The wicked wit of Brother Paul

My fellow evangelist, Brother Paul puts in the weekly kangaroo captions in the Australian TNT Magazine. We also encourage the public to submit their sayings so they can win a Wicked roadtrip each month. However, Paul needed no help in coming up with the caption this week.

Male: "I can't believe Michael Jackson is dead"

Female: "I know, it'll be one hell of a comeback concert!".

Bad timing? Probably. But still brilliant.

Party at Wolf Creek

After watching a scary movie a couple of years ago I made a vow to never watch another horror flick again. I don't find them appealing or entertaining in any way and thinking about them days later still gives me the shakes.

But now I find myself living in Broome and Mr Wicked has dreamed up the idea to start throwing monthly murder mystery parties, at a spot 800km away and the home of the scariest Australian horror movie ever made - Wolfe Creek Craters.

According to IMDB.com the Wolf Creek movie centres around "Ben and his two British mates who buy an old car to travel through the Australian outback. Their first stop is to visit a meteor crater in the isolated Wolf Creek National Park. When they go to their car, they find that it does not start. Later, a local hillbilly Mick stops his truck, offers to help the trio and tows them to his camp. When they accept the proposal, their dreamy vacation turns into a scary nightmare".

Fortunately these murders never occured at our planned party location, but they're loosely based on the Ivan Milat backpacker murders (NSW, early 1990s) and the Peter Falconio murder (NT, 2001). The ABC TV show, The Gruen Transfer highlighted these depressing points on a 60 second anti-Australia commercial, view the hilarious video here.

Back to the party though. We're aiming to host the murder mystery parties on the third Monday of every month. This party is open to everyone, not just Wicked Campers customers (or serial murderers). To register your interest visit the Wolfe Creek section on our website or email evangelism@wickedcampers.com.

On another note - Rest in Peace Michael Jackson, I loved your work!

The Wicked Naked Challenge

This will be a short post today as I've spent the afternoon editing the Wicked Challenge video (see above). We issued out a challenge to all our customers (giving them 7 days of free Wicked Camper hire as the prize) if they drove around Brisbane for a day. But here's the slightly difficult bit - they had to do it naked. A couple of outgoing Swedish lads took us up on the offer and here are some highlights from the day. What a laugh. I am so lucky to be able to do stuff like this during work hours!

Thanks for the memories

It's been a very busy couple of days in the office, following up with all the great people we met at the ATE last week. So for a bit of light relief I tuned into the monthly survey results from last month. This is one of the best parts of my job - reading/hearing the stories that flood in from people who've recently returned from their Wicked roadie. Here's a snippet of feedback from last month:

Q. Do you have a great Wicked roadtrip story you want to share with us?

A. Too Wicked to mention!!! Remember, we are both in our fifties but still Young at Heart. Live the Dream!!!

A. Just loved the freedom! :) but having 'fucking' on the back was a bit embarrassing, so covered it up with stickers! Think I'm getting old!

A. Ran out of money in rockhampton....no petrol...not even cence to make a phone call...ate fried bread for 2 days.... hitched about 120km to get replacement.... got very drunk and high... was awsome!

A. My mate was having a pee behind the van on a busy road cos he had just got up he was wearing only his boxers, which happened to be little white and tight, as he started to pee behind the van i drove forward and he was just stood there in his boxers peeing on the side of the road while a load of cars, buses and trucks drove past. Cos he had been holding it for a while he was peeing like a racehorse, a good minute and a half. You had to be there.

A. Even though our Dragon Wagon was really a hunk of junk we completely loved it! It broke down once and when the RAC turned up we tried the ignition once more and it started! The van made a terrible 'bang' noise every 3 minutes which only added to it charm! The Dragon Wagon became part of us, a talking point, which I suppose is all part of the Wicked experience.

A. When in a tiny town called Ross in the South Island of New Zealand, we parked up quickly to run to the supermarket. When we returned to the van (only about 5 minutes later) we found a note on the windscreen. The note said 'Your van is offensive to parents and children. Please inform the van company'. We found this absolutely hilarious and kept the note to show the wicked camper depot when we returned the van. They found it very funny too! We have some great wicked camper photos that I will send on to you. Thanks for a great trip!

A. We are about to switch drivers, so we pull into a nice park area for lunch. We relax for a bit, make some soup and just hang out while we can on the gorgeous day. As we get back in the van, I turn it on and put it into reverse to back away from the wooden fence in front of me. We start going forward. My two buddys start heckling me because I am using the wrong gear. Nope. I am in reverse. I try again. Forward we go. Again, forward when I am in reverse. Shit. This isnt good.

I turn the car off and on again. Reverse... just takes us forward. I try neutral... forward again. Ok this is beginning to be a problem. We are not stuck in front of this wooden fence. I have nowhere else to go. So we call wicked, get a number for a service station, and they come out to give us a hand, turns out the something is wrong with the gearbox. Ok. So he turns it off, puts it in neutral and we push it back out towards the road. We then follow him to his shop. He takes a look at it and it turns out that the gearbox is totally shot. Time for a new one. Well we need to be in Adelaide for our flight in a day or two and its now Friday? How long is this going to take? They call wicked and tell them whats going down. Wicked speaks to me and tells me I will be receiving a discount. Awesome!! So we get back in the car to continue driving? Just dont park so you need to reverse. Uhh.. Ok. So here we are. Everytime we need to; the car turned off and all three of us pushing the car backwards. We got a few smiles from people, a lot of laughs, and even more laughs from us. I think the loss of reverse made the trip even more memorable. So thank you Wicked, for a truly Wicked experience.

