How a Simple, Single-Minded “Tourism” Campaign Took Home a PR Grand Prix

Earlier today I shared a post on “A Really Good Job” campaign from Murphy-Goodie. It reminded me of the awesome campaign that Tourism Queensland did with their “Best Job in the World” campaign. It was a huge PR success and did a great job utilizing social media. It has already won some big awards and now it won again at International Advertising Festival in Cannes. Here’s a post from Matthew Creamer on AdAge.com talking about the latest.

How a Simple, ‘Single-Minded’ Campaign Took Home a PR Grand Prix

http://adage.com/cannes09/article?article_id=137499

Here’s a case study video on the project:

Posted via email from Diane Charno’s posterous

Social Media Smackdown – DMOs

I just came across a great post from Mengel’s Musings. She has a social media smackdown series and her latest one compares how two DMO’s (destination marketing organizations) are using social media. She compares Columbus, Ohio to Columbia, South Carolina. Both have an impressive presence on many social media outlets, including facebook, flickr, myspace, youtube, twitter and more. Check out the post and then let me know what you think. Oh, and if you’re a DMO, how do you think you would stand up in a social media smackdown?

http://www.amymengel.com/2009/05/20/social-media-smackdown-columbus-ohio-vs-columbia-sc/

Posted via email from Diane Charno’s posterous

Visit Las Vegas’ Latest Push Asks “What’s Your Excuse?”

Today I was catching up on some TV (The Real Housewives of New Jersey – a guilty pleasure) when I saw the latest Visit Las Vegas spot – Chinchilli Day. A man creates a fake holiday as an excuse to stay an extra day in Vegas. Then the commercial asks, “What’s your excuse?” I had to learn more.

“What’s Your Excuse?” is the latest campaign push for Summer travel to Las Vegas. It’s another round of spots that depart from the “What Happens Here” branding approach in order to have a more direct tourism push and message. In this case it’s “add an extra day to your Vegas getaway this summer”. From what I hear, Visit Las Vegas is not benching “What Happens Here” campaign forever, but will evolve it and launch again in the future. Perhaps when the tourism environment improves.

If you’re looking for more excuses to take an extra day off for a trip to Vegas, check out “Shin Wack”:

And, you can find more holiday excuses here: http://www.visitlasvegas.com/vegas/features/summer/holiday.jsp

Posted via email from Diane Charno’s posterous

Best Job in the World – Real or Fake?

In times of shrinking budgets and cluttered media environments, marketers are constantly looking to get a bigger bang and “buzz” for their buck. Tourism Queensland developed a unique initiative that’s captured a lot of attention. It was off to a good start, but today’s news shows that they were less than genuine.

In their latest campaign, Tourism Queensland has invited people to apply for the Best Job in the World– to be the caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. You’ll be paid $150,000 to live in a three-bedroom villa with a pool and spend time playing on the island for six months. The workload? Just 12 hours per month to produce a video diary and blog on all of your experiences. Sounds pretty good to me. So how do you apply? Just submit a 60-second video on why you deserve the job and fill out an application. All the details can be found at the campaign site IslandReefJob.com. You can even check out some of the other video applications on their site or YouTube.

The buzz on this campaign took off like crazy. Within a few days, they had over a million visitors and a ton of applications from around the world. One woman even tattooed herself for the job. Or at least we thought she did. Today, Tourism Queensland admitted that two videos were produced by their agency and they failed to label them as examples. The videos have now been removed. As a result, there’s even more news on the “Best Job in the World”, but it’s not as positive as before.

I really think it’s a good campaign and with all of the buzz generated I’m sure it will be considered a success. However, we can learn from this. As marketers, we need to create authentic experiences and communications for our consumers, not fake ones. Still interested in the Best Job in the World? You have till February 22nd to apply.