Australian Tourism Slogan Ruled Obscene

by Gary Leff

A tourism slogan for Australia’s Northern Territory has been declared obscene.

For those unfamiliar with Australia, it’s located in North Central Australia and its capital is Darwin. Crocodile Dundee‘s “Walkabout Creek” was in the Northern Territory.


Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Tourism in the region is down, so getting attention with a campaign to “see you in the NT” seems pretty mundane — but not everyone is comfortable generating buzz by any means necessary. Here’s what the fuss was about:

The slogan wasn’t actually official, though the logo suggested that it was. And it was controversial:

“The initial thing about the campaign is that it certainly did get a lot of people talking about the Northern Territory and what there is to see and do up here,” said Valerie Smith, acting executive director of the NT tourism department.

But there was also anger at associating the Territory with a swear word describing women’s genitalia.

The Instagram account features gorgeous photos of the Northern Territory as well as merchandise that you can buy on their website — which is “NT Official” certainly suggesting the campaign is endorsed by a tourism authority.

A complaint was lodged with the industry self-regulating Advertising Standards Board who ruled “the ‘C-word’ to be obscene and not appropriate in advertising in any form” although since the perpetrators of the slogan haven’t even identified themselves there’s really nothing that can be done other than asking Facebook nicely “to try to have the page taken down.”

(HT: Mediaite)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. The C word is actually a common term of endearment in Australia. People need to get over it, its just a word and unless it is used in a personal attack it isn’t inherently rude.

  2. Why hasn’t Fucking, Austria ever run a tourism campaign?

    Can we even say ‘fucking’ on this website?

    Testing 1 2 3 … cunt … that is all

  3. I am offend by the modesty of the peoples who are not willing to do the needful

  4. This is simply hilarious in some way. The emphasis on the CU at NT was meant to give a certain meaning. That, coupled with the words about the front end and bottom end all imply vulgarity.

  6. Anyone offended by the word needs to go see the Vagina Monologues… they’ll soon recognise that’s its only another word. I think because of it’s onomatopoeic value it gets “banned”. Some people think it’s mysoginistic because it has to do with a woman’s private but they condone the term “bollocks” which describes male anatomy… so where’s the equality. It’s a word and it gets used a LOT!
    And yes I’m both Australia and Glasgow Scotland it isn’t always necessarily a pejorative word. A person can be a nice cunt or a cute cunt.
    It was also historically used in a lot of poetry and literature. Eg. Lord Rochester, Robert Burns ….
    We’re still suffering from Victoriana as I call it , the fake morals of a bygone age, when the irony is that Victoria and Albert themselves were Randy cunts!!!

  8. The ruling that it’s obscene and shouldn’t be used clearly had no effect. I’m visiting the NT right now, seven years after this article was posted, and t-shirts with this slogan are certainly still available in shops here.

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