I love these guys! Especially the last post. They understand the Wicked philosophy....

The Wicked Philosophy
We believe in the experience of the roadtrip. It can change the way you see yourself, the world, and the world around you. It’s about getting something out of the journey itself, rather than worrying about how fast you can get to your destination; what’s the hurry? A roadtrip is a philosophy of life, a way of learning about yourself, an experience, a way to test yourself, a way to grow up…the possibilities are endless. Like life, your roadtrip is unique by how you shape it.

Evidence from the Australian Tourism Exchange

Hitting the tarmac running

Melbourne is the swine flu capital of the world so Mary and I took extra precautions when we hit the tarmac. Here we are on our first chilly night in Melbourne sporting our 'Wicked' branded swine flu air masks.

Share booth 107 - the party stand! The Wicked girls with Cathy and Randall from the Professional Helicopter Services (PHS).

We're currently in negotiations with the PHS team to get a helicopter spraypainted up by a Wicked grafitti artist and emblazoned with the token Wicked reflective stickers. No doubt the chopper will be the talking point in the outback if this idea comes to fruition!

Our German friend Michael. On the first day of the ATE Mary taught him a pickup line - "Fancy a fork?" For the rest of the conference Michael always ensured he carried a spare plastic fork in his pocket...

Mary taking no risks

Yes yes, it's old, but as you can see, most of our jokes in Melbourne revolved around swine flu. These statues found on Elizabeth Street were wearing air masks and displaying signs such as 'Ice skating causes more death than swine flu' .

June 17 - Socceroos vs Japan, MCG

Socceroos triumph 2-1!


"The Final Shout"

Last drinks were called on Friday to celebrate an end to the ATE 2009 in Melbourne. See you folks in Adelaide next year!

Evangelising at the ATE

Mary and I have spent the last few days in Melbourne, evangelising at the Australian Tourism Exchange ATE) The feedback for Wicked has been good – it’s quite amazing that a lot of the overseas agencies know the product; everyone we talk to is very interested to hear how the company began, who the boss is, who paints the vans and who dreams up the slogans! Over the next few blog entries I’ll answer a few of these questions, but first up – how did Wicked start?

Mr Wicked began the company back in 2001. He’s a mechanic and ran a small car-hire company in Brisbane. However there was one car, an old VW that no one would rent out – simply because the car had a few dents and scratches. One night over a bottle of champagne, Mr Wicked suggested to Mrs Wicked (an artist) to paint over the dents and scratches. Mrs Wicked painted beautiful daisies and flowers over the car and it became the most popular in the fleet! From these humble beginnings Wicked has grown to a fleet of over 800 vans Australia-wide.

But back to our evangelising at the ATE. We’re in a share booth with the great team from the Professional Helicopter Services. We’ve met a lot of folks located from all over the world, predominantly in Europe. Happy hours have been the highlight of the day for us with each State Tourism body sparing no expense when they throw on the drinks and nibbles.

I haven’t blogged for a couple of days because the wi-fi here has been cutting out – too much demand! It’s not the only thing cutting out…on Tuesday I wore some new heels and they gave me dreadful blisters. I spoke to the events co-ordinators who recommended I see the ‘swine flu’ nurse, but unfortunately she had no first aid kit either! In a last-ditch attempt, I visited the wonderful folks at ‘Let’s Go Surfing’, a learn to surf school located in Byron Bay. They had no spare flip flop giveaways, so one of the blokes gave me the thongs off his own feet. A couple hours later I moseyed over to their booth to return my thongs to discover that the bloke was wearing my high heels! Apparently for “security reasons” he wasn’t allowed on the convention centre floor without shoes on…funny times.

After talking to a few sellers here, it seems like most companies are going down the ‘word of mouth’ route, trying to claim a bigger and better online presence. We’ve received plenty of great advice from international agencies about sites that are popular in each of their regions, so when I get back to Broome I’ll work on developing Wicked through these avenues. I started writing this blog an hour ago and since starting I’ve had about 5 people drop in and commend us on the concept of Wicked. Fantastic feedback!

In the meantime though, I better get back to being social and more importantly, be wicked!

Stop the Toads

Last year I saw a segment on Sunrise about the 'Stop the Toad' foundation. This foundation was set up in Western Australia to stop the influx of cane toads to the region. Annually in Spring this foundation runs "The Great Toad Muster" where volunteers head to Kununurra at the top end of Western Australia to capture and eventually gas the cane toads.

According to the official report, a “total of 68,325 cane toads were removed from Auvergne Station during a 4 week period from September 20th until October 18th 2008”.

That’s crazy. Almost 70,000 in four weeks!!!

