Oct. 5, 2009 (Business Wire) -- SapientNitro, a division of Sapient (NASDAQ: SAPE), announced today that its “The Best Job in the World” campaign for Tourism Queensland earned the highest honor, the Best in Show, as well as four Gold Awards at the fifth annual MIXX Awards held September 22, in New York City by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The campaign, which leveraged social marketing and traditional print advertising to drive worldwide awareness of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef as a tourism destination, illustrates the enormous global impact that an integrated interactive advertising strategy can deliver when deployed intelligently across multiple platforms. Since the campaign went live in January 2009, it has garnered more than 25 awards, including the Cyber Lion Grand Prix at Cannes and Best in Show at the One Show Awards.
“The massive success of this campaign underscores the historic shift that is revolutionizing the advertising industry and its leaders – where technology plays a central role through enabling multichannel brand experiences,” said SapientNitro Chief Executive Officer Chris Clarke. “In fact, we’re seeing more and more clients wanting to tap into our distinctive offering that combines brand strategy and creative excellence with digital innovation as a way to create more powerful and lucrative customer experiences.”
In creating "The Best Job in the World" campaign for Tourism Queensland, SapientNitro began by developing a strategic, insightful idea that would capture the imagination of people all over the world, generate mainstream media interest and produce new content for social media dissemination. The campaign kicked off with a series of traditional classified job postings and banner ads strategically placed in target markets advertising “the best job in the world” – a live-in caretaker for an island on the Great Barrier Reef. The central component of the global integrated campaign was an innovative social media initiative that engaged consumers by leveraging their zeal for generating their own content. Interested candidates were invited to create a one-minute video application and then post it to a central site, from which a caretaker would be selected.
At the end of the campaign, almost 35,000 individual videos from 197 countries were uploaded. On an estimated advertising budget of $1.2 million, the campaign garnered media attention worldwide valued at $165 million. Coverage of the campaign spanned Germany, Japan, the UK, the United States and included CNN news broadcasts, Time Magazine articles and a BBC documentary. What began as a few strategically placed job postings transformed into one of the most innovative, viral and highly awarded campaigns in history.
