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Australia asks "where the bloody hell are you?"

Australia has today launched an AUD$180-million (£76 million) international advertising campaign to promote itself as a tourist  destination by asking potential visitors "where the bloody hell are you?"

The promotional campaign, launched today by Tourism Minister Fran Bailey, features an advert consisting of a succession of  typically Australian backdrops.  In it, characters make various inviting statements such as, "We've poured you a beer," then later, "We've got the sharks out of the pool".  The ad ends with a bikini-clad woman asking, "So where the bloody hell are you?"

This use of mild profanity has provoked controversy.  But the slogan has been vigorously defended by the campaign organisers.  Tourism Australia, the public body responsible for promoting Australian tourism, has spent AUD$6.2 million testing the ads on focus groups around the world and have said that respondents understood that "So where the bloody hell are you?" in this context is meant to be friendly.

Tourism Australia Managing Director, Scott Morrison described the slogan as a "uniquely Australian invitation" whilst Tourism Minister Bailey on The World Today programme referred to the expletive as "the great Australian adjective".

After complaining last month about the decline of good manners in Australian society, blaming the drop in standards on increasing vulgarity on television, Prime Minster John Howard said of the profanity: "It's a colloquialism, it's not a word that is seen quite in the same category as other words that nobody ought to use in public or on the media or in advertisements."

Previous campaigns such as the one in which Paul Hogan offers to throw "a shrimp on the barbie" have caused many Australians to cringe.  But the 1980s advert proved highly effective luring an estimated 250,000 American tourists to Australia.  In 1995 a new AUD$100 million promotion was launched to convince the world Australia had culture - at the time, Australia's biggest single marketing and advertising campaign to date.

But spending on the new campaign will dwarf these precedents.  Forty million Australian dollars will be spent on it over the next four months and AUD$140-million have been allocated for the next two financial years.  The campaign will target Australia's key tourist markets in China, Japan, India, the United States, Germany and Britain and will be rolled out in the next few weeks.

Tourism Australia Chairman, Tim Fischer said the new campaign aims to increase the economic benefits of tourism to Australia.  “This campaign is about increasing the dollars that we earn from international tourism and encouraging the spread of tourists  right across Australia, especially for rural and regional areas,” Mr Fischer said.

Tourism Minister Fran Bailey has stated Australia's tourism industry is currently worth AUD$73 billion and employs 500,000  Australians.

The new advert can be seen on Tourism Australia's Web site at www.wherethebloodyhellareyou.com.