The Holden Airship in Melbourne
If any of you looked towards East Melbourne over the weekend, you would have seen more than the lights of the MCG. The Holden airship is a 54m long and 14m wide “blimp” that is very impressive to look at. It features a video screen and internally it has two 1,000-watt light bulbs that make the airship glow red at night.
As impressive as it is, the Holden airship is causing controversy over its flight path. The airship will be flying overhead the MCG for all of the finals games. Problem is that Toyota is the major sponsor for the AFL and doesn’t like the free sky advertisement that Holden is using. There are no “NO fly zones” around the MCG so anyone is free to fly through there.
More than likely, the next time we will see the airship in Melbourne will be for the Grand Final at the end of this month and again on Melbourne Cup Day.
Did anyone else see the airship?
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I saw this one last week when I was in Royal Botanical Gardens. It’s AMAZING…
Oh, no… it was last week when I went back home from school. Last Friday night. From Postgraduate Center of Melbourne University.
i saw that! on friday evening if i remember correctly
I, of course, didn’t see it, but I would like to comment on blimps in general.
Blimps strike me as odd. It is kind of an outdated method of air travel. I understand that companies use it as an advertising platform, but even that is kind of archaic. I mean, yes, it is a large billboard, but people only look at it for maybe 15 seconds, and it is gone. It must cost serious money to launch one, so wouldn’t that money be better spent on an in-game ad (wall placement, fan promo, etc)?
I guess from a pure branding standpoint, it represents a good way to associate your logo and brand with a fun memory that people will have, but how valuable is that?
Saw this over the MCG on Sunday. Does it have an onboard camera? The view from above must be fantastic.
It does but it won’t be shown on tv during the finals due to sponsorship concerns. They didn’t even mention it while I was watching.
I just saw it flying outside again 15/9, probably flying above North Melbourne, Flemington area.
Just saw it hovering over my head when I was walking outside during lunch.
It said something along the lines of:
“GM Holden would like to welcome blah and blah to Melbourne.” (I forget the names of those who were mentioned.)
I think they call this guerrila advertising or something like that. From what I understand, Nike did the same sort of thing during the Atlanta Olympic Games - they wouldn’t pay to be sponsors, but they bought up all the billboards near the events and advertised.
I have seen it refuelling at Essendon Airport, if anyone is nearby and wants to get a close-up look at it (from the perimeter fence of course). Refuelling seems to take more than an hour. I was surprised at how it took off actually. Ignorantly, I just assumed it would be released from the holding mast and ‘float off’ into the sky from where they would turn on the engines and fly it where they wanted. Rather, it uses a runway just like an aeroplane. It was worth the wait just to see.
I saw it flying around this weekend. The video screen has a picture of Peter Brock.
Thanks for commenting Adam. You have some good pictures of the airship.
http://www.adonline.id.au/news/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1158410049&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&
Thanks Neil :)
You can view some of my other photos on the Melbourne Photos forum at http://forum.melbournephotos.net/viewtopic.php?p=1252#1252
Cheers!