Tourism New ZealandIntegrierte Kampagne

Germans love to travel. Our goal was to bring them to New Zealand. The idea was to convert mere interest in a beautiful country into genuine enthusiasm and a proper travel plan.

The idea was simple. One man goes ahead and everybody can experience what he does.

If you want to travel to New Zealand you need a lot of time and money; at least that seems to be the general view. Travellers all want to know exactly what they can expect in New Zealand and whether it's worth their while. That's why we decided to send someone ahead who could act as a representative and discover New Zealand for everyone else, and convey unmistakably how great this country is. That man was Bernhard Hoëcker.

Online, users could plan Hoëcker's travel itinerary, resulting in an unbelievable 8,036 suggestions. The users would then hold daily polls on which suggestions were best, leading to a collective decision on what Bernhard Hoëcker should experience and do next while in New Zealand. His experiences were documented down to the detail and could be followed almost in real time on the web. Every day videos and diary entries of his experiences would be uploaded to YouTube, published on the campaign website, posted on Facebook and spread on Twitter.

We managed to prove that social media and performance can actually go in sync – in the first user-generated travel guide for New Zealand.

More than 8,000 user ideas and suggestions acted as ample incentive for the target group to embark on their own extraordinary trip and to discover the other sides of New Zealand, those far from the clichés, trodden paths and recommendations in commercial travel guides. On top of that, the campaign proved that you don't need a month of holiday to see the best of New Zealand.

With proper targeting we managed to reach 70% of the core target group and steered 25,000 users to the campaign's partner websites. With Hoëcker's New Zealand journey we increased the year-against-year referral rate by 240% and by another 350% during the campaign period with the help of iterative real-time optimization. Bernhard Hoëcker didn't only report from his experiences in our channels, but in front of audiences of millions on TV for the channels SAT1, NDR and ZDF, Germany's second public broadcasting corporation. We exceeded the customer objectives by far.