100% Pure YOU! Is pure boring! It could do with a bit of colour. There’s way too much green and absolutely no shades of brown.
Apparently, Tourism NZ research says: cut the scenery and aim for the heart and soul of the visitor. But the YOU campaign is still landscape heavy backed up by bad acting and trite scripting.
Three Australian ads rolled out this week, all trying to evoke a different type of emotion.
Exhilaration: A 20-something year old girlie-girl getting her thrills jet boating, “…across ribbons of water through the most amazing landscapes you’ve ever seen”.
Passion: A couple finding romance riding horseback through bush, over hills to a deserted beach, “…to a place so close but feels so far away…”
Love: A father and son bond over a narrow bridge in dense native forest where, “…there’s no ticket office and no takeaways”.
Some bush, some water a horse – is that all we have to offer? I lived with Australians for a few years and I can tell you they’re a gusty lot. A jet boat, horse and bridge isn’t gonna pull their strings. There’s nothing special or authentic or compelling about these three things. Infact former ad agency boss Nigel Keats reckons our scenery isn’t our point-of-difference, our type of bush, water and horse can be found anywhere in the world. While Maori Party MP and tourism spokesperson Te Ururoa Flavell says what’s missing is the unique Maori factor.
To evoke soulful emotions means engaging all senses. Exhilaration requires one to stare into the eyes of fear, passion demands an out of body experience, familial love involves compassion. These are experiences of a spiritual nature. That’s not to say the ad makers need to conjure up kehua/ghost or apply some voodoo magic. But if according to Keats our scenery is a dime-a-dozen then the selling point is in the experience. If that unique experience is found with Maori as Flavell suggests then wouldn’t it be common sense to combine the unique experience with Maori.
If tourists want a thrill, I would offer up a powhiri from Kotane in Christchurch or Tamaki Village Rotorua or Haka Pa in Queenstown? The experience of a half naked tattooed warrior lunging at you with a long stick may not give you a 20 minute adrenalin rush but it sure as heck will spike your heart rate well above normal. If it’s passion visitors are after how about a night of ‘Opera in the Pa’ in Rotorua. Under the stars with some of the country’s greatest singers can inspire ardour in the most cynical of couples. If it’s a familial bonding experience then a waka trip along the Whanganui River with Awa Tours may do the trick. The team work and reliance on each other infused with astounding historical stories of the people and yes the beautiful country side is compelling.
Flavell is correct, Maori are found nowhere except here in gods zone. The audio and visual cues Keats was looking for, that will stand New Zealand apart from the rest of the world are within the Maori world. To promote New Zealand by highlighting Maori experiences, world, images and sounds, makes sense.
The opportunity isn’t lost. We can still make colourful ads that have that brown, indigenous and Maori experience for the North American and Asian markets. Tourists are demanding new, better different experiences – let’s give them that. It’s not about asking Tourism New Zealand to be bold and courageous – it’s just asking them to see what’s in front of them. So come on Tourism New Zealand let’s give the world what no other country has - Maori.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
PORN OLE SHANE JONES ALL IS FORGIVEN
That’s the thing about Shane Jones of Mangonui, he may very well have inherited his Dalmatian tupuna’s (ancestor) productive fecundity. His tupuna Andre Kleskovic and wife had 16 kids, Shane and Ngareta have 7. So when Jones says in response to watching those adult videos that he’s a red blooded male, yeah!.......it’s in his whakapapa.
That whole porn debacle is history, so-last-year, maybe not totally forgotten, but definitely forgiven by his leader Phil Goff. Shane did the right thing man’ed up, fell on his sword, wailed mea culpa and took the media fuelled flak. He scampered to the back benches and waited till the water was muddied by some other errant MP and all eyes were off him.
His self imposed banishment to Coventry paid dividends. He’s in line for one of the Labour big seats up front. He’s taking on Pita Sharples and the Maori Party in Tamakimakaurau. He won’t win. Sharples has done too much leg work in the area, not just during his time as a politician but his work with Kohanga Reo and Maori education has cemented his mana in the concrete jungles of Auckland. It’ll take a seismic quake to dislodge Sharples.
Taking on the co-leader of the Maori Party means Jones is on track to replacing former Minister of Maori Affairs Parekura Horomia. The hefty fellow might vacate his chair but don’t bet on the son of Ngati Porou ceding the seat of Te Tai Rawhiti. Horomia is no slug when it comes to his East Coast people and make no mistake about it, the tribe that has a whale for an ancestor loves this man. He brushed aside his cousin Derek Fox and the Maori Party in 2008, with little more than a huff and a puff. So if Labour doesn’t want to lose one of the two remaining Maori seats, then they need to hang onto Parekura’s coat tails for dear life.
