Twelve months ago almost to the day Tourism Queensland re-wrote the travel marketing rule book with its widely praised - and much copied - multimedia PR campaign.
Ben Southall, winner of the Best Job in the World campaign, ended his tenure on the infamous Queensland island this week and is now hitting the talk shows in the US.
The next phase of his "caretaker" job for Reef Island is as an evangelist-on-tour for Tourism Queensland, most notably on Fox News in the US this week alongside Anna Bligh, premier of the Australian state.
One of the key elements of the competition to win the Best Job prize was to maintain a blog during the seven months or so on the island.
The blog was world's window into what life was going to be like for Southall as he looked after the island.
After a bumpy start, Southall apparently got quite into it and wrote regularly.
The reality of the writing during this period was that it was used mostly to highlight some of the interesting things Southall - and, by extension, visitors - could do in region, rather than what many expected to be associated with a caretaking job such as cleaning et al.
Figures obtained from Experian Hitwise indicate how the blog faired over the course of the year.
The graph shows share of UK total internet traffic to Islandreefjob.com, the original site and then the URL for the blog, throughout 2009.
The spikes in traffic are at key points during the campaign.
- January: PR campaign launches, hundreds of media outlets, sites and blogs cover the launch of the competition.
- May: Southall announced as winner.
- July: Southall arrives at the island, starts blogging.
- Late-August: New initiative to find helpers for Southall.
The late December spike coincides with when Southall, with remarkable timing given he was going to leave in a few weeks, was
bitten by a jellyfish and a number of media outlets reported the unfortunate event,
including the BBC.
In terms of the most popular posts on the site, most reflect the activity outlined in the spikes illustrated earlier.
WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers!
Day 1, commence the games!
Ouch! A little incident on the beach...
Let the adventure commence...
Do you have mail?
WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers! Update
Heading north to Cairns and Lizard Island
Hay-man check out the coral....
WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers! Update
Touch down on Hamilton Island!
- WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers!
- Day 1, commence the games!
- Ouch! A little incident on the beach...
- Let the adventure commence...
- Do you have mail?
- WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers! Update
- Heading north to Cairns and Lizard Island
- Hay-man check out the coral....
- WANTED - Island Caretaker Helpers! Update
- Touch down on Hamilton Island!
The highest of re-tweeting against articles also pretty much mirrors this activity.
The question for the officials behind the project in terms of new visitors and awareness was addressed in part at the nine-month stage of the campaign.
The overall successful of the blogging element of Southall's victory is unclear. Traffic during the obviously critical moments of the campaign started extremely well and was latterly fair to good.
Much of the rest of the time, especially in the latter stages, traffic was flat. Officials may probably offset that relative apathy, during which time Southall was showcasing the delights of Queensland, for the peaks at other points in the campaign.