A recent campaign by Tourism Queensland (TQ)  titled Best Job in the World, has received international acclaim. 

View the TQ ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign website
 

It was an ingenious campaign, and really quite a simple concept. A ridiculously cool job to live on one of Australia’s most picturesque islands was ‘advertised’ by Tourism Queensland.  Because the job was dripping in awesomeness, those of us with dreary jobs (I’m guessing that 90% of the population) stumbled across the job of all jobs while cruising employment websites, through newspaper advertisements, and consequently, from friends via email saying “how cool is this job - I wish I was doing this instead of sitting in front of this freakin computer right now”

You see, the beauty of this campaign, is that is wasn’t really perceived as an advertisement at all by the general public, but more as the opportunity of a lifetime.  Any advertising campaign that can achieve this public perception is going to be a success.  

Ok, so that is lesson 1 - turn your viral campaigns into enviable opportunities, and you will reap the results.

But brace yourself, because lesson 2 take ingenius up a notch.

Based on the success of the Best Job in the World campaign, and the fact that a large percentage of the general public were aware of this campaign (every day I would hear people around me saying “have you heard about that cool job in North Queensland…maaaan, how good would that be!), a very smart spin-off was born.

The Worst Job in the World.   This smart Brazilian firm have struck while the iron is hot, and although it’s definitely a tongue-in-cheek mock interview, it’s a campaign that capitalises on a concept that I’m sure TQ would have spent hundreds of thousands of Aussie dollars putting into place. Ingenius….and down-right amusing…check it out in the YouTube clip below:

So inclusion, and at risk of repeating myself, lesson 1 when conceiving ideas for viral campaigns, is to try turning your viral campaigns into enviable opportunities, and you will reap the results.

And lesson 2? If you have a limited budget, limited resources, or limited imagination…..why not try simply flipping a popular existing advertising message upside down.  At the very least, you’ll have fun in the process!

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

A very quick post to let you know that today I discovered a nifty little piece of functionality hidden amongst Google’s Image search parameters - that allows you to search Google Images by colour.

To search Google Images by colour, visit the site below, and scroll down the page until you see the gray form (alternatively, if you’re feeling a little bit geeky, instead of using the form you can follow the instructions which involve appending a bit of text to the Google search URL - but this reeks of unnecessary effort to me!). Either way, click on the link below to find out more….

" target="_blank">Click here to check out the Google Image search form.

The form allows you to enter your search term, and select your desired colour/s.  Once you hit the “Search” button,  magically, only images of your selected colour will appear. Amazing!   That picture of a pink elephant you’ve been seeking for months can now be found in an instant….

Credit for this discovery goes to Blogscoped.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

Although it may be a little dated (particularly since we live in an era where  ’cool’ becomes defunct in a matter of minutes), the Time Magazine Top 50 Websites for 2008 is well worth checking out.

Be aware, Time is written and published in the USA, so the list reflects US internet usage.

A couple of my favourites from the Time Top 50 Websites of 2008 are :
Wikitravel - an online travel wiki which is becoming an absolute wealth of travel related information, updated by real people rather than the biased information that is found in many other travel websites

iliketotallyloveit.com - a site that measures the popularity of cool new products, via a user rating system

….and who could forget our trusty friend tinyurl.com - the handy online tool that shrinks those nasty, overly-elongated URLs down to something more managable

 Link to this page

 Link to this page