fbpx

Tourism Australia and Air New Zealand woo Kiwis with Yahoo and Tangible Media

Wanting to prove there’s more to Australia than theme parks, Tourism Australia and Air New Zealand have launched a content marketing campaign with Yahoo and Tangible Media* to lure Kiwis for a holiday over the ditch. The campaign goes for a fresh, inspiring view of Australia beyond trips to the East Coast gateways – beginning with Western Australia.

Using the Yahoo website as a hub to push out the content to readers, the Savouring Australia campaign centres on an ambitious 80-course degustation tour of Australia, with content on Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia all to be rolled out region by region. It features places like Hahndorf in Adelaide with its German meats and cheeses, beachy Broom with its open-air, 32-degree dining experiences in winter, and Melbourne with its baklava and pasta. Food and wine is king in the campaign, but it’s used to engage Kiwis in the other reasons to go to Australia: culture, nature and wildlife, shopping and shows.

“Giving Kiwis compelling reasons to travel to Australia, explore more and go further is our focus. The partnership with Air New Zealand and state partners, the campaign idea, the quality and relevance of the content from Tangible and Yahoo! and the engaging, user-friendly platform developed by Yahoo! are exactly what we need to deliver results,” says Tony Rogers, marketing manager of Tourism Australia.

A collaboration of the two companies with agencies OMD and FCB saw the creation of the campaign that involved Kiwi food writer, photographer and Dish* contributing food editor Sarah Tuck running a 22-day gauntlet of eating, drinking, flying, videoing and writing on location. Tony Clewett from FCB says “The 80 course degustation idea was a unique and interesting way to showcase all the amazing things to see and do in Australia, that Kiwis don’t necessarily know about.” With the support of Yahoo’s professional travel writers hundreds of pieces of original editorial content have been produced. Throughout her journey, Tuck had been feeding material back to Tangible’s Dish magazine editorial team who crafted the pieces into magazine-like content for the hub. Once back in New Zealand, Tangible Media’s sister company OnDigital collaborated with Tuck to cut and apply voiceover scripts to the video content. The campaign also features reader competitions requiring them to read through the stories for facts and anecdotes to win.

Chrissy Payne, client services director for OMD, says it has been a unique and exciting project for OMD – the fact it’s been able to work with two of its clients on the one campaign, and bring together two publishers who would not normally work in unison, to launch a content strategy to market.

Yahoo is a powerful partner in the campaign with its broad reach of just over half the New Zealand online population, while Tangible Media weighs in with content marketing and established magazine audiences.

John Baker, publisher at Tangible Media, says “at the heart of our approach is the creation of this as a completely authentic and credible editorial play, underpinned by the credibility of Dish magazine and its resonance with the target audience.” (The campaign is primarily targeting 35 to 64 year old repeat leisure visitors with a household income of over 80,000, and with plans to travel in the next 12 months).

Yahoo New Zealand general manager of sales Louis Niven says Yahoo has invested heavily in content marketing, and now has a dedicated team of six insights, design and production personnel. “Content marketing, content integration, native advertising – there are a number of names for it – is one of the fastest growing areas of our business, both globally and in New Zealand. This year we’ve experienced strong double digit growth in revenue year to date and that was off the back of a record year last year.”

Other traditional news agencies, too, have taken up content marketing. The Herald, like Yahoo, also dallied with Tourism Australia, in its “Australia by Passion” campaign, posting content about trips to Australia by celebrities Judy Bailey and Colin Mathura-Jeffree, hosted on a custom-built Australia hub on the NZ Herald Online site. The hub also featured content from the Herald’s editorial team, Tourism Australia, and user-generated content. Another content marketing foray by the Herald was a partnership with Auckland’s Heart of the City, in which its editors created articles and Instagram photos to inspire readers to share their own ways to ‘love their city’. Fairfax too, recently undertook a content marketing project with ASB, where ASB sponsors the Home & Property section on Stuff, and commissions the Stuff team to write content which is labelled as sponsored and integrated throughout the pages.

When asked how, as a news website, Yahoo manages to walk the line legitimately between journalism and advertising when doing content marketing, Niven says transparency is a key. “The Yahoo New Zealand network is much more than just news and how we deliver advertising depends on the type of solution we’re offering – but transparency is a key part of delivering these solutions for both advertisers and our audience. When it’s a simple advertorial this is clearly marked as advertising. Native content solutions are labelled as ads or as sponsored. With this type of solution where we are creating travel editorial and presenting it in a branded environment, it is clear that the content is supported by the advertiser.”

Niven says the travel category has been leading the growth in content marketing around the globe.

“When this type of campaign is done well and is a true collaboration between a publisher and an advertiser that puts audience needs and content at the heart, then the result is great content for the audience and great results for the advertiser. However this isn’t always easy to achieve and not all advertising categories lend themselves to this approach. Travel is one of the better categories in which to achieve this balance between what’s right for the audience, the publisher and the advertiser without compromising either.” 

Air New Zealand Group general manager New Zealand and Pacific Islands, Louise Struthers, says the airline is thrilled to be involved in the campaign as Australia continues to be the most popular destination for Kiwi travellers. “This campaign is a great opportunity to keep growing Australia’s appeal as a diverse and accessible holiday destination. Our alliance with Virgin Australia connects 25 New Zealand towns and cities with 47 Australian destinations making it easy for Kiwi travellers to seek out and discover every corner of Australia,” she says.

*Disclaimer: Tangible Media and Dish magazine are part of Image Centre Group, just like Stoppress.

About Author

Avatar photo

One of the talented StopPress Team of Content Producers made this post happen.

Comments are closed.