GREAT campaign launch at Melbourne Grand Prix

Our Sports and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson MP was in Melbourne this weekend to launch the GREAT campaign in Australia. This marketing campaign, which is running in ten countries around the world, aims to build on the fact that London and the UK will be a focus of world attention this year, with The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is an opportunity to set out the UK’s welcome for Business and for Tourists. Visit Britain, our national tourist agency has been running high profile poster campaigns in prominent locations in Sydney and Melbourne over the last couple of months. The Melbourne event followed similar launches in New York, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro.

The Melbourne Grand Prix was a great opportunity to launch the campaign, because Formula 1 is not just about sports (important as that is to millions of racegoers and TV viewers around the world), it’s also a fantastic example of British high technology manufacturing strengths. Two thirds of F1 cars are manufactured in Britain, in the so called “Motor Sports Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge. It is an incredibly innovative industry, with the racing cars having more in common with aircraft than with saloon cars. So we worked with business representatives to organise a high profile, glitzy event, with presentations by racing legends Sir Jackie Stewart and Damon Hill, and Chief Executives of several of the teams. The room was decked out with full size F1 models and other examples of British innovation, from Bentleys to Burberry and Bionic hands. A crowd of 300 local celebrities, business people and media agreed that it was a GREAT showcase for Britain. Our Consulate General team in Melbourne, and their communications colleagues from our Canberra and Sydney offices worked flat out for several weeks to put this together, and we were all delighted with the results. The results on the track were GREAT too, with British drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton coming 1st and 3rd.

In this sports mad country, there was great media interest in our Sports Minister’s visit and he appeared on the main breakfast TV and radio shows as well as giving newspaper interviews. The Australian swimming trials were running in Adelaide at the same time, so there was a lot of media focus on the Olympics. Everyone was very complimentary about the advanced state of British preparations, and was looking forward to the Games which start at the end of July. Mr Robertson met his Australian opposite number Senator Kate Lundy and they had a friendly wager about which country would get more Gold medals in London. If Australia wins, Mr Robertson will run round Australia House in London wearing Australian kit. If Britain triumphs, Kate Lundy will row on the Olympic course at Eton Dorney in our team uniform.

We also had a fascinating side trip to Melbourne’s Fawkner Cemetry to witness the unveiling of a new headstone on the previously unmarked grave of Britain’s first gold medal winner at the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896. Launceston Elliott (named after the Tasmanian city in which he was conceived) won Gold in weightlifting. It is an interesting commentary on the Games in those days, that he also did quite well in the 100m sprint – not an event we tend to associate with weightlifters today. Lord Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, performed the unveiling ceremony, in the presence of Elliott’s grandaughter and great grandson. It was a lovely story.

We were also joined in Melbourne by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman David Wootton. He was on a week’s visit to Australia, also taking in Sydney and Brisbane, promoting the UK’s Financial Services sector, much of which is within the Square Mile of the City. Audiences in this young country were impressed by the fact that he was the 684th holder of this distinguished office (predecessors include Dick Whittington), and by what he had to say about the continuing strengths of UK financial services, notwithstanding the impact of the GFC.