The Brief

The brief stemmed from Melbourne's uniqueness – it's unlike other Australian destinations. Instead of landmarks and beaches, it's a patchwork of hundreds of little experiences. These take time to discover. The objective was to find a means of letting people explore this depth first hand. Melbourne has a pedigree of producing evocative and successful television advertising campaigns. The aim was to move away from this and engage a curious and tech savvy, social media active audience. Any idea had to be a new way of showing off a city – that also reinforced Melbourne's position as the cultural capital of Australia.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

The solution was something never attempted by a city – allowing people to 'go, before they go', through a real-time web experience. Part TV show, part interactive video, we seamlessly combined Googlemaps, live-stream, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare. Using Facebook and Twitter as authentication let us reach a massive audience. Every user request to a Tourist was shared with that user's networks. Tourists became the eyes and ears of our online audience. With cameras and GPS they performed almost 3000 requests – from tasting tacos to trying on dresses. The objective of which was to build the World's first crowdsourced city guide.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In just five days over our We generated over 43 million social media impressions and were seen by estimated global audience of 150 million people. We had users from 158 countries and 3888 cities interact with us directly. Our Tourists themselves carried out almost 3000 unique requests for users – everything from trying on dresses to tasting tacos. We even facilitated a successful marriage proposal. We also trended nationally on Twitter, with positive sentiment toward Melbourne rising to 96%.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The creative execution was relevant on a number of levels. Melbourne is about the hundreds of small experiences, the hidden things – cafes, pop ups, shops and galleries. This allowed us to let people delve deep and get a flavor of the city beforehand. Melbourne is also constantly changing, so this idea allowed us to be reactive on a minute-by-minute basis, uncovering new things as our audience driven city stories unfolded live. Steered by users online, our Tourists became city data pathfinders. The more they uncovered, the more information we collected –creating the World's first crowdsourced city guide.