EVENT AT A GLANCE Objective: Grow U.S. investments in Australian businesses. Strategy: Connect Australian innovators with American investors, R&D professionals, and other prospective business partners. Tactics: Hold a series of finance and partnership-focused events for U.S. executives, including a venture-pitch-style “Innovation Shootout.” Results: More than $12.5 million in incremental U.S. investment and spending in Australia has been realized since G’Day USA launched in 2004.

ack in 2003, the Hon. John Olsen AO, then the Los Angeles-based Australian consul general, was giving a presentation to a university audience about “Oz” when an audience member asked, “What language do you speak in Australia?” Holy dooley! Granted, most non-Australian English speakers need a dictionary to comprehend Aussie slang. But still.

The question got Olsen thinking. Chances were, he reasoned, that if basic questions like primary language were coming up at his presentations, weightier misunderstandings about Australian culture and society were probably out there, too — affecting Americans’ perceptions of Australia as a desirable place to visit and to do business. “At the time, it seemed to me that there was tremendous goodwill here toward Australia and Australians,” Olsen says. “However, the perception of Australia was dated, reflecting old images like Crocodile Dundee. It didn’t reflect the modern sophisticated society and strong economy that has emerged over the past 20 years.” Olsen felt he needed to bring the bigger picture into focus.

But the traditional choice — an ad campaign — wouldn’t be big enough for this brand makeover. Olsen wanted to convey market concepts, not just more images. Innovation, not just the Sydney Opera House. A rock-solid economy, not just Ayers Rock. Business partnerships, not just Bondi Beach. To succeed, he would need to bring Australians and Americans together for firsthand dialogue.

So the next year, in 2004, Olsen conceived and launched G’Day LA: a weeklong series of events meant to raise the profile of Australia’s market, culture, and diverse environment among an influential audience of Californian business, entertainment, and travel executives. Backed by the Australian government and with early and vigorous support from Australian businesses like Qantas Airlines and Hollywood celebrities such as Sydney-sider Cate Blanchett, the event exploded.

Australia Week: New York would focus on brokering business connections within the financial and research-and-development communities by exposing U.S. executives to Australian innovators.

The Los Angeles-based event wrapped up its fifth year in January 2008, featuring food and wine experiences, a golf outing hosted by an Australian pro for a select group of 100 CEOs, several invitation-only film-executive events showcasing emerging Australian directors and the benefits of filming on location in Oz, a scientific session with American and Australian panelists on topics such as renewable energy, and a black-tie gala.

As a result, more than 40 U.S.-based movie productions have moved all or a portion of their filming to Australia since 2006, and American arrivals Down Under are on the upswing after three consecutive years of decline in the early 2000s. But Olsen and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade saw more opportunity. If the event strategy was effective in building Aussie-American ties among visual businesses, why couldn’t it also work to foster connections between those who are more about stock tickers than movie tickets?

The Good Pitch of the East

Armed with a solid case study in the G’Day LA events’ ability to drive business results for Australian film and tourism interests, the Australian government challenged Olsen to duplicate the success — this time, in the high-finance world of Wall Street.

In 2006, Olsen relocated to become Australian Consulate General in New York at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s request. His first action: Re-brand the events under a larger umbrella, “G’Day USA,” with each location — LA and New York — celebrating its own Australia Week.

To appeal to a Gotham audience of high-powered investors and R&D executives, Australia Week: New York would focus on brokering business connections within the financial and research-and-development communities by exposing U.S. executives to Australian innovators.

“We have such a lively business community,” says Penny Mapp, North America director for Advance, a New York-based nonprofit that connects Australian professionals overseas, and which works with Olsen’s office to produce events held during Australia Week: New York. “Even Australians who have been offshore for a while are surprised at how much innovation is coming out of Australia today.”

At Australia Week: New York, a financial-services luncheon networks Australian government officials and U.S. Fortune 500-company and investment-firm execs. A seminar series, called the Australian Markets Update, features Australian stock-market executives who present market overviews and opportunities to U.S. brokers and investors. Even New York’s fashion business gets involved, in a series of wholesale showroom events that bring U.S. retail buyers, industry executives, and media to small showings of Australian designers’ wares. And, as in LA, tourism- and wine-industry sessions showcase the best of Australia to influencers and buyers in these important markets.

But at the center of it all is an entire day focused exclusively on Australian innovation, during which the country’s brightest innovators show off their technologies in a way that is more suspense than science fair. Called Innovation Day, the event explores the state of research, engineering, development, finance, and technology in Australia with an audience of invited American executives who are responsible for their companies’ R&D, product-engineering and -development, technical-support, and business-development activities.

