Why Australia’s Tourism Board Faked a ‘Crocodile Dundee’ Reboot
It was done with the blessing of Paul Hogan, the original Dundee.
In Late January, we featured what appeared to be a Crocodile Dundee reboot, which came complete with a trailer and starred Danny McBride, Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie. Later on, it turned out that news of a reboot was fake and it was actually an elaborate tourism ad for Australia. Fast Company spoke to Droga5 and its creative director Chris Colliton, the agency behind the advert to talk about how this came about.
Crocodile Dundee is still Australia’s biggest export, with Colliton saying “It’s still what a lot of people reference when they think of Australia, and creatively, there really couldn’t be a more perfect time, considering how much Hollywood has embraced reboots. It just seemed like a perfectly believable story that Hollywood would do something this outlandish.” The strategy for Droga5 was to start out promotion in the exact same manner as a film, before eventually devolving into a traditional advertisement.
The agency had to go through Paul Hogan, who owns the rights to the character and land big names, the first of which was Chris Hemsworth, who recommended Danny McBride for the main character. Chief marketing officer Lisa Ronsen said they chose the Super Bowl as its big reveal because “We know there’s a lot of competition and noise around the Super Bowl, some fantastic work takes place there, but we wanted to try to cut through as a destination. Not only do we think it’ll engage the American audience, but it takes what Americans already know about Australia from the ’80s and brings it into a modern Australia.”
Read the feature in full over at Fast Company.
