Tourism Queensland's 'Best Job in the World' ad — 34,684 apply for one island job

Tourism Queensland had to raise global awareness of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef as a holiday destination with a small budget by world standards — a conventional media campaign could not buy enough attention. The solution had to generate interest money couldn't buy.

Turn a real six-month island-caretaker job into a worldwide contest: a one-minute application video, open voting, and the job itself becomes the ad.

They posted a real job — six months as Island Caretaker on Hamilton Island for AUD$150,000 — and asked applicants worldwide to upload a one-minute video. Tourism Queensland shortlisted to 11 finalists flown to the island, with public voting choosing a wild-card entry; Quinn & Co. launched the story via Reuters, it moved to AP and US morning TV, and the campaign site hit a million visits and crashed on day two.

34,684 applicants from more than 200 countries; 6.7 million site visitors and 423,000 public votes by March 2009; over AUD$200 million in global publicity value. It won the inaugural PR Grand Prix and the Direct Grand Prix plus four Gold Lions on day one at Cannes 2009, and a third Grand Prix (Cyber) later that week.

In January 2009, Tourism Queensland posted a real job: six months as Island Caretaker of Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef, paying AUD$150,000. Instead of running destination advertising, the organisation turned the recruitment itself into the campaign — applicants anywhere in the world could upload a one-minute video explaining why they deserved the role, and public voting fed the story.

The launch was engineered as news: North American PR firm Quinn & Co. broke the story on Reuters before sunrise in Australia on 12 January; by breakfast in London, AP was interviewing Tourism Queensland's UK director, and US morning shows picked it up. The islandreefjob.com site passed 400,000 visits in about 30 hours and crashed at a million hits on day two, after which it ran on ten servers.

Applications closed on 23 February with 34,684 entries from more than 200 countries — 11,565 from the US alone — and 423,000 people voted for the top-50 finalists. By March the site had seen 6.7 million visitors, and the campaign had generated more than AUD$200 million in publicity value. On day one of Cannes Lions 2009 it won the inaugural PR Grand Prix and the Direct Grand Prix plus four Gold Lions; a third Grand Prix (Cyber) followed later that week, and the UK's Ben Southall took the job.

It replaced a destination ad with a real, participative story: a genuine job, real applicants and public voting that people wanted to follow.

The job itself was the message — 'the best job in the world' encoded the island's beauty, climate and lifestyle in one phrase.

Launching as news rather than advertising earned coverage from Reuters, AP and morning TV that the small budget could not have bought.

Every application video was content the public created and shared, so reach scaled with participation rather than media spend.

Give the audience a role in the story — a real job, real videos, open voting — and an unknown destination becomes content people want to watch and share, making the campaign itself the media buy.

Ben Southall served as Island Caretaker from July 2009, blogging and filming from the reef. Tourism Queensland extended the idea with spin-offs such as 'The Best Holiday in the World', and the case entered the industry canon — shortlisted for the WARC Innovation Awards and cited as a benchmark of PR-led destination marketing. Destinations and brands worldwide have since run their own 'dream job' contests, and the format is routinely credited as the moment PR and social content became a primary advertising channel.