The winner has been announed for Tourism Queensland’s ‘The Best Job in the World‘ campaign and congratulations must go to Brit, Ben Southall, for taking out the prize.I have no idea what he did to win, but presumably he was affable, scrubbed up well on YouTube and had starred in less than a handful of Russian porn films. I haven’t been following the campaign closely, but of course, I didn’t have to. Every news channel in the world has been running headlines since day one, Sunrise had a spot on it this morning and even ABC news bulletins have talked the story up.

I’m mighty impressed with the campaign on the whole, despite some early stumbling, and given that this is only the end of phase one (the dude now has to go do the ‘work’ and write a blog about his experience), I’ll bet Tourism Queensland are chuffed with Cummins Nitro’s work. My guess is Ben’s blog won’t reach even a fraction of the people that news of the campaign to hire him did, but at the end of the day, I don’t think that really matters. Both agency and client will be hoping the online journal generates some interest, but success will be measured by overall column inches, and by that yard-stick, they’ve put together one of the best social media campaigns to date.

Will it translate into dollars for Queensland’s Tourism industry? It certainly will for Hamilton Island (I wonder what the other resorts think of it all). There’ll undoubtedly be a ripple effect too for the rest of Tropical North Queensland, but I’m really looking forward to reading the final report at the end of the day and comparing the success of this social media-bsed campaign to what they’ve done in the past. I’ll be surprised if there are any jaw-busting revelations there though. I think it will result in much greater media coverage than they’ve ever had, but in reality, Queensland is a long way from the rest of the world and favourable coverage on Fleet Street has a long way to trickle-down. For this to convert to substantially greater visitor numbers would be a massive achievement. I don’t think they’ll pull it off, but regardless, it is an absolutely fantastic advertising campaign.

Oh, and did someone mention something about a new mens range at a clothing store? No? Didn’t think so.