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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin – finally, the tropical dream came true. Unfortunately, not for me but for the British charity fundraiser Ben Southall, 34: He was one of the 16 finalists who recently spend three days swimming, snorkeling, diving and lounging under the close scrutiny of Queensland Tourism officials. They psychometrically tested the candidates for the ‘Best Job in the World’, the ‘Islandreef Job’ (read my recent posts number one and number two about the competition to get more information and the latest press release published by Queensland Tourism). Ben Southall staved off competition from almost 35,000 worldwide applicants to secure the post and was awarded the $150,000 (£73,000) contract beginning July 1 to serve as the caretaker of a tropical Australian Island. He now has the chance to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton island, in the Great Barrier Reef, for six months while writing a blog to (source: The Guardian). If you like to read his blog click here.

A successful social media campaign and its imitators

The recruitment for the ‘Best Job in the World’ was part of Tourism Queensland’s Islands of the Great Barrier Reef Campaign. The cooperative marketing campaign aimed to highlight the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and showcase Australia’s own unique Island experience, to the global market (source: press release published by Tourism Queensland). I think, I don’t need to tell you again that influential newspapers like The Guardian, The Mirror or BBC or German newspapers like Der Spiegel or Der Focus picked up the story once more among other media. According to Der Spiegel the marketing campaign exceeded all expectations of Tourism Queensland: Tourism director Anthony Hayes is of the opinion that there will be more bookings within the next 12 month at the end of the campaign. Probably the ranger casting will become an annual event? In anyway, there are already imitators of the campaign: According to Der Spiegel Taiwan thinks about starting a similar competition to promote its tourism.

‘The moral of the story’

What remains to say? As mentioned in earlier posts the ‘Islandreef Job’ competition was a striking campaign idea which was based on some remarkable PR and marketing decisions like the concept of the admirable independent blogger like you and me, the integration of the audience in the voting and the content-rich website (read my recent blog post) and supported by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (read my recent blog post). Doubtlessly, a short-term campaign success. Will it become a long-term success, too? Only time can tell.

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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin … Admittedly, I’m catched in this summer-like daydream again! I got lost in it for the first time when I recently blogged about the ‘The Best Job in the World, the ‘Island Reef Job’. The idea about earning £70,000 for blogging about the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef/ Australia while living rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool on Hamilton Island is tempting if you look out of the window and all you see are trees and shrubs devastated by the stormy weather. Quite apart from the rain.

Wild Card candidate selected

But stop building castles in the air! I promised to keep an eye on the competition of Tourism Queensland for you. After the top-50-shortlist from over 34,000 applicants for the job was announced on the website some time ago, the Wild Card candidate for the final round of the competition has now been selected by the visitors of the website: It’s Claire from Taiwan. “Clare has done a remarkable job of promoting her quest for the Best Job in the World in Taiwan and has become an overnight media celebrity. She has been in virtually every newspaper, on every TV network in the country, plus online media and social networking sites”, says Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes in a recent press release.

All up 475,855 votes were received during the Wild Card voting process. Clare received 151,676 votes – almost three times that of her nearest competitor, Mitchell from Canada who received 55,532 votes, followed by George from Ireland with 30,372 votes.

A successful social media campaign

Influential news papers like ‘Der Spiegel’, Germany, reported on the progress of the competition again (just a quick reminder: the winner will be named on May 6^th 2009). As far as today the Island Reef Job seems to be still a very successful social media campaign. For instance, Queensland Tourism set up profiles relating to the Island Reef Job on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (further information about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube on Wikipedia).

I’d like to pick up Queensland’s profile on Facebook as it is an interesting example to show that Facebook is not just a social networking site for students anymore but a great place for companies to communicate, too: Queensland’s Facebook page aims to help visitors share, plan and organize their trip to go there.

Facebook – a communication opportunity for companies

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With regard to Facebook marketing David Meerman Scott* names different useful ways to deliver information and ideas to a network of people who are interested in a certain topic of which two can be found on Queensand’s profile, too:

1. Friend-to-friend communication: In its personal profile Queensland is promoted as a amazing travel destination. You learn about the country and get reasons why it might be rewarding to travel there, for example.
2. Groups: Queensland keeps interested people informed on their profile (additional material include e.g. e-brochures and podcasts). Currently, it has got about 4.500 fans who actively take part in the communication process as you can see on the wall.

You see, Facebook can be an interesting marketing tool for companies. The following quote of Walter Doyle, CEO of uLocate, puts it in a nutshell very well: “People are sensitive to corporate content. It’s okay to be corporate if it is funny. Entertainment, fun, simple, and whimsical are all good.”  In other words: The experience on Facebook has to be very simple and devoid of commercialization. Indeed!

*Book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’