The South Australian Tourism Board recently launched a new promotion. The advert itself is visually beautiful, and is backed with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds ‘Red Right Hand’.
While not intended as a tourism slogan, the phrase “Don’t mess with Texas” does show up on souvenirs.
A lot of non-Texans are probably unaware of the origin of this phrase. It wasn’t intended to be a boast about how tough Texans are; it’s an anti-littering slogan used by the state Department of Transportation.
Just watched this one, and the combination of the song and the images of food interspersed with bugs and mud made it seem like an artsy short film about how we’re all going to die.
Even with a different soundtrack, repeatedly having a close-up of food and then a close-up of a bug is pretty unappetizing. I gather that the idea behind this campaign is to indicate that the food you can get in Barossa is locally produced and prepared the old-fashioned way, but do they really need to keep showing us the bugs?
The successor to this is not much better: Drive Clean Across Texas. Which has a double meaning as a exhortation to not litter and as a depressing reminder of how far you have to go to get out of the state.
Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It is currently being used in the current Extended Stay America’s radio campaign.
Are the marketing folks working that account former 80’s faux metal-heads?
The problem was that, although said in the demure and cheerful tones for which Australians are famed, most countries thought 'Wherethebloodyhellareya?" sounded like the opening lines of a soon-to-be violent drunk who’s deciding whether or not he loves ya, or the other.
Australian English is probably the only one that counts ‘bloody’ as an acceptable part of daily speech.
Yeah, I’d say it’s the “hell” that would seem more problematic for American audiences. If anything, “Where the hell are you?” without the “bloody” would be even worse, because as you say “bloody” generally seems sort of quaint and amusing to Americans. Had the final line been something like “We’ll have a bloody good time!” then that might seem a bit odd but I don’t think it would have been considered particularly offensive here.
