Systems and signals: Australia’s brand story must grow up
Four Pillars founder Matt Jones believes that in a world of infinite AI content, advertising is going to be less effective, and Australia should look to investing in systems above simple ad campaigns.
“Australia’s brand story still behaves like it’s frozen in a brochure from the 1980s”.
The hard sell: Campaigns like "Where the bloody hell are ya?" (2006, with Laura Bingle pictured) are going to find it increasingly hard to cut through
In July 2001, my partner and I boarded a late-night flight out of Madrid bound for Lima, Peru. Our real destination was Cuzco and, from there, Machu Picchu. Lima was simply where the plane landed, plus a friend had an ex-girlfriend there who could show us around. She managed cigarette promo teams, so we ended up touring the bars and clubs of Miraflores and Barranco with lycra-clad Marlboro promo staff.
I mention it because back then, spending time in Lima felt optional. A stopover city at best, Lima was sprawling metropolis you endured before the “real” adventures began. But today, Lima means something else entirely.
According to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, Lima is home to the best restaurant in the world, Maido. In total it has four restaurants in the current top fifty, plus a fifth, Central, which was named best in the world in 2023 and now sits permanently in the hall of fame. With five of the world’s best restaurants in one city, Lima isn’t somewhere on the way to somewhere else anymore, it’s a reason to book the flight.
“Best of” lists are easy to dismiss. They can be glossy and subjective. But they’re also a kind of infrastructure: they consolidate attention, reduce the paralysis of choice and tell a certain kind of traveller what’s worth crossing an ocean for.
Tourism bodies are responsible for marketing their regions (or counties). Within this remit are specific strategies to target industries, sure, but Michelin stars benefit very few (and I won’t have the argument that it lifts the whole food scene – certainly not enough to get a pay day on a $40,000,000 bill + the cost of applying and maintaining the annual fees btw). Michelin Stars benefit the very best of the best, and only them. It’s not a fair or even good use of tax payers money. It won’t fill planes and it wouldn’t have saved the Snow Egg from extinction.
It’s also a Pay to Play model, so a star being a useful tool to wade through the endless choices isn’t even a fair metric. Google reviews are fairer… everyone plays – for FREE!
You’re conflating the insane cost of living with 3 Hat (remember the good old Hat?) restaurants not getting Global street cred.
Tourism Australia’s number one priority is demand generation….attracting visitors to Australia. We can disagree over the optimal strategies to achieve that goal, but surely not that the existence of an Australian Michelin Guide would be a powerful net positive contributor to international visitor intent and demand?
Tokyo first benefited from a Michelin Guide in 2008 and its reputation as a food destination was immediately transformed by the number of three stars awarded in that debut guide. The global earned media was enormous.
Back in 2014, Tourism Australia recognised how important and powerful food quality was as a driver of international visitation and they launched their resulting campaign, ‘Restaurant Australia’, at (you guessed it) Quay.
A quick note…bringing the Michelin Guide into your market is pay to play, but their restaurant reviews are not.
Lastly, the point is not to prop up three hat restaurants (those ‘hats’ are meaningful to us Australians, but meaningless to international visitors) but to create a halo effect that reaches down through 3, 2 and 1 star restaurants as well as good value ‘Bib Gourmand’ venues, and a system impact that sees incremental visitation benefit our cities and regions more broadly.
I know this has been quite a polarising topic lately, but I completely agree – saying ‘thanks, but no thanks – we’ve got our hats’ to a globally recognised system such as Michelin (which I know for a fact people make travel decisions around) doesn’t serve Australia’s sophisticated food scene at all, and perpetuates the insularity that plagues our continent.
I understand your position re: Michele/cost ‘Have to disagree’, but, I think you’d have agree there needs to be more than postcard pics of kangaroos and the Opera House to drive tourism to Australia nowadays. I think the Tasmanian tourism campaign has demonstrated that for domestic tourism by leveraging a singular type of experience – even freezing cold ocean dips in the middle of winter – without a single pic of the Richmond bridge to be seen anywhere.
I think this is such an interesting topic and point of view. Certainly, one of the first things I do when I am visiting a new city is look to credible sources as to where to book and eat. And there is none more credible than Michelin. I agree, I think it is a missed opportunity not to participate. Because bringing more people to high-end restaurants at the big end of town will almost certainly those same people into Chinatown food courts. Once you are here, you are far more likely to experience everything else around the cities and evangelise it through social etc.
Great conversation.
Surely no-one’s choosing between intercontinental travel destinations based on restaurant ratings? And if they were, who in Asia or the Americas is choosing Australia over Europe? Or who in Europe is choosing Australia over Asia?