The Campaign

The challenge: Australian icon, the Great Barrier Reef, was shortlisted to be named a New7Wonder of Nature in a global campaign to find the seven most wondrous natural sites of the world, as decided by a public vote. Tourism Australia tasked us with creating a PR campaign that would raise awareness and motivate votes for the national icon from a domestic and international audience. The objective: Raise awareness and drive votes for the Great Barrier Reef in the global New7Wonders of Nature campaign. The strategy: Create an election-based PR program, to tap into the audience’s love of voting on an international level and motivate Australia’s national pride and competitive spirit on a domestic level. The execution: We activated a 10-week campaign that included intensive media relations, creation of visual social media and news content, ongoing social media community management as well experiential activities. The creative focus of the campaign was the creation of the ‘world’s most remote polling booth’, placed on a tiny sandbank island, right in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. The booth captured the votes of nearby swimmers and snorkelers. Vision was taken and seeded amongst domestic news outlets and global social media channels with significant media uptake. The outcome: Wide scale news and social media coverage was achieved, reaching over 75 million people. The vision received almost 20,000 Facebook ‘Likes’, the most achieved on a Tourism Australia Facebook page post to date at that time, and almost 7,000 views on YouTube.

The Brief

The Goal Drive votes for the Great Barrier Reef in the global New7Wonders of Nature campaign Research Social media listening revealed that there was very low awareness of the New7Wonders of Nature campaign amongst audiences. The challenge was to raise this awareness in order to achieve further support. Objectives Create newsworthy coverage to drive mass awareness Generate engaging content to encourage online conversation around the campaign Provide a compelling argument about why the public should vote for Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef in the New7Wonders of Nature campaign Target Audience: The Australian domestic and international public.

Results

Due to competition from countries with significantly larger populations (voting was not scaled accordingly), the Reef was not voted into the final seven. However, the campaign significantly raised the profile the Great Barrier Reef and Australia, both domestically, and globally. Results highlights include: • Media impact o 135 pieces of overall media coverage o 15 pieces of TV coverage o 48 pieces of radio coverage o PR impressions (international and domestic): 75 million+ • Social media impact o 6,290 views on YouTube o 19,136 likes on Tourism Australia’s Facebook page - the highest number achieved for a Tourism Australia Facebook post to date o Facebook virality of 2.79% o Over 100 pieces of blog coverage • Awarded Best Use of Multi-media Creativity by the New7Wonders Foundation *NB: Please note that final placing and voting numbers were not disclosed by the New7Wonders of Nature Foundation.

Execution

The creative focus was the creation of the ‘world’s most remote polling booth’, placed on a tiny island, in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. The booth captured the votes of nearby swimmers and snorkelers, via an iPad. Vision was captured and distributed to traditional and social media. Using Tourism Australia’s network, Co-founder of Earth Hour, Andy Ridley, was engaged as the spokesperson and narrator for all media content. Other elements included: Phase 1: A media call-out to rally support from media and consumers Phase 2: the stunt Phase 3: A final media call-out to urge voting in the final 48 hours Ongoing: A social media program, including management of the campaign Twitter feed, a Facebook voting app, conversation calendar and seeding amongst third party Facebook pages e.g. tourism stakeholder Stayz.com.au

The Situation

Tourism Australia is the Australian Government agency responsible for the international and domestic marketing of Australia for leisure and business travel Situation The Great Barrier Reef, was shortlisted to be recognised as one of the seven most wondrous natural sites in the world, as voted by the public Tourism Australia needed to rally support and voting from its domestic and international audiences Opportunity The campaign served as an opportunity to further raise the profile of the Great Barrier Reef and continue to communicate Tourism Australia’s message that ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ to the rest of the world.

The Strategy

Using the popularity of voting-based reality TV programs, such as X-Factor, as inspiration, we activated an election-based PR program, designed to raise awareness of the New7Wonders of Nature campaign to tap into the audience’s love of voting on an international level and motivate Australians’ strong sense of patriotism and competitive spirit on a domestic level. Our 10-week campaign: Phase 1: Media relations announcement to create interest in and awareness of the campaign and inspire competitive spirit amongst the domestic audience Phase 2: Compelling and visual PR stunt to raise awareness and drive further votes Phase 3: Experiential activity to facilitate further voting amongst a domestic audience Phase 4: National media relations announcement to encourage final push of activity with 48 hours left to vote Ongoing: Social media program to encourage conversation amongst a captive domestic and international audience