Who Looks Dumbest when Journalists Don’t Check the Facts?
“Tegan,” from Australia is actually a digital project manager at Cummins Nitro, the Brisbane agency behind Queensland Tourism’s best job in the world campaign and the tattoo is quite clearly fake. Discerning YouTube viewers picked up on the facts pretty quickly (for goodness sake, fresh tattoos bleed, you don’t walk out of the shop with a pristine design), yet the video has had more than 60,000 views so far and considerable traditional media attention from around the world.
Who looks dumber, AAP and the major news outlets who ran with the story, or Qld Tourism who used it as an example video without a disclaimer?
Either way, nice acting Rhiannon. Are the freckles real?
UPDATE: It seems Tim Burrowes over at MumBrella actually beat me to the punch on this story - for further reading and a response from Tourism Queensland, make sure you check out his blog post.
Dirk Singer
January 17th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
#
Amazing that they felt the need to do this for what’s a brilliant campaign under its own steam. In the UK we get hauled over the coals for this kind of stuff and I imagine it’s the same in Australia.
The agency in question doesn’t really do itself any favours in its “they fell for it, tough” explanation - http://bit.ly/8E1i
Sophie Benjamin
January 18th, 2009 at 12:42 am
#
That acting was horrendous and you’re right, the tattoo is clearly fake - plus it would have taken longer than 45 mins to do that design. Nice adbusting skills!
Tim Burrowes
January 18th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
#
Hi Matt,
What was interesting about this story when we broke it on Friday (http://mumbrella.com.au/2009/01/16/tourism-queensland-admits-the-reef-video-was-a-fake-that-took-in-aap/ ) was that Tourism Queensland were not attempting to hide the fact.
The journos didn’t make any check calls, and indeed after the stories about that tattoo were published as fact they got in touch with AAP to alert them, but there was no correction.
I think this one probably reflects on the media - after all, the coverage - accurate or not - counted in TQ’s favour.
Cheers,
Tim - Mumbrella
Integrity – Your most valuable asset | paulwallbank.com
January 20th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
#
[...] lesson is the damage done to the fantastic “Best Job in the World” campaign with another lame stunt. It’s fairly safe to say overdoing things with a fake tattoo has destroyed much of this [...]
leon
January 21st, 2009 at 11:26 am
#
Video has been removed, might wanna source a replacement link assuming one exists.
Tourism Queensland vs. Witchery Man: And the winner is… » Zakazukha Zoo Social Media Marketing Blog
May 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am
#
[...] mighty impressed with the campaign on the whole, despite some early stumbling, and given that this is only the end of phase one (the dude now has to go do the ‘work’ [...]