No single tourism campaign (and potentially no single campaign) has ever had such a significant global reach across the spectrum of media and generated such a high volume and highly impassioned response from consumers.

- 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.

- Media coverage has been estimated at over $US100M** from a campaign budget of $US1.2M.

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

The target audience were new customers, with a vague awareness of the Great Barrier Reef (and Australia), but no awareness of the islands. Our goal was to raise international awareness of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef (a new brand for Tourism Queensland) and transform a popular day-trip destination into an international tourist’s dream holiday. Classified press ads, a PR campaign, in-store posters, online recruitment listings and display ads would drive traffic. Here consumers could engage with the brand and in the long term, help to drive visitation to the region.

We tapped into a universal desire and created a job that sounded too good to be true – anyone from anywhere in the world could apply. The Islands Caretaker role is a genuine employment opportunity with Tourism Queensland, living on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back to the world – giving a first-hand account of a holiday experience. Candidates applied with a persuasive and entertaining video demonstrating their knowledge of the region. Tourism Queensland wanted to achieve 14,000 application videos from 8 key markets, plus news coverage in mass media and popular social networking sites.

The ‘Best Job in the World’ idea was born out of the brand’s positioning - Life Above - and inspires people to dream about living above the Great Barrier Reef. Travellers now rely on first-hand accounts of a destination, and are less influenced by traditional campaigns featuring stunning imagery. Which is why we used simple recruitment ads to drive Global Experience Seekers online to engage with the brand. The best aspect of ‘The Best Job in the World’ is its location, the generous salary is appealing, but the real reward is spending six months exploring the region.