knowledge marketing

Cimtig Awards

ttglive.com

Winning ways...

Three Cimtig Travel Marketing Award winners

tell Estella Shardlow

how agents can create successful marketing campaigns – even on a limited budget

rom the waters of the Great Barrier Reef to Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach, this year’s winners of the Cimtig Travel Marketing Awards demon- strated the power of PR and marketing to rejuvenate the image of a destination. Cimtig chairman Gary Grieve says small agencies can learn from the winners’ experiences. “There are lessons from the winning campaigns in terms of PR, which is often an area that travel agencies could do with developing,” he says.

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We spoke to three award winners to learn more about their campaigns and how easily agents might adopt similar activities within their business.

Award category: Social media

Winner: Tourism Queensland/Cummins Nitro and Hills Balfour Synergy Campaign: The best job in the world

Jane Nicholson, regional di- rector of Tourism Queens- land, says: “Launched in January 2009, the ‘Best job in the world’ campaign hit at a time when the UK was all doom and gloom with the recession and cold, grey weather. This was a real feel-good story about a very unusual job offer – the chance to be ‘caretaker’ of Hamilton Island for a year.

“The message was to raise awareness about Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef around the world on a relatively small budget. Brisbane-based agency Cummins Nitro came up with the concept, then our marketing and digital teams developed it in-house. The campaign really harnessed the power of social media. Entrants posted their

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Tourism Queensland’s “Best job in the world” campaign reached three billion people worldwide

application videos on YouTube, we got information out quickly using Twitter, and lots of bloggers got behind it.

“My experience of this campaign is that it’s important to channel social media along- side more traditional forms. I don’t think one really exists without the other. “It’s become the most awarded marketing campaign ever and reached three billion people worldwide. We smashed the 12- month key performance indicators target for our website within the first week. In terms of arrival stats, visitor numbers to Hamilton Island have risen 75-80%.

“There wasn’t just a one-off blast of cover- age either; it was carefully planned to deliver five key phases during the year. At each point we received a huge amount of cover- age, which kept up consumer interest. “I think our success can inspire at every level. To smaller companies I’d say don’t let marketing budgets restrict you – it’s not about how much you have to spend, as social media is a low-cost environment. It’s all about being inventive.”

What can agents learn? Grieve says: “Agents can

localise a campaign such as Tourism Queensland’s – why not make it ‘the best job in Derby’? You could follow a trainee at your agency and get the local paper to cover it.” The advantage that agents have, according to

Grieve, is being known and trusted in their local community, making it easier to get their message out and picked up.

Award category: Viral communication Winner: SKV/VisitBlackpool

Campaign: J’aime La Tour

Daniel Kennedy, director at SKV, says: “When VisitBlack- pool sent out a brief about raising the resort’s profile on a low budget, I came up with this idea of playing on the similarity between the Blackpool and Eiffel towers. The film was called J’aime La Tour and shows a French girl sitting in a chic cafe fretting about leav- ing the city she has fallen in love with – you don’t realise it’s Blackpool initially. Peo- ple have misconceptions about the place, so this was tongue-in-cheek and surprising. “Our success was a combination of inge- nuity and timing. It was released just after

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