[Editor’s Note: this is the first post from Jilly Jane Charlwood, who is “in regional Victoria managing flood media and is absolutely under the pump at work” – she will continue to contribute to our team from down under]
"Australia: I'm coming for you!"
When it comes to national days, Australia has some proud ones. We have ANZAC Day in April when we celebrate the heroics of Australian troops in the battle of Gallipoli in World War One. Then there’s Australia Day in January when we all have a day off work to thank Captain Cook for accidently stumbling across Australia in 1788. But something tells me that all our national days will pale in comparison with tomorrow, when Australia gets Oprah.
That’s right, tomorrow the most powerful marketing force in North America, possibly the world, will touch down in Sydney, closely followed by 300 audience members and an entourage numbering 250. It is the first, and likely only, time that the Oprah show will be filmed and broadcast from outside of the United States.
For eight days, the Sydney Opera House will become the ‘Oprah House’, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge will reportedly be adorned with a giant ‘O’ in honour of the great Ms. Winfrey. Oprah and her posse will film two shows in Sydney, followed by a whirlwind tour of some of Australia’s most significant landmarks. Oprah has also professed her desire to spend time with a ‘genuine Australian family in a real Australian community’. As opposed to all the pretend Australian communities out there I suppose.
In the lead up to Oprah’s arrival, reception in the ‘real’ Australian community has been mixed. When Victoria’s new Premier-elect Ted Baillieu was asked about his thoughts on Oprah’s imminent arrival, he commented that he didn’t know the specifics of Oprah’s trip, but predicted that she’d “make a lot of noise”. No arguments here. Critics of the trip claim that the $6 million of tax-payer funds financing the spectacle could well have been better spent elsewhere.
Tourism Australia on the other hand is treating Oprah’s arrival with pomp, ceremony and gravity akin to the second coming of Christ. And rightly so.
Australia celebrates the arrival of Oprah...or one of the other supercool holidays down under.
The Oprah show is currently broadcast in 145 countries across the world, with an average viewership of 7 million people per episode in the United States alone. Australian economists have predicted that the show is likely to lead to at least $100 million worth of international exposure for Australia as a tourism destination, along with increased interest in everything from Australian property to Australian clothing brands.
Since the global economic crisis, things have been lean in Australian tourism. We’re a great country, but the fact is that we’re really a very, very long way away. A few years ago, Tourism Australia spent $180 million dollars on an international tourism campaign based around Australian bikini model Lara Bingle standing on a beach asking potential tourists “So where the bloody hell are you?”. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t Australia’s most successful tourism campaign. In comparison, spending $6 million on one of the world’s most influential entertainers seems like a positively conservative financial decision.
Sure, changing the name of an iconic Australian landmark for marketing purposes might seem slightly OTT, as Oprah herself would say. And looking to a multi-billionaire from Chicago to determine what defines a ‘real’ Australian community might be a little unseemly. But for now, I am suspending my cynicism and will look forward to getting another day off work next year when ‘O Day’ joins our list of significant national holidays.