We mentioned the Tourism Queensland promotion in our earlier article. The campaign continues to make news, although not always for the right reasons. On the positive side, the lucky applicant, Ben Southall was on Oprah last week.

On the not-so-bright side, Australia’s Brisbane Times reports on the aftermath:

The Best Job in the World marketing campaign for Tourism Queensland won the top newspaper advertising award at the weekend, confirming its status as the most awarded ad of the year globally.

Judges at the Caxton Newspaper Awards nominated the ad best in show, handing it the prestigious Quinlivan Black Award for the best newspaper ad of the year.

This brings to almost 40 the number of national and international awards won by the campaign, including three Grands Prix at Cannes, the Oscars of the ad industry, leading the agency behind the idea to claim that it could be the most awarded ad of all time.

The advertising idea of seeking a person to act as caretaker to the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months began its journey as a simple classified ad that ran in newspapers around the world. More than 40,000 media stories later it continues to resonate around the world.

Although it put the islands, and arguably Queensland, on the international tourism map, the Brisbane-based agency that came up with the idea, Sapient Nitro, no longer works for Tourism Queensland.

Instead, the state tourism authority handed its multimillion-dollar advertising account to another agency, which has since created a campaign centred on a take-off of the Monkees – complete with a reworked theme tune, Hey Hey It’s Queensland, which has been widely lambasted by the industry.

The irony was not lost on the audience at the Caxtons, who pondered aloud why the same client who bought a campaign that delivered it publicity worth $300 million on a budget of $1.7 million could also commission the latest campaign.

Indeed. Life’s a pitch. Sometimes you win.

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Tags: advertising idea, best ad in the world, international tourism, irony, marketing campaign, state tourism, tourism authority, Tourism Queensland, world marketing