


	Ifra XMA Cross Media Awards Projects





	Company: Guardian Newspapers Ltd
	Project name: Experience Australia

	General information about the publication

	The Guardian is the only full-colour national daily newspaper in the UK and the only daily national newspaper published in an innovative format that uniquely combines journalistic integrity with ease of handling. Celebrating a passionate commitment to quality journalism, photography and design, the Guardian is the most modern and vibrant newspaper in the country. Together with the best online newspaper in the world, no other newspaper is so well placed to address the print and internet needs of both readers and advertisers. The Guardian’s vision is to offer independent, agenda-setting content that positions us as the modern, progressive, exciting challenger to the status-quo. The Guardian is consistently innovative, actively encouraging debate and exerting influence. The Guardian’s brand stands fundamentally for taking a fresh approach: we are modern, individual and sometimes unconventional. Healthily sceptical, but not cynical, the Guardian is confident, intelligent and investigative.

	Project description

	A cross media branded content campaign consisting of a bespoke microsite, supplement and user generated content brought to readers from the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited in association with Tourism Australia.

	The basic idea of our project

	A partnership between Guardian News & Media and Tourism Australia. The idea behind the project was to dispel the myth that Australia is a once in a lifetime destination and encourage immediate booking through promotion of seven key designated experiences. We wanted our audience to identify with the destination on a personal and accessible level by interacting and contributing to content through the creation of a social community. The purpose of this implementation was to encourage more travel to Australia as a more mainstream holiday destination amongst a broad audience of travel enthusiasts. The sponsor was fully integrated into this campaign, which was produced bespoke to their requirements.

	Used Media Channels


	Newspaper		Supplement/Magazine

	Web-TV / Video

The Implementation

Guardian Unlimited created a bespoke microsite to run for a 12 week period which housed the following:
1.Bespoke itinerary planner: Which Australian experience is right for you?
Users are invited to answer a series of questions designed to identify which type of holidaymaker they are. Their answers would then dictate which Australian holiday itinerary they were presented.
2. User generated content:
Share your experiences.
Users who had previously travelled to the destination were asked to share their tips and photographs of Australia. Following the same format as Guardian Unlimited’s successful ‘Been There’ section of the Travel site, we created a database of fresh, engaging and lively content on Australia, categorised by the seven key experiences. Users were encouraged to participate with the opportunity for their comments to feature in the print supplement; and also to win a case of Australian wine. This generation and distribution of web content was a true commercial first.
3. Data Capture:
To provide the client with data capture and generated excitement within our audience we ran a competition providing users with the opportunity to win a holiday to Australia.
4. Supplement
On week eight of the campaign the Guardian published a stand-alone supplement on Australia. This supplement contained a mix of experiential features tailored to the seven key experiences plus the best tips and images from the users generated content were published. Readers were encouraged to visit the microsite to partake in the ‘Personal Itinerary Planners’ and to enter the competition. ‘Web as the platform’ was key to the holistic nature of this campaign.
5. Truly integrated advertising.
A series of co branded advertisements run across key areas of our portfolio such as the Travel & Escape sections to increase awareness of the campaign and drive traffic through to the site.

Image(s)

ATB cover.jpg (91 KB)

Screen grabs of the Tourism Australia site.doc (699 KB)

Editorial spread from supplement, featuring reader content.pdf (2447 KB)

Links

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/experienceaustralia

Project results

The Results:
The campaign effectiveness research demonstrated:
Online activity for Australia significantly more likely to be recalled than for any other destination measured. 1 in 5 of total print sample and 1/3 of those who read the supplement recalled seeing the online campaign.
Microsite visitors were 78% more likely and supplement readers 35% more likely than the average users/ readers to rate Australia as ‘very attractive’.
42% of those who visited the microsite and 31% of supplement readers are now more likely to visit Australia.
To summarise the campaign created impact, was interacted with and enjoyed by our readers and delivered on our advertiser's objectives!