The Queensland State Government in Australia has upped the ante in creating mass awareness for its tourism push, and then topped the first campaign with a reason to push the story out even further.
The story? The Sunshine State is looking for applicants for the best job in the world and to be fair, that’s not a bad description of the role. One lucky job applicant will be paid €80,000 to spend six months on Hamilton Island. The job offer includes flights from the person’s country of origin and the winner will be expected to enjoy the outdoor pursuits – swimming, sailing, snorkeling etc – while reporting to a global audience through weekly blogs, photographic diaries and video update.
Applications are being accepted until February 22 when eleven shortlisted candidates will be flown to Hamilton Island in early May for the final interviews. The actual job as Island Caretaker commences on July 1, 2009.
This push is pretty impressive and the job description would pass any advertising standards. However, the savvy Tourism Tristans in Queensland then pushed the story onto all news feeds by announcing the website had crashed due to unprecedented traffic to the site. There were 300,000 on the site the first day and 25,000 in a single hour when it crashed. To my slightly cynical mind, that either says they did not expect a lot of traffic (go figure) or the website crashing was another way of creating more news (I prefer the latter conclusion).
Either way, a fine piece of marketing, using the web, and its up and downsides to create huge exposure for Queensland. Got to dash now, have to see a man about an island…
Check out islandreefjob.com for your job application.