This was a social-led campaign, and required content to be made specially for Instagram, comprising of 366 messages of welcome from different Kiwis every day — posted daily too — on our dedicated channels.

Given the sheer number of films we needed to pull this idea off, we used social media to recruit Kiwis to create their own films. Influential NZers, like Sam Neil, offered up welcome films of their own will, while others embraced topicality, such as when the All Blacks’ (NZ’s national Rugby team) Nehe Milner-Skudder provided some friendly banter about that day’s upcoming match with the Aussies.

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

Our big idea was to create an ambitious global gesture of welcome.

So, we gave Kiwis the official role of greeting the entire world each new day with a ‘Good Morning.’

Given the ridiculous lengths Kiwis go to to welcome visitors, it wouldn’t be good enough to just say Good Morning World a few times a year in campaign bursts. Critical to our idea was going to ridiculous lengths to make the world feel welcome by saying it every single morning for an entire year.

On our strategic journey to find a powerful insight, we uncovered research revealing what people loved most about their visit. We found they came for the landscapes, but left raving about the people. This links to the core Maori principle of manaakitanga —unconditional respect, generosity and care to all.

In order to really lean into this unique value that Kiwis practice and get the world to feel it, we needed to demonstrate it on a grand scale. Social media offered the ideal combination of reach, presence, and efficiency we needed to have an impact across key global markets like Australia, China, the US and UK, and Germany.

Good Morning World was created as a social-first campaign, enabling us to deliver 366 messages of welcome from different Kiwis every day, while allowing us to promote relevant activities and traveller interests on a market-by-market basis.

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 over every key brand measure. When Good Morning World went live, after three years of stasis, appeal for New Zealand grew in all markets — especially among Australia, 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.