An advertisement campaign aimed at luring British tourists to Western Australia has been mocked online after an embarrassing blunder was spotted in the photo.
Earlier this month, Tourism Australia was forced to quickly fix one of its advertisements for its UnDiscover Australia campaign, which aims to show a different side to Australian travel.
The original image shows a young couple sitting on a hill in Kings Park, Perth, with the caption “catch the sunset here”. The problem is, the couple are looking east, even though the sun sets in the west — meaning tourists who clamber to the top of the hill hoping to catch a glimpse of the setting sun would be in for a disappointing view.
Reporters at The West Australian were the first to spot the blunder and pointed it out to Tourism Australia, which said the ad would be fixed before it was released on social media. An edited version has now been released.
https://twitter.com/Talaolp/status/1101516913434189824
Despite Tourism Australia jumping to fix the mistake, it didn’t take long before the ad copped flak on social media, with one person writing: “It’s a joke. Tourism Aus almost released a campaign yesterday showing a sunrise over KP and calling it a sunset.”
Another added: “Sunset tourism blunder ‘typical’ of Canberra attitude to WA.”
And a third wrote: “They could always take a video of the sunrise and play it backwards.”
This isn’t the first time a mistake in a tourism advertisement has gone viral. Last year, Germany travel company Neckermann landed itself in hot water after their marketing poster turned into somewhat of an embarrassing blunder.
What is meant to be a seemingly innocent promotion to entice people to jet off on holiday, instead at first glance appears much more sexual than intended due to the unfortunate placement of a man’s hand.
While creators of the advertisement thought they had captured the perfect shot of a couple enjoying the sun in their swimsuits, others were convinced the photo showed the man enjoying an intimate moment as he pleasured the woman while laying on a sun lounge.
That of course isn’t the case as the man is actually sitting with his hand cupped on his knee, while the woman lays beside him sunbathing.