Ben (a Brit!) has won the best job in the world competition. The lucky bastard will now rake in USD 100,000 and blog about how awesome it is to live in paradise. Tough break, huh?
He’s got an impressive adventure laden resume, including a road trip around Africa. In fact, it looks like he’s using his Africa trip blog to blog about Queensland now. If I come across a more official Island caretaker blog then I’ll toss the link up, but in the meantime, you can follow his stay in paradise on his Afritrex blog.
I continue to have a slight obsession with the Island Reef Job, the Queensland advertisement wherein you get paid $100,000 to live in and advertise the Whitsunday Islands for 6 months. Applications closed a week and a bit ago, and now the videos of the 50 short list candidates are up. The videos are fun all around, as you might expect of 50 videos picked from 30,000, and I think it would be fun to hang out with most of these folks, they seem like fun. Check them out and make sure to vote!
Just a reminder to everyone: if you want to apply for the Whitsunday Islands caretaker possition now is the last day to do so. Just take an hour today to put together a minute long video explaining why you would be the best person to represent the Whitsunday Islands to the world, and then upload it and cross your fingers.
When I said “Best tourism ad campaign ever”, I apparently wasn’t giving the Queensland tourism association enough credit. Shortly after I put up the post and commented about the campaign on Twitter (you can follow me here), they started following me on Twitter.
Thing is, I didn’t even link to them from my Twitter comment, I linked to an article about their site being down. I guess they’re out hunting for people who are commenting about them, and working on some deeper engagement. They are certainly putting forward an impressive effort to get people to come visit.
Update: Looks like the @The_Best_Job was just one of the applicants posing as the real deal. However, though them magic that is twitter, I encountered the real Queensland tourism people: @Queensland. They are even more engaged on Twitter than that folks than the posers, and take the time to enage the community and answer questions. I’m well impressed.
Tourism Queendsland is running what may be the best ad campaign ever. They put out a few adverts and a swarm of press releases advertising the dream “job” of being an island caretaker in the Whitsunday Islands. Basically they’ll give you USD 100,000 to roam around the Islands taking pictures and making videos of how amazingly beautiful they are. The description (PDF because their site appears to be bogged down with traffic):
The role of Island Caretaker is a six-month contract, based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer. You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews. On offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.
This is a brilliant ad campaign. Just about every media outlet has picked up the story, example: BBC, CNN, AFP, etc. Even TechCrunch. You simply can’t buy that type of advertising. It’s amazing. Their website has basically been shut down from the traffic since yesterday.
Of course I encourage all of you to apply for the job. The Whitsundays are an absolute paradise. I spent just shy of a week on Pine Island with my family, and idylic doesn’t even begin to describe the sailing, deserted beaches that stretch on forever, and twisted Mangrove swamps with rays darting about. It’s well worth the 15-20 minutes it will take to get an application together for a shot at 6 months of that.
