The Best Job in the World video

In 2009, Tourism Queensland launched a campaign to promote the world famous Great Barrier Reef to the world. The idea was to create "The Best Job In The World", which officially a caretaker position for six months on beautiful Hamilton Island. Duties included promoting the reef through blogging, photo diaries, and web videos. Benefits included sizable renumeration, free accomodation in an expensive villa, and transportation to the Hamilton Island and other islands in the Whitsunday Group.

Applicants were asked to create a web video outlining why they should be considered for the job. With 34,000 applications received from over 200 countries it was a huge success with world media picking up the story and broadcasting it on news channels the world over. The web site hosting the competition even crashed following the launch due to high traffic.

Once the applications were viewed, sixteen finalists were chosen and these candidates were flown to Hamilton Island and interviewed. The winner was Ben Southall aged 34 from the UK.

At the end of the campaign, it was estimated that $200 million dollars in world wide publicity for Tourism Queensland had been generated. The company behind the campaign was CumminsNitro an advertising agency from Brisbane. They won three awards at Cannes International Advertising Festival.