her department’s $9.7 million dollar spend as a defining moment for the state.
It coincides with today’s influx of Gather Round footy fans from across the nation who may also be cashed up to spend recreational time away from various bruising AFL encounters.
The Premier then expanded that notion saying our “simple pleasures” is an invitation for the world to enjoy.
SA Tourism Commission CEO Emma Terry walked the captive audience through the creative approach taken to tell South Australia’s story.
The slick presentation and first viewing of three television commercials revealed the first signs of questions that needed to be asked.
Terry seemed mildly stunned that she was in the spotlight rather than the Minister, who didn’t get any questions, or the Premier.
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One of the offerings was titled “The Simple Pleasures of Pipis to Plate”.
Against the backdrop of our spectacular coastline, pipis, or cockles as most of us call them, were being harvested, cooked on an open fire and then served with pasta.
But hang on a minute, aren’t they the same pipis dying in their hundreds of thousands due to a toxic sludge along our southern coastline?
That was a significant news story from the night before as holiday makers on Goolwa Beach were being warned to avoid the dead shellfish which were rapidly sending an unpleasant pall across the golden sands.
Terry tried to brush that aside as inconsequential saying that she might assess the campaign and pull back on that tourism angle for a little while and use it at a different time.
No kidding.
Perhaps it would have been a smarter strategy to pull back on it before the official launch.
I’m dead set certain that some of her advisors would have seen the warning signs well before she stepped up to the microphone.
It’s trip wires such as these which can land expensive campaigns in hot water.
The opening shots of the first commercial shown at the launch had rustic views of the Barossa Valley with an elderly codger looking into the sunset, then tapping his gnarly fingers on a wooden table as an old wall clock ticked past midday.
It’s supposedly designed to depict ancient vines, and the patience needed in waiting for the grapes to ripen and world’s-best-practice wine making.
To me it also brought back a hint of Tourism’s disastrous “Old Mate” campaign in 2019.
That was a lonely old guy called Dave getting tearful and mournful as he discovered what he’d missed out on with our tourism delights, by leaving it so long to visit.
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It telegraphed all the wrong messages, almost making visitors want to avoid SA.
Critics saw it as dull, depressing, ageist and uninviting.
When I put those possible visual comparisons of yet another elderly bloke directly to the Premier, he dismissed them.
“I’m not too concerned about that comparison being made, unless of course you continue to make it Mike,” he said.
“I think it stacks up on its own two feet.” he concluded.
I think that was code for don’t mention “old mate” ever again and move into positive territory.
But that’s the whole point of art, creativity and scrutiny.
It’s our money being poured into getting mass numbers of interstate and overseas tourists invading our natural and simple beauties, whether ordinary South Australians like it or not.
The Tourism Industry Council predictably described this latest campaign as strategic and smart destination marketing.
My mind also wandered back to a simple and relatively cheap SATC social media campaign which was launched and then immediately scrapped by then Treasurer Rob Lucas.
Tens of thousands of dollars had been spent flying in “old mate” again with a film crew from Melbourne to share a can of Coca Cola with then-Crows skipper Rory Sloane on the sands of Henley Beach.
The only problem was that the extravaganza was shot on a bleak, grey winter’s day and was about as appealing as a flat Coke and a cold pasty.
Lucas had chewed out the Tourism Commission for wasting taxpayers’ money and my inquiries to Sloane about his unfulfilled talent fee were also met with some hostility.
I love this state for its natural beauty and, at times, its ugliness.
But if taxpayers are ever taken for a ride with fanciful or overambitious, indulgent tourism promotion, we have a right to ask uncomfortable questions.
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.
What is beautiful and creative with a flair of genius to some, is ho-hum to others but it doesn’t mean one observer is right and the other is wrong.
We all deserve to be heard.
One lovely lady who I interviewed with her daughter on North Terrace after the Simple Pleasures launch may have summed up what some others were thinking.
“Simple might relate to someone who’s not very smart,” she mused.
Mike Smithson is weekend presenter and political analyst for 7News.
