How entertainment, brand mascots and creative testing delivered a winner for Tourism Australia - Susan Coghill

How do you market a country that's closed? Better still, how do you market a country that's closed with a top 0.1% ad creative? I speak to Susan Coghill of Tourism Australia to find out exactly how they did it.
Susan Coghill is the Marketing Director at Tourism Australia and they've got one of the best performing ads on the System1 database, with their new campaign "G'Day". But this wasn't without taking some risks, such as introducing a new brand mascot, getting high profile stars to feature and producing a 9 minute film.

Watch the ad here.

What we covered in this episode:
  • Why Susan has the best job in the World
  • How to set KPI’s for a tourism brand
  • Why Tourism Australia kept advertising through the pandemic
  • What System1 learnt about advertising during covid
  • Winning the only Effie for a travel company during lockdown
  • Planning ‘Come and say G’day’ a new global campaign to announce Australia is open again
  • Which distinctive assets are the most Australian
  • Creating Ruby Roo the new brand mascot
  • What we can learn from the Entertainment industry
  • Putting on a show rather than selling
  • Why it’s important to remember you are not the audience
  • Making a new version of Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’
  • The role of celebrities in making the ad more distinctive
  • Justifying spending $125m on the new campaign
  • How System1 testing gave confidence to make creative decisions
  • Getting a 4 Star in the animatic testing
  • How to reassure your stakeholder the creative will work
  • Inspiration from the best Christmas adverts
  • Adapting creative for different markets
  • The long term plan for Ruby
  • The decline of fluent devices and why you should use them
  • Whether Ruby will appear as a character in real life
  • Why we should all be more like Churchill the dog
  • Revealing the official countdown of the UK’s best advertisers

Creators and Guests

Jon Evans
Host
Jon Evans
Host of Uncensored CMO & System1 CMO.
How entertainment, brand mascots and creative testing delivered a winner for Tourism Australia - Susan Coghill
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