Friday, April 22, 2011

'The best job in the world' campaign: A SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

At the end of the year 2008 Tourism Queensland of Australia, the statutory body of Queensland Government, found itself struggling to attract more tourists to visit the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Therefore, they decided to do something different, exciting and special in order to get International attention so they asked the advertising agency SapientNitro to think in a unique campaign to make people aware of the exceptional experiences available there.

They first published classified job adverts and job listings in newspapers worldwide looking for an Island Caretaker and all the key markets were supplied with press releases, story lines and astonishing photography showing how the Island was. All the applicants had to sent a one minute video explaining why they want the job and why they should get it and all these videos were available on YouTube and on the campaign web pages so people could see them.

They create an incredible interaction between all the applicants on the Internet; all of them could share their videos, getting to know each other interests and consequently spread the enthusiasm for being the winners of this incredible adventure.

They had also official groups on Social Media websites such as Facebook and Twitter in which there were thousands of people posting and trying to guess who will be the winner of the competition. The winner was announced after some interviews made in The Islands of Great barrier Reef to the last 16 candidates who had to prove their skills by doing various tasks such as swimming and snorkeling.

In Britain this campaign was a Boom as a result of the many benefits this job was offering such as a salary of a £972 an hour based for just working 12 hours a month for six months, living rent-free in a 3 bedroom villa in the Island with a temperature of 29c, free return flights, transfers and transport around the island included and so on.

The winner had to create a weekly online blog, photo diary, video updates of his/her time on the island and give media interviews and email reports to chiefs at Tourism Queensland. All these with the aim of getting the eyes of millions around the world in order to increase the tourism of the Island. It is said that thousands of Britons applied to this job and the winner in fact was a British man ‘Ben Southall’ a charity fundraiser from Petersfield.

This campaign received full media coverage including TV stations such as CNN and BBC and almost all Newspapers a Radio stations. It was definitely a very good example of promoting a PR campaign using all the channels available and making it fascinating. But as many people commented, the real winner of this campaign was the Queensland tourism board ‘which has pulled off a great PR stunt by generating well over £50m of free publicity’.


Isn't that amazing?.....

2 comments:

  1. I would say that that the Queensland Tourism has created a really effective way to get the worldwide tourist industry involved. They have created a much needed hype across the globe in a way that is creative and environmentally informative (the Great Barrier Reef is a UNESCO listed protective areas), using a marketing strategy that has encouraged the mass to "spread the word” about this amazing habitat.

    Who wouldn’t want to have the privilege to develop this as the best job in the world?

    AA

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  2. I couldn't agree more with what you just have said Airan, SapientNitro advertising agency did a really good job when portraying the astonishing image of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef as one of the most beautiful, amazing and diverse places in the world worst visiting.
    Their PR strategy worked perfectly according to their expectation as they manage to get the attention of million of people who didn't even know that this Reef existed.
    Personally, I am really curious of getting to know this amazing place someday and I'm sure that many people would think the same after having seen the spectacular images provided by those behind this great PR campaign.

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