South Australia’s Barossa Valley is far better known one of Australia’s most famous wine regions than it is moody murder ballads, but the latest tourism campaign for the area isn’t so much concerned about accuracy as it is providing a stylistically grabbing promo.
The South Australian Tourism Commission are taking a new approach to promoting the Barossa Valley with a bit of edge for their latest, $6 million advertising campaign, which features the recognisable music and voice of one of Australia’s most treasured musicians.
Nick Cave provides the soundtrack for the new advertisement, the first part of the Be Consumed campaign, which focusses on the food and wine available in the wine region through artistic shots of the landscape and visiting tourists all set to the tune of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’, as mUmBRELLA reports.
Taken from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ eight studio album, 1994’s Let Love In, ‘Red Right Hand’ is one of Cave’s more recognisable numbers and its sinister lyrics might seem an odd choice for tempting visitors to the Barossa Valley, as Cave sings “Hey man, you know/ you’re never coming back/Past the square, past the bridge/past the mills, past the stacks;” it’s cultural clout however, is certainly hard to ignore. “…One of Cave’s more recognisable numbers and its sinister lyrics might seem an odd choice for tempting visitors to the Barossa Valley.”
The ad campaign begins airing in a week’s time in cinemas and on television, is aimed at bringing a wider demographic to Barossa Valley, which as The Music points out, has seen a 44% drop in tourism dollars in the last decade as well as a corresponding 45% drop-off rate in tourists visiting interstate.
Tourism Barossa chairman Chris Pfeiffer said he hoped the ad would be “instrumental” in bringing more visitors to the region. The Nick Cave-scored commercial was created by Adelaide Agency KWP!, who previously worked with the South Australia Tourism Commission on the ‘Let Yourself Go’ campaign for Kangaroo Island of last year.
Director Jeff Darling says of the new ad: “After Kangaroo Island, it was fascinating to revisit the tourism genre, to open up the language and to bring out the soul of another, very different place. The approach was to bring out a sense of vitality, heritage and for me this frontier sense that is borne out of its producers and the experience of spending time there.”
In related news, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are set to take the stage at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival tomorrow, the first of a few international festival slots this month, including playing the first-ever All Tomorrow’s Parties in Keflavik, Iceland and hitting up the Rolling Stones-headlined Glastonbury alongside fellow Aussies, Tame Impala, Jagwar Ma, and Xavier Rudd on 30th June.
The band continue touring through Europe and the UK from August to the end of the year off the back of their latest album, Push Away The Sky, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ first ever #1 album after 15 years and 30 years.
Cave also resurrected libido-charged Bad Seeds side-project Grinderman in April for a roaring performance at California’s Coachella. His reasoning? “Fuck You,” as Cave responded in his hilariously morose fan Q&A over Twitter earlier in the year; his justification being, “every other shitty band is doing it, why not someone who’s actually good?”
We can only hope another foolish fan takes Cave to task for letting ‘Red Right Hand’ be used to score a tourism commercial just to see his witty, wrathful reply.
