We All Need Heroes

BEST JOB IN THE WORLD

Chapter: Awesome Marketing

In 2009, the Australian government tourist office in Queensland wanted to improve their tourism. They needed to launch a new campaign to promote the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to Global Experience Seekers across eight key international markets. The advertising agency Cummins Nitro presented their solution: The Best Job In The World. The idea was to search for someone to look after a desert coral island in the Great Barrier Reef, for half a year. The tourist office liked the idea and started working on promoting the Great Barrier Reef as a global tourism destination with a website encouraging people worldwide to apply for The Best Job In The World: To become a caretaker and “house-sitter” of the island. The caretaker would live in a three-bedroom villa with an unbeatable views of a crystal clear lagoon, surrounded by palm trees and white sandy beaches with a temperature of around 29°C (84°F).
    The new hire was supposed to live in this fantastic house on this paradise island for six months and get paid $110,000 to do so. The only catch? Writing a weekly blog. That’s right, weekly, not even daily. The job requirements were quite simple: The ability to speak English and swim. Job benefits except the large salary and free lodging in a multi-million dollar villa, was transportation with free return flights, transfers, and transport around the island included.
    All this was advertised as a typical job advertisement in newspapers and online around the world, creating a huge interest among the media that reported on this “dream job”. Those who wanted to apply for the job were asked to upload a one minute long application video. In total, 35,000 applications were submitted from 201 different countries. The advertisement made a massive impact in other words (no wonder!). The submission website crashed from excessive visits and application video uploading two days following the launch of the campaign.
    The tourism bureau announced the winner: Ben Southall, a 34-year-old British man who claims he once kissed a giraffe.

Possible Moral
A massive and bold campaign that really paid off. I think Tourism Queensland did something highly unexpected and gutsy. In my experience, most government owned agency’s hardly ever step out of their comfort zones. The comfort zone can be seductive. Many of us desire comfort. It’s human nature. However, the right level of risk-taking yields vitality and a higher level of achievement. We don’t know the rewards we will enjoy by our willingness to take thoughtful risks, but we do know that the really big rewards will not occur unless we are willing to take those risks. The Best Job In The World was a big bet that in the end gave back a lot. By the campaign’s end, it had generated more than $200 million in global publicity value for Tourism Queensland. The Australian government is setting a good example for governments of other countries – dare to try something new!


Story from We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish.
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