TWICM 193: How Tourism Australia Became One of the World’s Strongest Brands

Tourism marketing often gets reduced to beautiful beaches, drone shots and generic aspiration. Susan Coghill has spent years proving that isn’t enough.

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor sits down with the CMO of Tourism Australia to explore how one of the world’s most recognisable destination brands thinks about salience, creativity, distinctive assets and long-term brand building in an increasingly competitive global market.

Susan shares the story behind Tourism Australia’s hugely successful “Come and Say G’Day” platform, why Ruby the Kangaroo became such a powerful brand asset, and how the organisation balances consistency with freshness across markets including the US, UK and China.

The conversation also explores Susan’s fascinating career journey from working at Apple during the “Think Different” era, including delivering creative work directly to Steve Jobs in Hawaii, through to leading one of the most admired tourism brands in the world.

Along the way, they discuss:

Why Australian marketers consistently punch above their weight globally

The role of salience and mental availability in destination marketing

Why tourism brands often fall into category sameness

The importance of distinctive assets like Ruby the Kangaroo

How Tourism Australia approaches talent partnerships with figures like Nigella Lawson and Robert Irwin

What modern tourism marketing can learn from entertainment and social media

How AI discoverability is changing brand strategy and search behaviour

Why consistency compounds in marketing

This is a conversation about much more than tourism. It is really about how brands stay memorable in a crowded world.

A huge thank you to our partners at Tracksuit for supporting the podcast.

You can listen to more episodes of That’s What I Call Marketing here:

That’s What I Call Marketing

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.