There's nothing like - dumb ad campaigns and internet smart-arses

A day after Tourism Australia launched their ill-fated (yes, I'm calling it - it's the iSnack 2.0 of tourism campaigns) new marketing scheme for Australia - "There's nothing like Australia" - a group of proud pisstaking Aussies have responded with their own version.

I don't know which band of coke-fuelled marketing gurus came up with this replacement for the charmingly desperate and sad "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign that gave us tabloid darling Lara Bingle but it hasn't done this country, Tourism Australia and marketing doofuses any credit at all.

If for no other reason than half decent writing - surely it should be "there's nowhere else like it" - this slogan just begs mockery. Why on Earth would you put a negative word in the same phrase as the product name and no other words that cast a positive light on it. Even "you can't beat the feeling" has "feeling" in it.
Dropping "else" in there immediately invites you to think about other places - which, whether we like it or not, actually do have most of the cool things that we have here - particularly if we are focusing on nature. (Of course we have very nice nature and great diversity but there are still beaches, mountains, rivers, forests etc elsewhere, despite what the slogan might have you believe)

Fortunately, we do have a proud tradition of pisstaking, which makes me proud to see the response version of the ad campaign up and firing so quickly. (In fairness, credit should go to Tourism Australia for not setting the lawyers on these guys for parodying their IP - that part at least is classy)

These are some of my personal faves so far.

The Phantom •

Hmmmmm, kind of having my doubts about this.
So now we have a reimagining of The Phantom, due for tv this year.

Looks a little generic - could be any modern chosen-one/superhero actiony thing.

Happy to be proven wrong though - but if the word badass comes out of this guy's mouth I'll know it's all over.

Castle: "Space Cowboy" (Firefly/Serenity)

Got to respect the Firefly love still being shown in Nathan Fillion's new show Castle.

Hey Dad...! - "Was it good for you?"

Clearly the whole Hey Dad alleged child-groping/etc is a terrible terrible story - either if it happened (and the weight of evidence seems pretty damning) or if it didn't (let's not completely forget presumption of innocence and due process). Clearly Robert Hughes is totally fucked either way.

All of which makes it extra unfortunate that there are so many track titles on this 1991 compilation of audio tracks from the popular Oz sitcom that seem to be darkly inappropriate.

From the obvious opening track "Was it good for you?" and "Electric touch" to the prescient "For whom the bells toll", you could almost believe that someone in the know was sending a message that they couldn't put out any other way - or perhaps more darkly having a quiet laugh to themselves.

Of course, its ridiculously easy to attach a double meaning that was never there in the first place to any innocent phrase or statement with hindsight, but there's still a whole lotta yick to all of this. (Including the fact that this story made me voluntarily watch both A Current Affair and Today Tonight)

For me, I never liked the show - I never knew exactly why, at the time I assumed I was being mr snobby highbrow-pants but it never seemed to ring true.

Sometimes though it's just better when you're not right about something.

The cd itself I picked up in a bargain bin for $3, figuring that I would one day get around to re-editing the wholesome/dorky dialogue tracks into something perverted/darker and clearly more hilarious. Never did though - and now I guess I never will. Some shit just isn't funny when it might be true.