After months of talk and anticipation, Tourism Australia last week unveiled its coastal and aquatic push at an event in New York attended by minister for foreign affairs Julie Bishop and its new global ambassador Chris Hemsworth with AGB Events bringing the event to life.

Immersive virtual reality displays and aquatic-themed images were projected onto the ice rink at the Bank of America Winter Village in Bryant Park where the new broadcast ad was premiered at an event hosted by Aussie chef Curtis Stone, with another Aussie chef, Luke Mangan, designing the menu.

“Tourism Australia’s challenge to AGB Events was: bring Australia’s aquatic and coastal feeling to life, in the middle of a zero degrees, blizzardy NYC winter night, at an open-air ice rink,” the company explained.

“This collision of opposites began – using light projection to turn this huge ice rink onto a ‘portal’ to Australia, with tropical fish, body-boarders paddling around friendly humpback whales, and majestic aerial flyovers to warm the hearts of New York’s VIP set and the world’s media.”

AGB director Anthony Bastic explained that the company sourced content from multiple platforms to produce the Production company AGB Events, sourced content from multiple platforms to produce the immersive experience.

“Through digital imagery projections we transformed Bryant park ice rink into the blue southern ocean, with whales swimming, body‐boarders paddling and warm tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef – you can really feel the transformation of a holiday in Australia,” he said.

The marketing campaign, which heavily uses virtual reality and 360 mobile technology, has been designed to focus on one of Australia’s “key competitive advantages”, according to Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan.

“Already 70% of our international visitors enjoy an aquatic or coastal experience as part of their trip to Australia, so this is a campaign we know will resonate strongly across all our key markets,” he said.

“While Australia is known for its natural beauty, the world still doesn’t have a full appreciation of the breadth, depth and quality of our aquatic and coastal experiences. They’ve always been an important part of our destination story but they’ve never before taken centre stage.”

The campaign features a voiceover by Australian actor Hemsworth, which O’Sullivan said adds an “authentic and influential” Australian storytelling voice.

Upon the launch, Hemsworth spoke of his pride in his Australian identity.

“It’s a pretty special feeling knowing that I will have a role in promoting my country to the world and encouraging more people to come down under and experience our amazing beaches and landscapes for themselves,” he said.

Tourism Australia will deploy its most “comprehensive” range of assets to bring the campaign to life, chief marketing officer Lisa Ronson explained. That includes the use of virtual reality technology and user generated content on a major scale.

It aims to help Australia stand out amid the increasingly competitive global travel market, according to Ronson.

“Australia has always had the advantage of being a highly desirable destination. The challenge is how to create a sense of urgency to visit that counters those perceived barriers such as time, distance and cost,” she said.

“This campaign has been designed to be incredibly immersive and capture what it feels like to be in Australia and to experience for yourself being on, in or near the water.”

TA worked with global creative agency Clemenger BBDO and production agency FINCH on the project with the VY and 360 content delivered by Vrse.works. More than 40 cameras, eight 360 camera rigs and three drones were used to make the 17 edits.

Experiences featured in the campaign include a helicopter ride over the 12 Apostles; swimming in Sydney Harbour; snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef; kayaking through Katherine Gorge; driving on the beach in South Australia; cycling around Lake Burley Griffin; sailing through the sparkling blue waters of Rottnest Island; and walking the recently opened Three Capes Track in Tasmania.

Tourism Australia will spend $40 million over the next six months rolling out the new creative – starting in the US with a joint campaign with Virgin Australia and then across other key international markets, including the UK, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and New Zealand.

Minister for tourism senator Richard Colbeck, who was unable to be present at the launch, thanked Julie Bishop for attending on behalf of the Australian Government and urged the industry to get involved.

“There are may opportunities for the industry to help and share in the success of this campaign; they can submit aquatic and coastal videos and photos to be featured through Tourism Australia’s social media channels or send new aquatic and coastal story ideas to Tourism Australia,” he said.

“Industry can also access new campaign assets from Tourism Australia’s image and video galleries for use in their own marketing activities.”

Meanwhile, Australian Tourism Export Council managing director Peter Shelley said the campaign comes at a great time.

“We are now in a fortunate position where our dollar is more affordable than it has been in a long time and at the same time we have an amazing destination to offer international visitors so we are in a great place to grow inbound visitation even further,” he said.

“Now is the time to be investing in growing our share of the international visitor market by featuring some of the destination’s real strengths in its aquatic and coastal offerings and ATEC welcomes this investment in a new advertising campaign to help promote regional destinations which may not have previously been on the radar.”

Check out the longer version of the video below:

https://youtu.be/2ITeIca-JvI

Here are some images from the launch:

Chef Luke Mangan hard at work

TA global ambassador Chris Hemsworth
Photo by Diane Bondareff/Invision for Tourism Australia)

Event host Curtis Stone