Old Mate

Read the campaign story

South Australian Tourism Commission’s Old Mate advertisement appeared in 2019, showing an older man visiting Adelaide attractions before becoming tearful. The voiceover framed his emotion as regret for not visiting sooner. SBS reported criticism of the tone, including concerns about ageism, alongside the commission’s explanation that it wanted younger people to stop postponing a visit. ABC later reported mixed pre-release research obtained through freedom-of-information processes.

The editorial mechanism was anticipated regret. Instead of presenting a destination as somewhere to visit eventually, the film tried to make delay feel costly. The character’s pleasure at the attractions supplied the positive proposition, while the ending added urgency. That is a coherent creative structure, but its effectiveness depends on the audience accepting the emotional turn and the narrator’s attitude toward the person on screen.

The controversy shows how that attitude can dominate the message. A line intended as teasing can sound dismissive when applied to age, loneliness or visible distress. Viewers may identify with the character more strongly than the advertiser expects, or question why the film appears to blame him. In that situation, the audience is not simply failing to understand the joke; it may be understanding the relationship between narrator and character differently.

The research reporting is useful because it complicates a simple success-or-failure story. ABC described warnings about audience fit and variety of attractions, but also reported that some respondents understood the humour and expressed greater interest in visiting. Those findings should be read together. Selecting only the most positive or negative response would hide the actual decision problem: how to retain a motivating idea while addressing foreseeable interpretation risks.

The sources establish the execution, public criticism and reported research, not an independently isolated tourism outcome. This case therefore belongs in a library as a cautionary example rather than an unqualified model to copy. Its practical lesson is to test emotional meaning, not just recognition of the intended proposition. A campaign can communicate urgency clearly and still damage the welcome it wants to extend if the person carrying the story is treated without sufficient care.

Test emotional meaning

Ask how viewers feel the character is being treated.

Read mixed research fully

Positive intent scores do not erase clear interpretation risks.

Keep welcome intact

Urgency should not undermine the hospitality a destination promises.

A small test for another brief

Test a positive invitation against an urgency-based version.

Measure interest and perceived welcome separately.

Stop if urgency relies on shame or a vulnerable stereotype.

• Write both versions around the same real benefit.
• Ask a diverse sample to describe the emotional tone without prompting.
• Revise any version that blames or belittles the audience.