By now just about everyone it seems has been exposed to Australia’s latest marketing effort with the unusual slogan of Where the bloody hell are you? spoken by a pretty girl on a bikini on a deserted beach. Hell it makes me want to come to Australia and … no wait i am already here!
The advertisements have not however been without controversey. The old fuddy duddies that decides what can and can’t be shown on tv in Britain decided that the word “bloody” was too strong and forced the ads to screen with the slogan where the *bleep* are you before eventually backing down and allowing them to screen unbleeped. Canda on the otherhand took a far more dim view it seems getting upset not about the bloody hell or the girl in the bikini but by the beer which from memory was considered implied product promotion or something silly, i forget what exactly because i’m too lazy to look for links. I expect they will be screening with one of those pixelated boxes over the beer the same way they do to hide people on tv.
But by far the best part is the fact that satire ads are now coming out making fun of the offical ads and i’ve tracked a couple down:
Where The F*#king Hell Are You?
Get your f**king arse over here
Not suprisingly Tourism Australia didn’t like anyone being funny but themselves and demanded the immediate removal of the video, not on any legitimate grounds but because they considered the music too similar to the music of their own ad. Obviously the age took shared their opinion enough to display the ad on their own website. Poor TA, no one takes them bloody seriously!





4 Comments Received
March 28th, 2006 @10:42 pm
And apparently the phrase dosn’t translate into Japanese. Bloody as slang is non existant and where the hell are you is more of a phrase of anger than enquiry apparently…
Though the japanese officials were heard to say something like “The more I hear it the more I like it” (I’ll find the article in the West Aust when I can find it)
March 28th, 2006 @10:51 pm
I had that emailed to me and had a good laugh. Now THAT is Aussie!
March 29th, 2006 @5:41 pm
Dan - I don’t think we have any shortage of Japanese visiting lately so translation isn’t such a concern
Steph - nothing more Aussie than that!
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