Ring my bell

If there is a common theme among admirers and detractors of the Bell Tower that graces Perth's foreshore it would bew that the tourist attraction is too small.

The tower was completed in 2000, a pet project of then Premier Richard Court who wanted to see an iconic building housing the 600-year-old bells of London's St Martin-in-the-Fields which had found their way to Perth.

Somehow the end result, while architecturally interesting, has always been considered undersized. In fact, if it were any nearer to the Swan River, you'd be tempted to throw it back in.

Now The Note admits to being larger than life so our expertise may not be ideal but there seems to be an unwritten rule that if you have something small you should beware of making comparisons with larger objects of a similar nature. The reasons for this seem obvious to us.

So The Note is, therefore, perplexed at a new ad campaign purportedly designed to promote the Bell Tower.

The bus-based 'Ring My Bells' advertising campaign highlights the history and story of the bells by using comparisons to global tourist icons including the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben.

If anything was designed to generate feelings of inadequacy or icon-envy, it has to be this campaign. Then again, maybe it will get people talking.