Brand Advocacy
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The use of third-party advocacy and word-of-mouth to promote Tasmania on social media play an important part in Tourism Tasmania’s combined approach to consumer marketing. Tourism Tasmania uses social media to increase the reach of our marketing message, generate brand-aligned content, reinforce brand attributes and build trust with audiences. Social media and public relations activities also promote the brand globally using content generated through Tourism Australia’s International Media Hosting Program and Tourism Tasmania’s Visiting Influencers Program.
Our community
Tourism Tasmania uses the hashtag #discovertasmania to encourage sharing of content across social channels. In 2016-17, Tourism Tasmania’s social media community across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter grew more than 27 per cent from 533,512 to 680,808 followers. This increase demonstrates the growing popularity of Tasmania as a travel destination on social media.
#TassieStyle
During the 2016-17 summer season, Tourism Tasmania harnessed the seasonal influx of visitors to generate active advocacy for the state. The #TassieStyle campaign encouraged visitors and locals to share their distinctly Tasmanian photos and videos through social media using the hashtag #TassieStyle for a chance to win one of 11 weekly prizes, or one of three major prizes. The campaign had a strong focus on industry involvement and encouraged local tourism operators to promote the campaign to their guests.
The response from Tasmania’s tourism industry was overwhelmingly positive with 225 individual orders received for promotional materials from operators and partners. Over the course of the campaign, Tourism Tasmania distributed over 2,150 marketing kits, amounting to around 240,000 items of promotional material, to Tasmanian tourism operators.
The campaign was well received by consumers, receiving 42,411 entries over the 12 week campaign. This far exceeded our most optimistic expectations based on similar competitor campaigns held elsewhere. In all, the #TassieStyle campaign reached more than 11 million people across all social media channels and achieved an average engagement rate of 9.5 per cent – well above industry benchmarks.
Insiders’ Guide – Go Behind the Scenery
Content authored by third parties underpins Tourism Tasmania’s Insiders’ Guide, a multi-social channel content hub on the Go Behind the Scenery campaign microsite. Using short and long-form content pieces created by local digital advocates and visiting bloggers, photographers and Instagrammers, the Insiders’ Guide presented a selection of informative and engaging Tasmania stories.
Advocates also engaged in conversations, shared their stories and images and encouraged their social media community to visit the guide. Tourism Tasmania selected advocates based on their target audience reach, expertise aligned to content themes and engagement rates. The content pieces were created in the form of articles and photo galleries. The content was delivered via Outbrain and both paid and organic Facebook posts. The Insiders’ Guide included a curated feed from Tourism Tasmania’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that reinforced the brand narrative and served to increase exposure of the microsite in the new Your Stories area of the microsite.
Rosehaven TV series
The eight-part comedy series Rosehaven, starring Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor, launched on the ABC on 12 October 2016, with its world premiere held in Hobart on 10 October 2016. The show was shot in locations across southern Tasmania, including Geeveston, New Norfolk and Richmond. Tourism Tasmania worked with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to amplify Tasmania’s share of voice around the series and leveraged social media conversations to inspire further conversations about Tasmania. Content from the series provided by the ABC, along with access to the actors, allowed Tourism Tasmania to create a voice-over piece titled Luke and Celia’s Guide to Tassie that was then used across Tourism Tasmania’s channels.
Lion – the movie
The highly-anticipated feature film Lion, set in Tasmania, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Zurich Film Festival and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Gala before opening to the general public in North America, Australia, Hong Kong and India. Lion resulted in the fifth biggest opening weekend for an Australian film and the biggest opening weekend for an independent Australian film. The film subsequently opened in New Zealand at number one, and the United Kingdom at number four for box office takings. Tourism Tasmania identified the release of the feature film as an opportunity to achieve exposure and ‘talkability’ for Tasmania by ensuring the state was always part of the conversation when the film was mentioned on and offline.
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