We tapped into a universal desire and created a job that sounded too good to be true.The Islands Caretaker role is a completely genuine employment opportunity with Tourism Queensland, living on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back to the world.

We relied on simple recruitment ads (in newspapers, online and in-store posters) to create a global tourism campaign. People were directed to islandreefjob.com for more information on the opportunity (and the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef), supported by a presence in Myspace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

A comprehensive PR strategy fed the world’s media a rare ‘good news’ story in a time of rising unemployment, driving awareness of the region and directing traffic online to apply. Candidates applied with a persuasive and entertaining video application demonstrating their knowledge of the region (generating content for the website).

The campaign generated a response fare exceeding the initial objectives and targets.- Global news coverage has been estimated at over US $100M* from a campaign budget of US $1.2M. - 34,684 applicants from 201** countries created 610 hours of video content which passionately promotes our product.- Over 450,000 votes for the Wild Card applicant.- In 56 days islandreefjob.com had 6,849,504 visits, 47,548,514 page views with an average of 8.62 minutes spent on the site.

- A Google search for “best job in the world island” achieves about 52,500,000 listings, 231,355 blogs and 43,60 news stories.

*Value of media coverage estimated by Tourism Queensland, as at 19/3/09.**Web-coded countries (only 195 countries are recognised by the UN).