I suspect it was unintentional – after all, why on earth would Tourism Australia want to remind the media that where Tourism New Zealand had succeeded in creating a campaign that’s lasted 10 years at least, it had itself struggled through three different campaigns in four years?

But wait, their nightmare might be over. This new campaign, “Nothing Like Australia”, is built to last. This, we were repeatedly told, and this, the Australian media, kept digging away at, reminding the Tourism Australia executives of the previous campaigns that had failed to last.

Andrew McEvoy, Tourism Australia’s CEO (left in photo), is keen to put all that behind. “This is the one,” he said. “Australia deserves a campaign like this. I’ve been in this industry for 15 years and this is the most integrated tourism campaign ever. It uses digital and social media and it is the most powerful campaign of its kind.

“It puts on a fresh, friendly, contemporary Australia out to the world.”

So there’s taglines like “There’s nothing like rubbing shoulders with a local celebrity” or “There’s nothing like front row seats to an outdoor theatre” or “sailing through a postcard”.

I liked one image in particular where it showed a man lying next to a kangaroo on the beach.

Tourism Australia will spend A$150 million over three years on the campaign, and McEvoy hopes that with cooperative partnerships, that budget will be considerably boosted to an estimated A$500 million.

Well, it did by A$44 million this morning when Qantas, obviously pleased with the new campaign, threw its weight behind it and signed a joint marketing agreement with the tourism board.

Executives were also quick to dismiss any suggestions that the campaign was too narrowly targeted at the young and digitally-savvy. “Youth is important, yes,” said Nick Baker, executive general manager-marketing (right), “but we have a big family market as well, and the commercial also shows a huge range of ethnicity.”

Older people were also getting very active on social media and Tourism Australia’s Facebook fan page has 400,000 users, “the biggest Facebook page for any country”. This is a number Baker says will grow with the new campaign and he expects visits to Australia.com to grow from 16 million to 20 million.

The 30,000 experiences collected throughout the “Nothing Like Australia” campaign are being translated into 15 languages and McEvoy said the power of this theme is it translates well across markets.

“We need a framework and we’ve got one. It’s flexible to move to new areas. More individual pieces have come out of this than anything else we’ve done,” he said. 

After the commercial was aired, the room burst into applause. That prompted Rick Allert, chairman of Tourism Australia, to say, “It’s good to hear that applause, after having been at it for so long. This is worth the wait.”

Talking to my fellow media colleagues from India, China and Japan, it seems they like it too. “Easy to understand,” they say.

Yes, in the end, there’s nothing like simplicity when selling an idea.

Featured image credit (Yellow Cosmo flower with sunshine5): Ockra/iStock