Carat New Zealand has delivered a digital media first in the New Zealand market by creating a new campaign for Tourism Australia entitled ‘Short Breaks’.
The campaign, which was aimed at increasing the number of three to four night trips Kiwis take across the Tasman and took off via a series of print and digital advertisements in October, won a BAM (Best Ad of the Month) award from Yahoo!Xtra.
The ‘side push’ banner ad ran across several New Zealand websites and enticed users to interact with the brand, providing those who did with a high impact and engaging ‘short trip’.
“We wanted to get New Zealanders to see Australia as an exciting and vast place that they haven’t truly discovered yet and perhaps it was about time they took a short break there,” said Jonathan Allen, client service manager, Carat New Zealand.
In other tourism news, the online reality travel series ‘The Ultimate Gap Year Traveller 2009’, which was sponsored by Tourism New Zealand, came to an end recently in Queenstown.
Created by Endemol UK’s Digital Studios arm, the series involved travellers posting short videos and updates documenting their adventures on The Gap Year homepages, which gained nearly 12,000 followers across Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and You Tube. Viewers were able to vote for their favourite competitors online and the show clocked up over 25,000 votes.
Gap Year co-producer Matt Smith says the project was hugely successful. “It’s the first project of its type to be rolled out across a number of social networks and it has exceeded expectations in every way.”
The initiative is part of Tourism New Zealand’s ‘Go All the Way’ campaign, which was developed to target the resilient backpacker market.
Tourism New Zealand Acting Chief Executive Tim Hunter says it has been an ideal way to showcase the New Zealand holiday experience to a backpacker audience.
“Outbound travel from the UK has been hit hard by the global economic downturn but we’re finding that backpackers are still travelling. The Gap Year project is just one of a series of initiatives that will aim to make sure these travellers come all the way down to New Zealand when they make that big trip.”
