"In Australia, McDonald's are called Maccas. They're hip hangouts"

Yes, you read right! Well, that's according to one Australian TV personality who made this bold statement on none other than the Oprah Winfrey Show. Truth or product placement? Most Aussies can tell you that 'Maccas' is not the pinnacle of hip. To give you an idea, just see the picture above and tell me which one of those 'hipsters' has any sense of cool about them...?

Australian TV personality (she's lucky to have that title), Carrie Bickmore, in a report for Oprah and her 40-million-strong US audience, gave an 'insight' into Aussie culture, including a crash course in common lingo such as 'blokes', 'sheilas' (pur-leaze!) and 'budgie smugglers'. However, what was most curious was Bickmore's claim that Australians also consider McDonald's to be an important part of life Down Under. "While there are a lot of differences there is one comforting similarity - we still have McDonald's," she said. "Although while you guys have your diners, we have these special cafes where guys come for business meetings, girls come for a catch-up over coffee. It's all just a little bit fancy. In Australia, McDonald's are called Maccas. They're hip hangouts where people sip gourmet coffees in the McCafes and dine from a menu exclusive to Australia."

Hmmm... it looks like that Bickmore was more than stretching the truth there. What next darling... that a super-sized Big Mac Meal is what Aussies consider to be 'fine dining'?

Bickmore's Wikipedia page was updated with a scathing assessment of her performance. "More recently she has been known as a McDonald's sell-out tramp and her viewer appeal has mysteriously fallen through the floor. She is about the get the arse... for being an absolute sell-out to an American junk food producer and not standing by Aussie values." These comments have since been removed (probably for being too true).

In a statement McDonald's said the 'in-program integration' (i.e. a new term for 'product placement') "was a one-off segment negotiated by our global McDonald's counterparts and McDonald's Australia".

All this comes as Oprah Winfrey brings an audience of her show who were screaming megadecibel shrieks of joy when they were told they were being whisked to Australia on a nine-day, all-expenses paid trip to Australia on a Qantas plane piloted by John Travolta. Here is a clip of the event (earplugs required)


Now, you must be thinking like the audience that Miss Winfrey must have such a big heart of gold to be paying for all of this. Hahaha, nothing could be further than the truth. Mr and Ms Aussie taxpayer is paying as this Oprah trip Down Under is the latest elaborate plan devised by the idiots at Tourism Australia to lure tourists to God's own land. The idea is that Oprah is watched by so many middle-class Americans who will do anything that she endorses (refer to her Book Club) that paying her to come and show Australia around will be the best ad campaign ever since Paul Hogan (aka Crocodile Dundee) invited Americans in the 1980s to 'throw a shrimp on the barbie' (even though Aussies call shrimps - prawns. A 'shrimp' in Aussie English is a rude way of describing a short person). Along with movie-length episodes of the Love Boat and the Facts of Life set in Australia, the land Down Under back then was flavour of the month for Americans, who realised that the people there actually spoke a similar language and it was relatively cheap and safe.

Alas, those days are long gone. Tourism Australia has gone from one bad pitch to another. In recent years they bombed out when Lara Bingle, Z-list celebrity and 'model' appealed to tourists to come to Australia's fine shores by shouting out 'where the bloody hell are ya?' Charming! The multi-million ad campaign failed as 'bloody' is considered too harsh a word to be used on TV in other countries. Tourism Australia also invested a bomb in that bomb of a film - Australia, Even then they paid Oprah to give a ringing endorsement and devote a whole episode of gushing bile to Baz Luhrman's turkey of a film. Despite that, you would have thought that Tourism Australia would have learnt their lesson that first time when promoting Australia via La Winfrey. Still, we now are on the cusp of a major media event and kitschfest in Australia, when Winfrey arrives with around 300 Americans to do two shows at the Sydney Opera House and another one reportedly in the outback.

There has been some backlash to the $3 million the Australian government paid to lure Winfrey to Australia, but Martin Ferguson, the Australian Tourism Minister is unperturbed, calling her visit a major coup. "I think it's money well spent. This truly represents an amazing opportunity to showcase Australia, the warmth and hospitality of our people and the depth and breadth of everything our country has to offer visitors from around the world. Tourism Australia is finally getting it together. We as a nation will win as a result of this coup."

However anything could be better than their last campaign - There's Nothing Like Australia, which even before it was released had already been lampooned on a spoof website. You'd think that their web experts would have taken the rights for every domain name associated with 'nothinglikeaustralia'.

So check out how lame Aussie Tourism ads are. Here is that 'bloody' ad, with every cliché in the book:

And now the spoof...

Well Martin, I am not convinced. The fact remains that tourism numbers to Australia have dropped drastically in the past decades. Reasons for this lie in the fact that there is now far more competition in destinations, the strong Australian dollar makes the place a very expensive place to visit, airfares to Australia are also expensive, and everyone except New Zealanders needs visas to enter the country. Hardly welcoming.

But who cares... we have our hip McCafes to go and have fine, gourmet (remember to pronounce the 't') coffees... it's just that little bit fancy! Hmm.. love the taste of a brown crayon dissolved in a polystyrene cup of boiling water!