Being brought up in Queensland, I hate the cane toads. They're awful, ugly creatures who destroy our native wildlife. Late last year I got in touch with the ‘Stop the Toads’ Strategic Campaign Manager Kim Hands and offered to paint up a Wicked Camper for their cause. Kim came back with some great design ideas and our grafitti dude spraypainted up the hot box below:


To show their support of the cause, Wicked campers has designed a Stop the Toad camper van which can be hired out across Australia and encourages travelers to ‘spread love, not cane toads’ and to ‘save our aussie icons’.

I also caught up with Kim last month in Broome and we decided to cross-promote the van and the Muster via a competition. Over the next few months (until September), anyone who spots the toad van can submit a photo of the van with a natural aussie icon, such as Ayers Rock, Purnululu National Park or a tropical Queensland beach. The best photo will win 7 days free hire from us!

Click here for all the competition details.
Are you interested in mustering up some toads? Sign up to join the Great Toad Muster!

Do you like it in your Avis?

Fiona from the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) contacted us today, telling us 3 of the 15 advertising complaints against Wicked were upheld. These were complaints referring to the following adverts:

• A Wicked van painted up with 2 kangaroos shagging, one kangaroo says to the other “Do you like it in your Avis?” the other kangaroo says “No, it Hertz”
• A Wicked van painted up with the slogan “I don’t like gay sex… like f*ck”
• A Broome map printed up with a Wicked list of things you must do in Australia. Among the items is the to-do item “snog an aboriginal”

At Wicked we like to push the limits and have a bit of fun with our one-liners. Last August we received a multitude of media coverage for a van which had “Save a whale, harpoon a jap” written on the back – there was even a debate for it featured on Channel 7’s Sunrise. Many of the one-liners are created internally at Wicked, or we’ll grab them off websites/t-shirts etc. Here are a list of some of my favourites:

• Let’s play carpenter. First we’ll get hammered then I’ll nail you on the table.
• Sometimes I wake up grumpy. Othertimes I let him sleep.
• They’ve done something that does the work of 5 men. One woman.
• Let’s go back to my place and do the things I’ll tell everyone we did anyway.
• Condoms aren’t safe. My mate got hit by a bus when he was wearing one!

I’ve offered fellow Blogger Michelle the opportunity to create a van slogan for one of our campers. Check out her suggestions here.

It's a great day at Wicked

Want the insider's scoop at Wicked? One of our fantastic Wickedees has put together a blog talking about "day-to-day Wicked life, bizarre situations and any accident/care related issues".

The blog is a hoot - start following her today!
http://wickedcampersinsidestory.blogspot.com/

How do you market tissues?

I've spent the day with my fellow Evangelist Mary sorting out all we need for the Australian Tourism Expo (ATE) in Melbourne. The ATE is the largest travel conference held in the southerm hemisphere annually and provides an opportunity for us to showcase our Australian product to international buyers (usually travel agencies) from all over Europe, Australia and the Americas. The theme of this year's ATE is "Good food, good wine, good lifestyle" so Mary and I are very excited to hit the cold of Melbourne and warm up with a few vino's!

Mark from our Melbourne depot dropped me an email today suggesting we "organise some naked midgets covered in body paint to hand out flyers at the expo". This reminded me of the midget we tried (but failed) to hire for our Brisbane Wicked Revival party - apparently the guy dresses up as a mexican and wears a sombrero that converts to a serving plate full of corn chips and guacamole - and prances around the room acting as a mobile serving table. Amazing! He'd make any party memorable and sociable - no one would get caught hovering around the refreshments table...

Today Mr Wicked was in to chat to our graphic designer about some new stickers we're creating for the back of our vans. Mr Wicked's mate dropped over to our house to show him a new promo item we could possibly put in our vans... When Mr Wicked threw the packet over to me I wasn't too sure what they were, but I was shortly informed that it was a 'jerk-off kit' so our male wickedees could 'jerk-off with confidence', aka a packet of tissues! Brilliant. At 10c a pop we may just buy a stack and stick them in vans...but I've been assured we'll tone them down and label them '...For a messy night'.

Surfin' Steve and his crew dropped by our office to say g'day and thanks for the van hire - his challenge is to get 100 kisses from Aussie chicks in the next 2 months (he scored around 45 smooches own the Gold Coast last week)! He wasn't too lucky here - I compromised for a kiss on the cheek, Mary proclaimed she was a lesbian and also offered her cheek, but the ever-obliging Samanthan puckered up for lucky number 46.

Surfin' Steve hangs five in a Wicked

Well, I'm back in the Brisbane Evangelism Headquarter's after an exciting week playing netball (and starring in Digicel TV commercials) in Samoa.

My fellow evangelist, Brother Paul received a text message from Surfin' Steve today saying the first installment of his Wicked roadtrip was up on the web. According to his website, Surfin' Steve is "(almost) blonde, (almost) Aussie, but above all he’s (almost) a surfer…". Steve and his own production crew nakedly swept into our Brisbane depot on Monday to pick up his pimped up Wicked Campervan, which he'll be taking on a 3-month roadtrip around Australia.

Part 1 of his adventure is up now and it's a hoot! Click here to view the footage.

Check out Surfin' Steve's website here.