The Campaign

If you’re a fan of Tolkien, then one place is synonymous with Middle-earth, and that is New Zealand. New Zealand is Middle-earth on Earth. Where Gandalf strides, Hobbit’s walk, and Gollum creeps. So this year, we aimed to earn as much media as we could by using our association with all things Middle-earth. Thus “100% Middle-earth=100% Pure New Zealand” was born. A global campaign created with the permission and involvement of Sir Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films and Warner Brothers. All campaign activity needed to live and propagate online, and drive global traffic to our gateway portal newzealand.com, and/or to our travel partners. Our campaign included an epic online film, then encompassed rich media, paid display, earned media, PR at many levels and audiences, broadcasting the nation’s weather forecast entirely in Elvish, exclusive online content via a ‘Journey to Middle-earth’ book, and a DIA sanctioned ‘Welcome to Middle earth’ passport stamp.

Success of the Campaign

Sir Peter shared our film with over 650 000 fans. In 3 months, we had close to a million views online. Visits to newzealand.com using campaign related key-words is up 265%; A 16% increase (year on year) of global traffic to newzealand.com. In the first 48 hours of the ‘virtual book’ going live it received 130,000 page views, with an average of 14 book page views per visit. Rich-media interactive film performed above industry standards for ‘interaction’ and engagement. The nation’s weather forecast, broadcast in ‘Elvish’ was reported far and wide by the BBC and the Daily Mail. Thousands got their passports stamped, and shared with millions online. "Following our '100% Middle-earth’ campaign, the increase in interest is seen in record traffic to newzealand.com, with one million visits making it the biggest February month on record, up 37.3% on February 2012." Kevin Bowler, TNZ Chief Executive

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Our campaign launched with an epic online film seeded by ‘Sir Peter’ to his 650 000 fans, then encompassed rich media (interactive film with hotspots linking to newzealand.com, paid display, earned media, PR at many levels (trade, consumer, media, ‘influencers’, stakeholders) and audiences, broadcasting the nation’s weather forecast entirely in Elvish, exclusive online content via a ‘Journey to Middle-earth’ book, and even a Dept of Internal affairs sanctioned ‘Welcome to Middle earth’ passport stamp. The campaign was truly global and appeared online, and on TV and cinema in up to 47 countries with many parts being purposed/repurposed according to local nuance and need.