What the Island Reef Job campaign did for Queensland?

Hats off to them. Cold, dark, dank Monday morning - and every newspaper talking about 'best job in the world' with a nice tropical island picture - very good timing.

All the hits caused the website to crash. Apparently it's been rebuilt...

This just proves that creativity with PR campaigns can beat out news stories on war, a global financial crisis, a historic inauguration and all the other "headline" news. Job well done, Queensland!

This doesn't surprise me. My only question is who caught it first that it took off so quickly. Obviously this had to have started as a word of mouth thing, but to catch on like it did-- nice job.

I am still having problems loading the site though. I am getting closer, I can at least load the title. Even on my wireless internet, which is pretty powerful, I am having trouble.

It was in every newspaper, simultaneously, on Monday.

With the website, they weren't expecting 500,000 in two days, so it went down.

Was told they spent all night creating new site - but you're right, it's still VERY slow

This is possibly the best marketing campaign for years. The exposure gained from the media is worth so much more than the cost of 'employing' the lucky person for 6 months. This is viral marketing at its best.

Hy! I'm Bernard Maddoff , before wall-street I was a good lifeguard....this job is for me ,I'm a good swimmer! in 5 years I can change this islands like Manhattan , with buildings ,traders, highways, pollution,dealers,stress,and ice-cream merchants evrywhere....trust in me , I'm the good boy for you!

First off, bugger off annoying spammer commenters :)

This was quite a brilliantly executed piece of work if you ask me. What I'd be interested in is how this is going to affect the state tourism boards spending going forward. They have always been rather anal about needing a massive application to get money off them to help promote their respective states. Yet they happily blow tens of thousands of dollars on conferences and other events where the roi is attrocious (if not measured in beer intake per staff member :)). I hope we'll be seeing more creativity from the folks working there going forward. This single campaign alone probably garnered more traffic and recognition for the state than they would normally see in an entire year. It must be near 7 figure direct visits now in less than a week, and it's going to live on forever on the internet of course. I was looking at stats yesterday for tp and noticed a jump in yahoo. Turns out it was all related to a post on our forum which broke this job really early on. Seeing that traffic and the fact that people actually started actively searching for information on it, is a real eye opener on the power of this kind of successful campaign.

Incredibly difficult to duplicate though!

Sounds like my a lots of my friends made when I was stationed at RAAF East Sale during Operations Crow Flight.

This PR campaign is all the more impressive because it is from a Government office.

Don't get comfortable just yet because round 2 starts in 2 weeks and I expect the competition to be fierce. As a contestant, it was a bit worrying at the start whether to try and get something out as quick as possible or to try and put some effort in but not to leave it too late otherwise I would get left in the dark.

So I received my email of acceptance on Friday the 6 Feb and it’s been a week now. I don’t know how I got there but I am currently the most popular in the UK and at one point was second in the world :) .

The problem with the site is once you start getting a decent amount of votes that it takes quite a few votes to get you into the few pages that give you exposure. I suppose you could say we are all in the same boat though so I can’t really complain.

What I can say though is to get out there and support the people who have put some real effort in and if you see someone good then give them a good rating and if you see some real rubbish then make sure you give them a bad rating as I expect ( don’t quote me) that if you don’t vote then you are only strengthening the rating that they have already got (which they probably gave themselves anyway).

Anyway give us all some support and check me out at
http://www.islandreefjob.com/applicants/watch/jzbt5ZoD2WI

Shayne Murray

I agree that it's an exceptionally clever campaign - it's got masses of exposure in mainstream media outlets plus loads of word of mouth not to mention that old marketing buzzword 'engagement'.

I imagine this will be wheeled as an example of an effective social media campaign in countless case studies and textbook examples to come. It remains to be seen what the return on investment will be but for a reasonably modest outlay it's certainly created quite a buzz. Since we're heading rapidly into global recession, even keeping tourist numbers the same would be a good achievement.

This recruitment stage is 90% of the the campaign but I actually do think there's potential there if they pick the right blogger, to sustain the interest in the second half of the year. I also think I'm the right person!

I've created a social media campaign of my own to support my application - you can read more about it (and why I'm right for the job) here:
http://www.roamingtales.com/2009/02/08/best-job-in-the-world

Please watch and rate my video here (do give it a good rating please - ideally 5 stars!):
http://www.islandreefjob.com/#/applicants/watch/ZTo_m6xPGHE

well this an awesome PR campaign .. for queensland .. and their tourism industry ....,their main aim is to give a boost to this industry during this global meltdown..and they certainly have seem to done the job.

also please visit this link and vote

http://www.islandreefjob.com/applicants/watch/Qe1ez13w-J4

Go check out the forum at www.nottheislandreefjob.com