Jodie Stephens
(Australian Associated Press)
Chris Hemsworth has brought some Hollywood star power to the launch of a new tourism campaign spruiking Australia’s unique way of life – or “philausophy” – to a divided and disconnected world.
Celebrity chef Kylie Kwong, wildlife warriors Terri and Robert Irwin, author Kathy Lette and model twins Jordan and Zac Stenmark also helped launch the campaign at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday.
It’s centred around nine “philausophies” that underpin the Australian way of life, including: mateship, a love of nature, a sense of adventure, a no worries attitude and boundless optimism.
“They are just truisms of the Australian character and our outlook on life and so we have just pulled them together and given them a name, a title and really just articulated what it is that people love about coming to Australia,” Tourism Australia’s managing director Phillipa Harrison told AAP.
Research in the lead-up to the campaign had shown 76 per cent of people believe the world isn’t getting better. However, the research found Australia offered a sense of optimism.
“They are just struggling from this rise in nationalism, from feeling disconnected from each other, from feeling divided in the UK, distrust in the US,” she said.
“And it was interesting because Australia was a real outlier in that and we were seen as just countercultural.”
Hemsworth, a global ambassador for Tourism Australia, talked up the “the incredible environment we have at our fingertips, the great outdoors that are available to all of us”, the coast and the bush.
“We’re immediately drawn outside and I think we become obsessed with, you know, the adventurous spirit that becomes embedded in all of us,” he said.
Lette welcomed Australia being promoted as being “a place of harmony and fun and fabulous and optimism” at a time when the world was “so polarised and so at war”.
“It’s a very clever marketing platform because it’s not just about our physical attributes,” the Puberty Blues author told AAP.
“It’s a bit tangential and a little bit lateral and then it’s celebrating things you don’t see immediately on the surface.”
Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham said the latest global campaign strategy was part of a $38 million investment to be rolled out in 15 key tourism markets over three years.
