Best viral campaign in the world?

With a viral campaign that spawned around 200,000 blogs, more than 40,000 news stories and more than $200 million worth of global publicity, Tourism Queensland was responsible for one of the most successful and talked-about media/viral campaigns in recent history - The Best Job In The World. And they’ve got the awards to prove it – they scored two Grand Prixs at this weeks Cannes Lions Festival – the ad world’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Last week, whilst chairing the Strategic Communication Research Forum groups quarterly meeting (Shangri-La, Sydney) I got a behind-the-scenes look into the campaign’s highs and lows.

Danielle Koopman, General Manager Corporate and Government Relations shared some key findings from this campaign including:
* Expect controversy. As you’re always one step removed – it’s really out of your hands and with social media (especially blogs), the campaign will always have a mind of it’s own
* Always be prepared to be honest and admit your mistakes. Faced with some unusual applications (spoof Osama bin Laden entrant) and a web/communication malfunction which saw the winner’s name uploaded onto the web before the official announcement – Tourism QLD didn’t try to make excuses but honestly fessed up to their blunders
* Double-check your resources. Due to overwhelming applications their website shut down and wouldn’t accept any more (it had reached the unknown cut-off quota of 30,000) causing a mild panic for the team.

Another example of a great recent viral campaign was the Deloitte Film Festival, check it out if you’re yet to view.

Thanks again to all our members for your input into this meeting, there were some really great benchmarking discussions and case studies around viral comms. See you all in September when we tackle senior leadership with our special guest expert – Bill Quirke!

Katrina

P.S. Don’t forget Danielle Koopman is keynoting day two of our upcoming Strategic Communication Management Summit, Sydney. A great opportunity to hear this story, plus 14 others! See you all there.