Our Good Morning World campaign shows that unearthing a powerful insight can drive not just the development of a Creative Idea but the sense of ambition of the team around it too.

Understanding that Kiwis go to “ridiculous lengths” to welcome visitors meant we had to embrace this attitude – conceptually, executionally, and in protecting our idea from the pressures faced when developing a global campaign.

Our creative strategic thinking required commitment. And going to the extraordinary length of making a new film every single day for a year ultimately proved a worthwhile one both for our country and professionally.

The word “tourism” conjures up images of good times and relaxation. But in New Zealand it means far more.

Lucrative, high-spending visitors from overseas contribute NZ$17B to NZ’s economy annually, contributing significantly to NZ’s GDP (~10%), while the tourism industry supports 480,000 jobs directly and indirectly — significant for a country of 5 million people.

And for over two decades Tourism New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ brand platform had been hugely successful in driving inbound tourism to the country.

But by 2019, 100% Pure wasn’t as 100% Effective as it needed to be: key brand metrics stalled, and international visitor arrivals plateaued.

Given the economic impact of tourism, it’s crucial then — both economically and creatively — that TNZ’s advertising delivers.

The brief was straightforward: return international visitation to NZ to growth.

But, doing so wouldn’t be so straightforward… it would require a total rethink of our creative strategy.

We faced a number of challenges:

1. For most international markets we are literally the end of the earth. Coming here means forsaking easier, quicker to reach destinations opting instead to spend far longer in the air.

2. Added to this, we have a very limited advertising budget with which to convince potential visitors — just 0.3% share of voice of the international tourism category spend.

3. The beautiful landscapes we’d traded on in advertising were now commonplace across tourism communications, seemingly everyone was now presenting their country in this way.

4. TNZ had changed tack in recent activity to focus on overcoming ‘planning barriers’ to convince people to book, but consequently our emotional connection with travellers had eroded.

We needed a fresh way of presenting NZ to the world and key to this was a compelling truth about the country… something unique that would make the journey worthwhile.

We set out to uncover a powerful insight that would result in the biggest marketing shift of TNZ’s last 20 years.

We decided first to uncover what people loved most about their visit, unearthing an unexpected tension: they came for the landscapes, but left raving about the people.

Going deeper, the reason why people leave raving about us Kiwis is a unique Maori value: ‘manaakitanga’ — showing unconditional respect, generosity, kindness and care to all.

Because of this, Kiwis go to ridiculous lengths to showcase their hospitality, like lending visitors the keys to their car or beach house!

We believed that if Kiwis go to ridiculous lengths to welcome visitors, then it’s only reasonable that our campaign should too, conveying this sense welcome to the world at large.

The crux of our creative brief was to demonstrate the ridiculous lengths Kiwis will go to, to make the world feel welcome.

To demonstrate these ridiculous lengths, we created a global activation called Good Morning World

As the first country to see the sunrise every day, we gave Kiwis the official role of greeting the world each new day with a ‘Good Morning’ to people everywhere.

An ambitious global gesture demonstrating our warm and welcoming nature, our campaign comprised a new film every single morning for an entire year.

The heroes of our films were real everyday Kiwis showing off NZ’s unique culture and places.

Every film was unique, showing the world what each different Kiwi was up to from their little part of NZ, inviting travellers to come on down and experience NZ’s people and places for themselves.

The consistency and repetition of a single message every single day was core to our creative strategy, proof in communication form of our insight about the ridiculous lengths Kiwis go to welcoming visitors.

Good Morning World was a great success, meeting and exceeding all our target measures.

In brand terms:

- It achieved an Equivalent Advertising Value (earned media exposure) of NZ$7.2M

- Grew Brand Appeal between +3–7 points across our key markets (target +3pts)

- Grew Destination Consideration between +3-9pts (target +3pts)

And in real terms:

- Delivered 84,149 incremental visitors

- And NZ$175M incremental visitor spend

- Resulting in a $9:16 ROMI for every dollar invested in the campaign.

To most of New Zealand’s key international markets, NZ is literally the end of the earth. Deciding to go to NZ on holiday means forsaking easier, quicker to reach destinations opting to spend many more hours in the air to get here.

And if this isn’t challenging enough, with a population of 5M New Zealand is small, which is reflected in our advertising budget. Our SOV is just 0.3% of the international category spend.

So, while selling New Zealand might be hard, selling it with a limited budget is harder still.

To stand out, we challenged the dominant narrative in the category (which ironically was one that Tourism New Zealand itself had created).

The Good Morning World campaign shows how, like the people of the country themselves, one of the perennial underdogs of international tourism went to ridiculous lengths in their commitment to a communications idea that paid off handsomely.