I didn’t Google ‘Kiwi slang’. You Googled ‘Kiwi slang’!

(just for this one because I had an <em>actual</em> Aussie tell me I can nail a Kiwi accent!)

“Took a squiz at your script. It’s crack up!”
“Ta, say you’ve any left in the chilly bin? I love those new Starbucks Mocha thingys.”
“Yeah, gizza one while you’re at it will ya?”
“Sure thing. Was chatting up the oldies last night, gave me the usual ear bashing on why I don’t have a Sheila, why I drive a rust bucket, and when I’m gonna get that leak in the ‘loo fixed. I wanted to chuck the phone in the long drop and pack a sad. Didn’t though.”
“Mean as! Mr. Jackson replied to my email!! We’ve got the green light!”
“You bein straight up? We can actually use what I wrote?”
“Sure looks that way.”

okay, fine…maybe I did.

I’m totally about to get you to watch a life insurance commercial…

“You know what!? I know we aren’t giving away cupcakes, but let’s make this undeniably interesting!!”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, what if instead of focusing on the product, we shifted the focus to telling a story so compelling people thought they were watching a short film instead? What if we could inspire them!? What if we could empower them!? WHAT IF WE CAN CHANGE LIVES!!!??”
“You sell life insurance.”
“So?”
“So what we need is for people to die.”
“But then they can’t buy our product.”
“Good point.”

It’s okay, I teared up too.

And then there’s Aussies…

“Do you know what happens when you listen to a Disney soundtrack for 8 hours straight?”
“No…what?”
“You start thinking…things. Bad things.”
“Like…about yourself?”
“Oh, gosh no. About what I could do to the writers.”
“Ah…do I want to know?”
“Well…yeah…about that. So I know I was supposed to be thinking about the project while I was on my trip, but to be honest, this is all I could think about. I felt like I had wasted a ton of time until my sixteen year old wrote this guitar part and sent it to me.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“…okay Mr. Melbourne…I’ll bite, but it’s your head that’s going to roll if this whole thing goes south.”

Non-Fiction

The NZ Safety video? 19 million views (+ all the times people had to watch it).
That Life Insurance commercial? 31.9 million views.
And the Dumb Ways to Die campaign?
The campaign was massively successful (in terms of numbers). In April 2014, the video has been viewed 77 million times on YouTube. The game became No. 1 free app in 21 countries including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany and it reached top 100 in 101 countries, top 1,000 in 148 countries. In six weeks, DWTD gathered an estimated $60 million in earned media. Source.

Dumb Ways to Die is property of Metro Trains, Melbourne, Austrailia. Image source.

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