Background

In the wake of devastating bushfires and a global pandemic, Australia’s tourism sector was facing its most difficult period ever. To help the industry survive, we needed to inspire local and international audiences to start planning their next Aussie holiday at a time when they couldn’t leave home… Our brief? Provide support to an industry facing an uncertain year ahead, and inspiration for a world in lockdown. Our objective? To reignite the dream for travel in Australia by: - Facilitating international audiences to explore and experience Australia remotely - Increasing Australians' intention to undertake domestic travel as soon as borders opened To achieve these two objectives, we'd need to generate an impact both locally and internationally, unifying mass reach with deep engagement to drive meaningful shifts in attitudes and behaviours around travel in Australia.

Describe the strategy

The High Value Traveller (HVT) is Tourism Australia’s target audience. HVTs value travel, enjoy experiences Australia is known for and are likely to spend more, stay longer and disperse further. But at the height of lockdown, no HVTs were planning an Australian holiday. So we needed to understand what they WERE doing instead. Analysing rapidly evolving media consumption, we discovered they were in search of new forms of social interaction, with news and personality anchored TV programming up 17.4% YOY. But the relationship between TV screens and social media was also changing. Once confined to mobile devices, live streams were providing a form of escape and variety for living room entertainment. Social media users were searching and streaming live content, with Facebook Live and YouTube Live audiences up 300% compared to pre-COVID. With travel unattainable, we went where the HVTs were with a digital experience they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Describe the execution

Live From Aus - a live virtual holiday, reconnecting the world with the best of Australia, on the hour every hour, for an entire weekend. We launched the unique brand experience via a live broadcast television event that continued into a full weekend schedule of live Australian experiences, streamed simultaneously to the world on Facebook, YouTube and Australia.com. With attention grabbed from the big screen, we delivered deep experiences on the small, handing over the reins to over 40 tourism industry operators and entertainment personalities to show off the incredible breadth of Australia’s tourism offering through 32 immersive live streams from every state and territory. Every element of the weekend-long brand experience was interactive - from enabling viewers to share their holiday hopes during a live TV broadcast to creating opportunities for one-to-one conversations between viewers and tourism operators. All delivered under strict COVID restriction in under 6 weeks.

List the results

The epic ‘Live From Aus’ weekend delivered epic results. The Love Australia Project TV event reached 1.27 million Aussie viewers, trending #1 on Twitter nationally. The Live From Aus digital experience drew 6.6 million live views, delivering 12 years of viewership in just 36 hours. The view count for the experience climbed to 34 million over the following fortnight, engaging people from over 40 countries. The activation generated 226 million global impressions, reaching 127 million unique social users and driving significant lifts in recall and sentiment in all international markets. 1,765 pieces of media coverage with 100% positive sentiment, delivering an estimated 1 billion reach through global PR. Booking.com recorded an instant 10x spike in search for Australian holiday experiences. +10% increase in those ‘very likely’ to undertake domestic travel when restrictions lifted (pre and post brand lift study) - the first positive change following 12 weeks of falling demand.