Wellington’s wide array of promotional activities have helped to greatly increase visitor numbers to the capital, both domestically and from Australia. Now it’s trying to get some of our tech savvy neighbours to think about staying for longer and check out opportunities available at some of the city’s world-class ICT and creative tech companies.
Created by Touchcast, the Wellington Works digital campaign asks Australian visitors to click on various objects on three different desks (it has done something similar in the past) to show off the compact city’s work/life balance. It uses Xero strategic programme manager Erin Connelly, Carnival Mobile iOS developer Sam Jarman and UX designer and founder/CEO of Zing Designs Zheng Li as personal case studies of the wonders of the capital.
In a story in Mumbrella, Positively Wellington’s chief executive David Perks said “Wellington is a city that is trying to get traction to grow its economy in many ways” (and Peter Biggs, the inaugural chairman of the new Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency, is one of the men trying to grow it). And it will be attempting to attract Australian tech workers to the website through social and digital media.
“We have a pretty sharp and focused digital sector and the businesses in those sector are needing to fill recruitment gaps, so we are looking to attract Australians who are talented in that high-tech space across to Wellington to work,” he said.
He says it has had 12,000 Australian visits to the jobs section of the website (which is powered by another Wellington-based tech company Trade Me) since it was redeveloped around a year ago.
Positively Wellington has had its sights set on Australian tourists for a few years now, with a couple of clever pop-up restaurants and, more recently, the Wellington has Things campaign, which aimed to deal with some lingering misperceptions with the help of The Voice host Darren McMullan.
And it seems to be working. Direct Australian arrivals to Wellington Airport were 186,336 in the 12 months to April 2014, an increase of 4.2 percent vs YE April 2013 and it’s been steadily increasing in recent years (with a big increase for the Rugby World Cup).
