Background

To keep New Zealand top of mind in a locked down world, we created a tourism experience that showcased the unique aspects of New Zealand’s people, places and culture. With online gaming spiking and people stuck at home, we needed a way to engage that would give an adventure-starved audience a travel hit and boost desirability to travel to New Zealand. We spoke to a younger audience, the ‘first to fly’ 20–35-year-old demographic who had spent their lockdown trapped at home and online gaming to slake their thirst for adventure. We decided to market the entire country like a game. PLAY NZ is a rich brand experience that not only showcased the country, it gave people a playful, interactive experience featuring authentic influencers.

Describe the creative idea

PLAY NZ brought the country to life as an immersive, open-world gaming experience that lets people explore some of New Zealand’s greatest attractions in a completely new way – effectively marketing the entire country as a game. The entire campaign is hosted on an online platform with quests to explore the whole country while igniting the audience's love for travel. PLAY NZ is the first campaign by a tourism body that developed a virtual walkthrough taking cues from the gaming scene it was targeting. To launch the campaign, Tourism New Zealand partnered with one of Australia’s top gaming content creators, Loserfruit, tapping into her organic audience and giving the campaign an edge within the gaming community.

Describe the strategy

The genesis of this idea came from strong insight – that being the rise of gaming amongst Australians and gaming’s expansion into storytelling and entertainment. The campaign leant into one of YouTube’s largest audiences and used the power of gaming and technology to ignite tourism by inviting Australians to virtually explore the country. Designed to engage Aussies unable to satisfy their New Zealand wanderlust physically, PLAY NZ showed off New Zealand by gamifying the experience of travelling to New Zealand, and the country's landscapes as the backdrop.

Describe the execution

In July 2020, the entirely online campaign launched with a live stream on Twitch, gaming influencer Loserfruit led thousands on an hourlong journey through the best bits of New Zealand and featured a “gamer walkthrough” where she “played” the country and interacted live with followers. The walkthrough film was housed on YouTube and the vehicle of gaming allowed us to share New Zealand’s unique experiences, people and even culture. Every channel deliberately targeted gaming media, mimicking an online game launch. From teasers and trailers that hinted at the coming “game” to gamer reviews. Finally, we invited future travellers to an immersive online hub where they could explore 18x VR180° films – encouraging itinerary-building behaviours. The campaign is still live during the submission of this entry.

Describe the outcome

Intent to visit New Zealand post lockdown increased by +387%* and we maintained our #1 position as the preferred destination for Aussie travellers**. We’ve also seen a shift in brand metrics with a 53% lift in ad recall and a 10% lift in favourability. Campaign engagement is high; we reached over 100 million people and our films have over 15 million views. PR coverage has a universally positive sentiment with 130+ unique earned articles. Our live Twitch launch reached thousands of die-hard gamers and our gamer-walkthrough film has since reached over 3.5 million while receiving lots of “POGs” in the comments – that’s game chat for cool. Lastly, one of the campaign’s core goals was to encourage gamers and travellers to PLAY NZ online – we’ve achieved an average website dwell time of over nine minutes (280% above benchmark) and a 37% increase in user-interaction on our website content.