The Great Boomerang Throw
Issue 18 | March 2011
Agency
DDB UK
Creative Team
Creative Director: Guy Bradbury, Scott Walker; Copywriter: Ric Hooley; Art Director: Vix Jagger
Production Team
Facebook Developer: Iplatform
Other Credits
Business Director: Fiona McArthur; Account Director: Sarah Lambert; Account Manager: Patricia Synephias
Date
March 2010
Background
Australia used to be a popular destination amongst 18-30 year-olds, especially for gap-year students, but it had dropped from the top of the list.
The brief therefore, was to get it back to the top, getting as many young adults as possible from the UK to talk about a working holiday in Australia.
Idea
The aim was to harness a channel which the target audience used every day to chat and share aspects of their lives with each other: Facebook. To get them talking about Australian working holidays and excited about the destination, 18-30 year-olds were invited to take part in a competition to win a working holiday. All they had to do was involve as many of their friends as possible.
What they were asked to do was to throw a virtual boomerang. They asked the mate they’d contacted to choose someone from their own list of friends and to throw the boomerang on for them. It was the ‘six degrees of separation’ principle put to work on Facebook, with the longest sequence of ‘throws’ winning the holiday downunder.
Participants could track on Google Maps how far their boomerang had gone and find out who had it currently on a ‘Profile Picture’ chain.
Results
In just 4 weeks 19,272 people took part, passing boomerangs on as many as 77 times.
Boomerangs travelled to over 40 countries, creating noise outside the UK.
During the promotion, fans soared from under 12,000 to over 38,410, and the amount of chat about working holidays in Oz was seen to increase by 220%.
Our Thoughts
It’s easy to get seduced by results measured in millions because that’s what can happen online if an idea goes viral; it gets seen around the world. In this magazine there are examples of campaigns that have racked up big numbers but it would be a mistake to imagine that smaller numbers make for less successful results. Okay, fewer than 20,000 played this game, but of those 20,000, almost every one was in the core target group. My bet is that it didn’t just raise awareness and desirability but to a real increase in visitors. And all on a budget that wouldn’t even pay for the catering truck on Tourism Australia’s latest commercial.