If Jones takes over the reins as shadow Maori Affairs Minister, he won’t stop there. Jones is ambitious. He’s after the Finance portfolio and why wouldn’t he covet that cache. He’s made for the job. The 51 year old is well schooled in finance and business. He has economics and politics degrees from Auckland and Victoria Universities and he is a Harkness Fellow from Harvard.
He’s revered by both Labour and National Parties for smoothing the troubled waters at the Waitangi Fisheries Commission. Under his Chairmanship back in 2000, Jones succeeded in sorting out the flotsam piled up over years of litigation and battles among tribes and urban Maori. Tribal scrapping over the distribution of some $800 million in fisheries assets was fierce, brutal. Interestingly it was Horomia that put Jones in that lead role.
If Jones is a political pole climber, then what’s to say he won’t make a tilt for the top job? Will Jones be the first Maori Prime Minister? Jones himself detests it when people say he’s Prime Minister in waiting. In his own words, “…that’s to court the guillotine” He points to his mate John Tamihere as an example of what happens when the death knell ‘first Maori Prime Minister’ tolls. Tamihere the West Auckland champion of city Maori is now in purgatory, on talk back radio sharing spit and spittle with his urban brother Willie Jackson.
The thing about Jones is that he is a team person. If he gets the nod at the top job it’ll be because he’s the best person for the position at that time. He won’t do a Chris Carter and hatch a sure-to-fail coup; he won’t even attempt a sure-to-win coup. He’ll come by the job legitimately, because he’s loyal to the leader, his colleagues and his party. He’s pragmatic, practical and a realist. There’s nothing stopping Shane Jones from going all the way. All the way to where though, well that’s up to the Maori-speaking, white, square-head kid from the gumfields of Te Aupouri. So we wait and watch.
That whole porn debacle is history, so-last-year, maybe not totally forgotten, but definitely forgiven by his leader Phil Goff. Shane did the right thing man’ed up, fell on his sword, wailed mea culpa and took the media fuelled flak. He scampered to the back benches and waited till the water was muddied by some other errant MP and all eyes were off him.
His self imposed banishment to Coventry paid dividends. He’s in line for one of the Labour big seats up front. He’s taking on Pita Sharples and the Maori Party in Tamakimakaurau. He won’t win. Sharples has done too much leg work in the area, not just during his time as a politician but his work with Kohanga Reo and Maori education has cemented his mana in the concrete jungles of Auckland. It’ll take a seismic quake to dislodge Sharples.
Taking on the co-leader of the Maori Party means Jones is on track to replacing former Minister of Maori Affairs Parekura Horomia. The hefty fellow might vacate his chair but don’t bet on the son of Ngati Porou ceding the seat of Te Tai Rawhiti. Horomia is no slug when it comes to his East Coast people and make no mistake about it, the tribe that has a whale for an ancestor loves this man. He brushed aside his cousin Derek Fox and the Maori Party in 2008, with little more than a huff and a puff. So if Labour doesn’t want to lose one of the two remaining Maori seats, then they need to hang onto Parekura’s coat tails for dear life.
If Jones takes over the reins as shadow Maori Affairs Minister, he won’t stop there. Jones is ambitious. He’s after the Finance portfolio and why wouldn’t he covet that cache. He’s made for the job. The 51 year old is well schooled in finance and business. He has economics and politics degrees from Auckland and Victoria Universities and he is a Harkness Fellow from Harvard.
He’s revered by both Labour and National Parties for smoothing the troubled waters at the Waitangi Fisheries Commission. Under his Chairmanship back in 2000, Jones succeeded in sorting out the flotsam piled up over years of litigation and battles among tribes and urban Maori. Tribal scrapping over the distribution of some $800 million in fisheries assets was fierce, brutal. Interestingly it was Horomia that put Jones in that lead role.
If Jones is a political pole climber, then what’s to say he won’t make a tilt for the top job? Will Jones be the first Maori Prime Minister? Jones himself detests it when people say he’s Prime Minister in waiting. In his own words, “…that’s to court the guillotine” He points to his mate John Tamihere as an example of what happens when the death knell ‘first Maori Prime Minister’ tolls. Tamihere the West Auckland champion of city Maori is now in purgatory, on talk back radio sharing spit and spittle with his urban brother Willie Jackson.
The thing about Jones is that he is a team person. If he gets the nod at the top job it’ll be because he’s the best person for the position at that time. He won’t do a Chris Carter and hatch a sure-to-fail coup; he won’t even attempt a sure-to-win coup. He’ll come by the job legitimately, because he’s loyal to the leader, his colleagues and his party. He’s pragmatic, practical and a realist. There’s nothing stopping Shane Jones from going all the way. All the way to where though, well that’s up to the Maori-speaking, white, square-head kid from the gumfields of Te Aupouri. So we wait and watch.
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