Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World campaign has won six awards at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Image: Tourism Queensland.

By Rob O’Brien

It inspired a tsunami of job applications from across the world and generated media coverage a struggling tourism market could have only dream of.

Now Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World has done it again.

 

The advertising campaign for a caretaker for the islands of the Great Barrier Reef has won six awards at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival – the advertising industry’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Tourism Queensland Chairman Don Morris said the campaign had won two of the festival’s 11 only Grand Prix awards, including the inaugural PR award, and four Gold Lions awards.

“The Cannes Lions Festival recognises the best of the best in the advertising world and the Grand Prix awards are the ultimate awards, so for the campaign to win two in one night is unprecedented,” Morris said.

Morris said the campaign also received four Gold Lions awards in the categories of travel, tourism and leisure, best use of the internet, digital media and social media.

Tourism Queensland Executive Director of Marketing, Steve McRoberts, who is currently in Cannes, said the buzz created by the Best Job in the World campaign was incredible.

“The cream of the advertising world is here in Cannes and it seems everywhere we go people are talking about Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World campaign,” McRoberts said.

The advertising campaign to find a caretaker for the islands, won by the UK’s Ben Southall, was launched in January. The six-month contract, worth $150,000, involved exploring the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back via a blog.

The interview process garnered more than 34,000 applications from almost 200 countries and generated more than $200 million in global publicity value for Queensland.

The campaign is nominated for a further major award to be announced on Saturday night Cannes time.