South Australia Tourism Commission (SATC) released the final installment of its controversial Old Mate advertising campaign over the weekend during the AFL grand final.
The latest installment shows Old Mate bringing two of his mates with him back to Adelaide to show off his new favourite city.
The 30-second advert shows the trio going on a range of South Australian adventures including driving across Sellicks beach, flying over d’Arenberg Cube and even dabbling in Adelaide’s laneway nightlife.
The initial campaign released at the beginning of September sparked debate across the nation for depicting a sad and lonely older man and even saw Tasmania create a parody of it.
Brent Hill, executive director of marketing for SATC, told AdNews that the decision to bring back Old Mate was sparked after numerous requests to interview the fictional character.
"What crystalised it for me was just the amount of interview requests that I had for Old Mate himself," he says.
"There was so many people asking if they could interview Old Mate and that was the thing for me that [there] was this real interest in his character, what he’d seen and done in Adelaide. So, from that point I knew we could go ahead and bring him back."
Hill says while there are no future plans for the nation to see Old Mate again, he could make a comeback pending the nation's reaction to the latest ad.
"As to future plans, I guess we will wait and see what the reaction is," Hill says.
"People really warm to him as a character and probably really want to see where he goes and what he does but it’s not necessarily something we plan to take forward in a year. It just depends on that reaction. Maybe next time he brings Beryl down for a romantic weekend in the Barossa."
The SATC ads were created by the tourism body's creative agency TBWA Adelaide who won the account last year up against 35 agencies including incumbent and Adelaide local KWP who had held the account for a decade.
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