• Tourism Australia is spending $36 million over 3 years in a bid to increase the US tourism spend Down Under to $6 billion annually.
• Tourism boss John O’Sullivan pitched the idea to Paul Hogan last year in Sydney cafe.
• Some of the biggest Australian stars in Hollywood wanted to join in at ‘mates rates’ to support the campaign.

Tourism Australia’s month-long campaign based around a fake Crocodile Dundee movie sequel has been a massive hit, with more than 1 billion people exposed to the project.

The marketing push, which created social media hype around plans for a new version of Paul Hogan’s 1980s comedy classic, starring Danny McBride as Mick Dundee’s son, and Chris Hemsworth, as his sidekick, was part of an $36 million investment to increase the annual US market spend in Australia by $2.3 billion to $6 billion by 2020.

It even sparked a petition as part of a local media campaign in an attempt to turn the spoof idea into a reality.

A Hollywood A-list cast of Australians including Chris and Liam Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman, Margot Robbie and Russell Crowe, as well as the original Dundee, Paul Hogan, all featured in the campaign, taking part for standard industry-mandated rates to show their support.

Federal Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo released figures today saying the campaign achieved a social media reach of about 890 million, with 80% of those people based in the US, on top of the 100 million Americans who saw the climax of the campaign, an ad during the half-time break at the Superbowl.

The popularity of the idea generated more than 12,000 media articles, worth an estimated $74 million. It was also 2018’s most-searched Super Bowl campaign, according to Google statistics.

Ciobo said industry feedback had been “incredibly positive” and the Tourism Australia website, Australia.com, had record traffic after the ad went to air, with people from 10,000 US towns and cities – more than half the entire country.

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