How Tourism Australia is winning hearts globally: Insights from CMO Susan Coghill

By Carol Mason

Tourism Australia’s beloved “Come and say G’day” campaign is back with a bold new chapter. Chief Marketing Officer Susan Coghill explains how leveraging familiar faces like Robert Irwin and customizing for key markets is helping Australia cut through the content noise and win hearts across the globe.

In the US, your new 60s TVC broke this week and stars Robert Irwin, son of legend Steve Irwin, and timed to align with his appearance in Dancing with the Stars. What makes Robert the perfect ambassador for Australia in terms of a US audience?

Thank you… We’re very excited to have this new chapter live in market!

For the campaign, we made a deliberate choice to work with talent who have genuine resonance in our key markets. With Robert, the Dancing with the Stars timing is brilliant. It puts him right in the heart of American popular culture when people are already paying attention.

What makes Robert perfect for US audiences is his genuine connection to Australia. He isn’t a celebrity doing a quick tourism ad. Through his work at Australia Zoo and his constant travels around the country, he’s actually living the Australia story. When he talks about our wildlife or our landscapes, Americans can see it’s genuine. It comes from someone who’s out there every day, not reading from a script.

Americans have had a genuine affection for the Irwin family for decades. When I moved to Australia 20 years ago, my nephews in America were excited that I might get to meet Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter! Robert himself already has a strong profile in the US, well before Dancing with the Stars – that show just amplified what was already there.

The YouTube videos of Robert on the Tonight Show over the years have hundreds of millions of views. We’re building on a foundation of trust and familiarity that goes back decades.

The numbers don’t hurt either. Robert has about 17 million followers globally, with half of them in the US. That’s direct access to American travellers, amplifying our message through someone they already trust and follow.

It’s a perfect example of what we call ‘cycles of salience’ in action. We create and leverage cultural moments that keep Australia in the conversation. And ultimately, that’s what helps us cut through in a market where we’re competing with other destinations and the entire content jungle.

It can be challenging to land on a great creative idea that will resonate with people in different countries and in different cultures. How are you styling the campaign for other countries?

It absolutely is challenging! But we did it anyway because we believe a multi-local approach would drive stronger resonance in our five key markets and unlock more earned media opportunities. When we first launched Come and say G’day in October 2022, our focus was reintroducing the world to Australia after Covid.

Three years later, the media landscape has changed drastically. A one-size-fits-all approach would struggle to cut through. That’s why we’re working with talent who are genuinely culturally relevant in each market and can reach our high yield travelers on the platforms they’re actually using.

We’ve paired our successful campaign idea with authentic in-market storytelling, creating earned media and organic amplification that travel much further than paid media alone.

All our creative edits have been crafted specifically for their markets, using local talent and featuring the Australia locations where travelers from specific markets actually want to go. We want people to imagine themselves in their own Australian adventure.

Beyond traditional advertising, we’re showing up in unique ways. In London, we took over the Outernet, surrounding visitors with multi-screen visuals and rich audio that combined stories from real travelers with Nigella Lawson’s memories from Australia, captivating the crowds. In Shanghai, we created a pop-up featuring our talent Yosh Yu at the opening night media event. We’re developing bespoke launch experiences in other markets as the campaign rolls out.

Our aim is simple: drive consideration and build salience in what can be a sea of sameness in destination marketing.