Tourism Queensland’s BEST JOB IN THE WORLD wins Best Worldwide PR campaign award

NEW YORK – Tourism Queensland’s THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD took home two Platinum awards and a Best of Show for best worldwide PR campaign of the year at the 2010 HSMAI Adrian Awards.

“We are proud to be the North American PR firm for Tourism Queensland’s blockbuster campaign,” Florence Quinn, president and founder of NYC-based Quinn & Co., said.

The annual competition attracted more than 1,100 entries from nearly 37 countries. The awards were presented on Feb. 1 at New York City’s Marriott Marquis with the travel industry’s top leaders in attendance.

“Tourism Queensland’s groundbreaking THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD campaign is a PR and viral marketing phenomenon that has generated worldwide attention,” said John Frazier, executive vice president of Quinn & Co., who leads the North American PR effort with Melissa Braverman, account supervisor.

The campaign generated more than $106 million worth of ad value for worldwide publicity and 647 million media impressions in the U.S. and Canada alone.

Conceived by Tourism Queensland (TQ) and its Brisbane-based ad agency, CumminsNitro Brisbane, the concept was simple: post a one-minute video application on TQ’s Web site explaining why you should be chosen as caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef and you might get to blog and cam your way through a six-month gig that pays about $100,000 U.S.

Quinn & Co. broke the story on Reuters around sunrise in Australia on January 12, 2009. By breakfast time in London, AP was interviewing TQ’s UK director for a broadcast package that turned up on the morning shows in the U.S. Within two days, Quinn & Co.’s monitoring service found 1,100 TV placements in the U.S. alone.

TQ’s goal was to get 400,000 new visitors to THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD Web site over the course of the one-year campaign. They blew past that in about 30 hours. On the second day, the millionth hit crashed the site. When they brought it back up it was hosted on 10 Web servers, the maximum number of servers possible. Approximately 34,684 people from more than 200 countries applied for the job of Island Caretaker.

A social networking frenzy ensued with 336,000 Facebook-referred Web site visits, more than 3,170 @Queensland followers on Twitter and over 338 members on the campaign’s Wiki. By March 18, 2009, the Web site had 6.7 million visitors, with 26 percent of visitors logging in from the U.S. Over 423,000 people (including 210,000 from the U.S.) voted for their favorite top-50 finalist.