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.

-Global news coverage included CNN stories, BBC documentaries, TIME magazine articles and everything in between. Media coverage has been estimated at over $US80* million from a campaign budget of $US1.2 million.

-34,684 applicants from 201** countries created 610 hours of video content which promotes our product.-Over 450,000 votes for the Wild Card applicant.-The campaign spawned thousands of blogs, networks of candidates, forums and even parody videos on youtube-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, at 19/3/09.**Web-coded countries (only 195 countries are recognised by the UN).

The campaign launch coincided with the northern hemisphere’s winter - ensuring our destination would have heightened appeal in the primary markets. 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 was planned in four stages: 1. Application stage2. Short-list and voting for Wild Card applicant3. Job interviews on Hamilton Island4. Work period – 6-months exploring and reporting