Australian Capital Tourism gets people to experience Canberra and go social, with ‘Human Brochure’

Australian Capital Tourism (ACT) has launched an extensive social media campaign to promote Canberra as a place to spend a weekend break rather than just a day. ACT did not have the budget to make paid media work, thus invited ‘real people’ to share their ‘real experiences’ on the website - ‘Human Brochure’.

To inform the public about this initiative, it released a social advocacy campaign created by Sydney-based agency ‘The Works’. Nearly 31,400 people applied to avail the all expenses paid weekend trip to Canberra on the condition that they would share their experiences of the city on various social media channels (Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook). All this content using the hash tag ’Human Nature’ would then be uploaded by (ACT) on the website ‘Human Brochure’.

Nearly 500 people were selected of which 250 people have visited Canberra on the weekend of 27 to 28 October. About 4,339 Tweets were sent over the two-and-a-half day trip with the #HumanBrochure. In addition, 2,762 Instagram photos were also shared.

On the campaign, Ian Hill, director of Australian Capital Tourism said, “The weekend was a big success with a fantastic level of engagement and sharing. The campaign has been designed to broaden the appeal of the ACT and show the real side of what our fabulous destination has to offer.”

Douglas Nicol, creative partner and director at The Works added, “The concept was simple, get social media influencers to experience Canberra and tell people about it, and that’s exactly what they’ve done across all social media platforms. The numbers are beyond our expectations and importantly the sentiment is also overwhelmingly positive.”

The next round of 250 ‘humans’ will visit Canberra from 15 to 17 February 2013.