Brand advocacy

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The use of third-party advocacy to promote Tasmania is an important part of Tourism Tasmania's combined approach to consumer marketing. Using social media increases the reach of Tourism Tasmania's marketing message, generates brand-aligned content, reinforces brand attributes and builds trust with  audiences. Tourism Tasmania also leverages third party promotion of the destination through sharing content published independently by journalists and influencers on recognised mastheads and through Tourism Australia's International Media Hosting Program (see Content above).

Tourism Tasmania partnered with V8 Supercars to leverage the exposure of Tasmania across their broadcast, digital and social media channels, with the live event on Fox Sports and highlights on Network 10 reaching a combined television audience of 1,012,500.

Our social community

Tourism Tasmania uses the hashtag #discovertasmania to encourage content sharing across all of its social channels. In 2015-16, Tourism Tasmania's social media community across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram substantially increased from 317,484 followers to 533,512. This 68 per cent increase demonstrates  the growing popularity of Tasmania as a travel destination on social media. Tourism Tasmania's Instagram account also became the largest of all Australian state tourism organisations, with over 286,000 global followers. This year, Tourism Tasmania used social media to promote its Go Behind the Scenery  autumn and winter campaigns, the launch of the Three Capes Track, brand-aligned events including Dark Mofo and the Huon Valley Mid-Winter Feast, the Qantas Australian Tourism Awards and Helloworld Insta-Relay.

Chief Wombat Cuddler competition

As well as engaging in planned activities on social media, we also build on unanticipated opportunities to promote Tasmania's tourism brand. Tourism Tasmania ran a competition on its campaign microsite to leverage the viral exposure of a visitor's video of a baby wombat on Flinders Island. We built  the competition around a prize winning Chief Wombat Cuddler to generate conversations about Tasmania and Flinders Island as travel destinations. The competition gained significant online media attention from Australian and international media channels including CNN, CNBC, BBC, BuzzFeed, Travel + Leisure,  AWOL, Huffington Post, Triple J, ABC, Lonely Planet and The Telegraph. These outlets also promoted the competition through their own social, television and print activities. As a result of the competition, traffic to the Go Behind the Scenery campaign microsite increased from an average of 7500 visits  a day to 10,704 visits a day.

Three Capes Track

Tourism Tasmania worked with Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service to promote the launch of the Three Capes Track, a premium walking experience on Tasmania's Tasman Peninsula. Tourism Tasmania shared a user-generated video featuring the track to a global audience of over 970,000 with over 200,000 views  on Tourism Tasmania's Instagram, Facebook and Twitter channels alone. We also produced a series of videos with Lonely Planet that they then shared with their global audience of over 642,000. These activities produced exceptional results with over 6876 walkers booked in the first five months of the track's  operations, far exceeding Parks and Wildlife's target of 3700 by the third year of operation. We also worked with Tourism Australia to help domestic and international influencers experience and then share the Three Capes Track experience through their own social media channels.

Insiders' Guide – Go Behind the Scenery

Content authored by third parties underpins Tourism Tasmania's Insiders' Guide, a multi-social channel content hub introduced on the Go Behind the Scenery – Autumn 2016 campaign microsite. Tourism Tasmania engaged local and visiting bloggers, photographers and Instagrammers, to create short and  long-form content pieces. They also engaged in conversations, shared their stories and images and encouraged their social media community to visit the guide.

Hawthorn Football Club

Tasmania's sponsorship of the Hawthorn Football Club allows Tourism Tasmania to harness significant promotional opportunities including a presence on the club's websites and through the Tasmania Game of the Year, a Melbourne-based home game dedicated to promoting Tasmania. With ground signage and public  relations activities evident on the day, the Seven Network broadcast the match to an audience of around 1 million with a match day crowd of 61,552 and a corporate audience of 570 in the prestigious President's Function.

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