Couple Announce Engagement In Mobile Studio

MEDIA RELEASE
30 January 2009

Couple Announce Engagement In Mobile Studio

A young British couple on holiday in New Zealand have just used Tourism New Zealand’s ‘Have Your Say’ mobile film studio to announce their engagement to friends and family back home.

Kate Mills and Stuart Evans from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, broke the big news via a video diary yesterday, which was posted immediately to Tourism New Zealand’s ‘Have Your Say’ YouTube channel, as well as the couple’s Facebook pages. Watch it here at: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=XLX-PHQ2dEI.

Stuart says, “we thought it was the perfect way to let our loved ones know in person about our special news”.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton says the mobile studio is designed to capture the personal experiences of tourists in New Zealand and share them with a wider audience.

“So it’s fantastic to have this couple choose to use our studio as a way of telling their friends and family back home that they are engaged.”

The mobile studio was in Rotorua and Tauranga this week, in the third week of a nationwide tour that will visit around 40 New Zealand towns.

It is the next phase in Tourism New Zealand’s ‘What Do You Say UK?’ marketing campaign, which launched in the UK last September.

Over 220 videos have been recorded by travellers from Australia, the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada and beyond, with some videos being viewed over 250 times.

The mobile studio has already visited Auckland, Northland and the Coromandel. After Rotorua, it will visit Eastland this weekend, before arriving in Napier next Wednesday.

Tourism New Zealand is working closely with regional tourism organisations as the mobile studio makes its way around the country. The Hawkes Bay region will be showing its support with a ticker tape parade and other festivities when the studio visits Napier and Hastings next week.

With international visitor numbers expected to be down by 10 per cent this summer, it is hoped the initiative will help keep New Zealand’s profile high in the UK, New Zealand’s second largest tourist market.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton says the initiative is a cost-effective way to reach consumers and capture the value of personal recommendations.

“These days people from all walks of life are using social media to connect with people back home while they are travelling, making it a very effective way of communicating with a wide audience.

“If every clip filmed in the mobile studio is viewed by 10 friends and family back home and if 3,000 clips are filmed, that’s thirty thousand messages about New Zealand sent to our key markets.”

To view video ‘raves’ go to http://nz.youtube.com/PureNZHaveYourSay

For more information and pictures about the 100% Pure New Zealand mobile studio go to www.tourismnewzealand.com

Background

The mobile studio is the second phase of Tourism New Zealand’s ‘What Do You Say UK?’ campaign, which launched in the UK last September.

The campaign is based on research that shows word-of-mouth recommendations are among the strongest motivators for British travellers when they are thinking about a holiday in New Zealand.

The campaign is believed to be the first time a national tourism organisation has used real traveller testimonials in its advertising.

A recent poll in the UK found that the ‘What Do You Say UK?’ campaign ranked 9th for unprompted recall among viewers alongside Kellogg’s and Tesco supermarket advertisements.

The mobile studio has been created in a converted shipping container and will be transported around New Zealand on a 10-tonne flat-bed truck.

The mobile studio will be touring the country between December 12 and 30 April 2009, making around 40 stops.

Visitors’ video diary messages are hosted on a specially-created Tourism New Zealand YouTube channel, where friends and family can view them. Visitors with their own Facebook profile can opt to have the video diary hosted on that site as well.

The whole process, from filming the video diary to posting, takes about 20 minutes, meaning Tourism New Zealand can film 20 tourists per day.

Any video diaries that stand out will be used by Tourism New Zealand for future ‘What Do You Say UK?’ television commercials.

While the initiative is targeting travellers from the UK, all international visitors are welcome to record a ‘rave’. So far, videos have been recorded by visitors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Eastern Europe and South America.

Tourism New Zealand has been using YouTube to host video content since August 2007 when the organisation took over YouTube’s home page for 24-hours worldwide to launch its new 100% Pure New Zealand campaign. The television commercial has since been viewed more than 1 million times.

ENDS

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