Human Wanted
Ipswich’s recent tourism success with ‘Human Wanted’ has come from thinking differently, researching our audience and challenging conventional marketing.
Our Goal
Increase Domestic Overnight Visitation.
Our ‘Human Wanted’ campaign embraced new technology (which usually applied to National Parks only) and aligned with Australia’s #1 website, Google Maps.
Ipswich became the first region in the Southern Hemisphere to map visitor precincts, walks and heritage highlights.
The journey to create a new visitor resource became the narrative for online audiences to engage and retain interest in Ipswich for over a year.
Human Wanted built awareness, marketed the destination and reaped free media coverage in the process.
3 million steps in 160 days
18kg backpack for the Google Trekker gear
16 terabytes of imagery collected
396,000 Domestic Overnight Visitors equating to $2.8B in spend
The Arduous Challenge
The journey included 2,414 km or 3 million steps in 160 days loaded up with an 18kg backpack with Google Trekker gear.
230 brave souls signed up; 8 were interviewed; one ideally fitted the bill – Josh ‘The Bear’ Kerr – an activities guide from Spicers Resort in the Ipswich Region.
Josh soon became a rock star – or at least a star of rock climbing as he scaled the summits, navigated the rivers, visited the raceways and attractions, explored the 6,500 hectares of conservation land and followed the heritage trails through the inner city precincts of Ipswich.
57 locations in total were trekked.
Media
“It allows us to map the roads less traveled… it’s a bit of a beast…”
“Google wanted a ‘human’ to discover the hidden beauties of Ipswich”
“Thanks to the interest around the campaign Nature Conservation has seen a 50 per cent spike in trail use”
“..Mr Kerr was selected for what he described as “the best job in the world.”