Innovation Day’s adrenaline jolt comes from the marquee session that kicks off the day: the Innovation Shootout. Here, six individuals, each representing a business based in one of the six Australian states, compete in a rapid-fire, pitch-driven process in front of a panel of judges, Innovation Day attendees, and business-media representatives for the chance to be named the Australian Innovator of the Year.

The high-pressure event (think executive-innovator speed dating) is modeled after the infamous Silicon Valley venture-capital pitch process. Teams have exactly 10 minutes to tell their story: a strict five minutes for a formal presentation, followed by five minutes of hot-seat questions from the judges. “We intentionally kept the timeframe quite short so the competitors have to come up with crystal-clear, succinct pitches,” Mapp says.

	Since its founding in 2004, G’Day USA has grown into the single largest annual foreign-country promotional event in the United States.

To win the right to take part in the Innovation Shootout, each of the six presenting businesses first must triumph in a home-state competition in Australia. Upon arriving in New York, each presenter can participate in two, two-hour, one-on-one training sessions with two pitch coaches, arranged by Advance. “Receiving the brief ahead of time and then working with the coach to tweak our presentation gave us invaluable feedback and helped us fine-tune our presentation for the U.S. market,” says Andrew Roberts, national export and marketing manager at 2007 Innovation Shootout winner Autech Software and Design, which devised a technology that brings greater accuracy to the paint-color-evaluation and -selection processes.

“The training sessions are an integral part of the process,” Mapp says. “Ideally, they learn how best to pitch in the United States so they’re successful in bringing their innovations to the U.S. market, which of course is the idea behind the whole event. There are things that should not be presented in this market, and things that should be played up as compared to an Australian audience.”

Judges, who in the program’s two years have included Wall Street Journal editor Alan Murray, several investment-firm managing directors, Columbia University’s director of new science and technology ventures David Lerner, and Carol Coletta, the host and producer of the public-radio program “Smart City,” tally their scores and name the winner. While the judges are comparing notes, the moderator (in 2008, Business Week magazine’s innovation department editor Reena Jana led the session) opens the discussion for a Q&A with attendees, during which audience members are encouraged to pepper the presenting companies with their own queries.

“Win or not, the judging process is a great learning opportunity,” Mapp says. “To have the sort of questions fired at you that you could expect when meeting potential investors, to practice your pitch with a coach, and to meet with all the attendees and judges gives them great insight into the questions and expectations that exist in the U.S. market.”

The invited audience of influential U.S.-based Australian and American angel investors, R&D executives, university partnership managers, and media representatives, is free to network with the shootout presenters after the morning session as they move into the rest of the day’s events. A luncheon features keynote speakers, typically U.S. businesspeople, speaking about their experiences establishing R&D efforts independently or in partnership with Australian firms. Afternoon sessions dig deeper into market, partnership, financial, and regulatory aspects of the Australian business community. The day closes with a networking cocktail reception and final keynote speaker.

We’re Not in Canberra Anymore

For any company, no matter how established or new, a little help making the right connections can mean the difference between a difficult, roundabout journey to success, or a mutually profitable shortcut. The winners of G’Day Australia’s two Innovation Shootouts already have found plenty of partners interested in a walkabout on that shortcut with them.

“We expected we would gain invaluable contacts from the process that would help our desire to grow our clinical and commercial operations in the United States,” says David Young, managing director of 2008 shootout winner Fermiscan Holdings Ltd., which won for its testing process that uses X-ray diffraction of hair fibers to scan women for breast cancer. “As a result of our participation, we’re now working with several potential clinical-trial partners and FDA consultants, and have been exposed to significant potential financial and strategic partners.”

Since its founding in 2004, G’Day USA has grown into the single largest annual foreign-country promotional event in the United States — and has made a major mark on Australian tourism, film production, finance, and research and development. All are enjoying new levels of visibility, global deals, and partnerships. “The G’Day USA promotion has raised the profile of Australia’s policies and industry capabilities, resulting in millions of dollars of trade in goods and services and two-way investment and tourism flows for Australia’s economy,” Olsen reports. “Over the past four years, G’Day USA participants have reported more than $12.5 million in trade and investment across sectors as diverse as art, food, wine, fashion, music, cosmetics, and business services.”

The New York week and its Innovation Day have hit their business-building stride as well. As Advance’s Mapp says, “Our objective with the Shoot Out is to sell Australia as an innovative nation. This gives the American market great exposure to just how innovative Australian companies really are.” e