Okay wine friends, how long did it take you to realize that the Crocodile Dundee trailer during the Super Bowl WAS NO TRAILER?

You know the ad where it seems like it’s a trailer for Son of Dundee or some such and it’s actually a showcase for Australian tourism featuring a scene at a winery and starring Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride drinking Australian wine?

According to Andreas Clark, CEO of Wine Australia, in a press release dated Feb. 5, “The Super Bowl has the largest reach of any advertising platform in the USA, with more than 100 million Americans tuning in across the USA and many millions more people globally.”
That’s why Wine Australia partnered with Tourism Australia in a $36 million marketing campaign in the USA aimed at boosting interest in Australia as a tourism destination with a Super Bowl launch.

And as of today, that video has had almost another 700,000 views! Talk about viral! I even taught it along with some other Super Bowl videos in my college composition classes to discuss appeals and methods of development — and other faculty used my blog post as well!

The press release quotes Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources Anne Ruston says that the wine industry is one of Australia’s most important, and that they expect their investment to bring in up to $170 million to the economy via 40,000 additional international tourists visiting the AUS wine regions by 2019–20.

‘This campaign puts the spotlight on contemporary Australia and we hope it inspires Americans to discover the beauty and sophistication of our wine regions and try some exceptional Australian wine,” says Ruston in the press release.

According to Quartz Media, by game day, “Tourism Australia had built more online buzz than most other brands that pre-released or teased their commercials online ahead of the Super Bowl. ISpot.tv found that thefake trailers captured nearly 11% of pre-game social media buzz—including online views, and engagement on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google search—around Super Bowl commercials. It racked up 43.4 million video views and 578k social engagements, the firm found. That followed only two other brands: Amazon’s Alexa, and a joint advertising campaign for Doritos and Mountain Dew.”

I had no idea about this when, in my own pre-game coverage, I featured a competition between two wines from the US made in bourbon barrels and two wines from AUS made in a similar fashion and we asked which went best with pulled pork!

Clearly the AUS wine industry won the Super Bowl with this humorous, memorable ad. Maybe next year the California wine industry will come up with something equally creative and inventive to invigorate tourism into our fire struck areas —which fortunately is showing signs of recovering in Napa according to recent research published in Wine Spectator Jan. 26, 2018.

For more information and to view the campaign visit Twitter: @Wine_Australia; Instagram: @WineAustralia; Facebook: WineAustralia; Website: www.wineaustralia.com.

And stay tuned to Wine Predator — looks like I’ve just signed up to host June’s #WinePW grilling and AUS wine theme!