At its core, Good Morning World was a media idea — and the media/communications strategy was a key part of the creative strategy.

The repetition of a single message (from a different Kiwi) every single day was a core part of the communications strategy, as the frequency of the message was critical to the scale of the gesture, and what enabled Good Morning World to live as an enduring gesture of New Zealand’s welcome.

BRIEF

Tourism New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ brand platform has established NZ as the ultimate destination for natural landscapes for the past 20 years.

Despite the long-term success of this campaign, many of our competitors were beginning to emulate our simple strategy of showing off New Zealand’s stunning scenery (and significantly outspend us while doing so).

Our challenge became: how do we evolve and elevate ‘100% Pure’ in a new way to reclaim our uniqueness and grow NZ’s consideration as a holiday destination?

OBJECTIVES

Our objectives that would prove we’d done this were three-fold:

- Grow affinity for New Zealand

- Which grows the number of people actively considering a New Zealand holiday

- While delivering an incremental lift in visitors ultimately returning a commercial payback to NZ

We uncovered research revealing what travelers loved most about their visit. While they came for the landscapes, they left raving about the people. This links to the Maori principle of Manaakitanga— showing unconditional respect, generosity and care to all.

Because of this, Kiwis go to ridiculous lengths to showcase their hospitality. It’s common for Kiwis to lend travelers the keys to their car or their beach house or telling them about their secret spots. Kiwis do this because they’re touched by the great effort they’ve made to get here.

In order to really lean into this unique value that NZers have, we needed to do something different. Something big. Our idea was an ambitious global gesture of welcome. So, we gave Kiwis the role of greeting the world daily with a ‘good morning’ — 365 Kiwis sharing places they love, in unscripted, personal messages, showcasing their little part of NZ

Good Morning World was a truly social-led campaign, embracing the need for content to be made specially for Instagram and Facebook – 366 messages of welcome and hospitality from different Kiwis every day posted on our channels, inviting people to their special part of New Zealand.

The campaign ran across global key markets such as, Australia, Germany, UK, India and USA. The global spread required us to create content that appealed to many, or enough content that allowed us to speak to numerous markets, demographics and interests. While our overall campaign strategy was socially-led, we delivered a bespoke campaign to each of these markets – including TV, Out Of Home and digitally led channels. We also adapted our content for the China market for platforms such as WeChat.

We embraced a truly social-led, content-first approach, with a new ‘Good Morning World’ video released every morning on our new ‘Good Morning World’ Instagram account and YouTube channel, as well as other existing Pure New Zealand channels.

We launched to the local tourism industry with a visually stunning and emotionally moving film explaining 100% Pure Welcome, helping kickstart the second stage of our campaign — recruiting real, everyday Kiwis across the NZ to become the stars of our films.

Every day for a year, our Good Morning World film series featured Kiwis showing off our unique culture and place. Like 2-year-old Sadie, blowing the world a kiss and wishing the world a good morning from her rural Northland beach house. Or Terau from Tokomaru Bay about to ride along the beach with his horse, and Ray from Te Anau featuring his prized pet, Penelope the Pig.

Good Morning World ran globally across Tourism New Zealand’s key markets, generating great success worldwide across every key brand measure. When GMW went live, after three years of stasis, appeal for New Zealand grew in all markets — especially among Aussies, climbing to 66% (+6pts), smashing a three-year target.

It also grew the number of people considering a New Zealand holiday, tracking pre-lockdown showed consistent advances of consideration, increasing between +3pts to +9pts. And despite our border closure from March-onwards, we saw strong preservation of consideration well into the end of June, ensuring our objective was broadly achieved.

Good Morning World also delivered a commercial payback to New Zealand, despite the effects of COVID-19 on international tourism.