General News
1 July, 2023
'Different Light' among best 2023 campaigns
Locals have long known that the Wimmera Mallee is a pretty special place. Now the region’s promotional work is being hailed as some of the best in Australia as well. ‘Adventures In A Different Light’, the latest campaign highlighting the...
Locals have long known that the Wimmera Mallee is a pretty special place.
Now the region’s promotional work is being hailed as some of the best in Australia as well.
‘Adventures In A Different Light’, the latest campaign highlighting the Wimmera Mallee’s abundant attractions, has been shortlisted in the prestigious national Mumbrella Travel Marketing Awards.
The campaign - described as “a love letter to the region” - is a finalist in the Best Use of Content category of this year’s awards, which will be presented in Sydney on August 17.
“This award recognises the best work carried out on behalf of brands involved in marketing themselves through the creation of content,” Wimmera Mallee Tourism marketing and project officer Georgia Bennett said.
“The application was submitted by Arthur St Digital, which was engaged to lead, develop and produce a tourism campaign for the Wimmera Mallee region.
“To say we’re stoked would be an understatement.
“This campaign was ‘a love letter to the region’ and it is beyond exciting to see this work recognised on the main stage alongside the best in the biz.”
Wimmera Mallee’s competition for the 2023 award includes some of the biggest players on the Australian travel scene, including Tourism Australia, the City of Melbourne and Tourism Western Australia.
“To have the Wimmera Mallee region presented and recognised at this level is an incredible achievement,” Ms Bennet said.
To produce the campaign, Arthur St Digital (based in North Geelong) worked in collaboration with True South Film, Chris McConville, 4thwall.imaging and Superbold to create a series of videos, a suite of photographs, postcards for visitors to share, a brand update tailored to the general public, and itineraries for specific market segments such as young families, nature enthusiasts and young creatives.
“A competition was also used as a tool to increase exposure and engagement with the campaign,” Ms Bennett said.
“Additionally, Arthur St created a series of webinars to help businesses to develop their digital marketing knowledge and skills.”
Ms Bennet said Wimmera Mallee Tourism was thankful to all five partners for their input into the campaign.
“We acknowledge their dedication and passion in their work to produce such a spectacular outcome for our region,” she said.
“It’s an absolute honor to have worked alongside such a talented and dedicated group of individuals on Adventures In A Different Light.”
Arthur St Digital director Matt Cowdell in turn thanked both Ms Bennett and former Wimmera Mallee Tourism executive officer Kristy Witmitz for “inspiring us to do things differently”.
Ms Witmitz, who now manages Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat, said it was “no mean feat to be shortlisted for the Mumbrella Travel Marketing Awards in a usual circumstance, let alone when you’re a crew from across rural and regional Victoria, working in a region that is better known for broad-scale ag, B&S balls and beaut utes”.
“Working in this context doesn’t simply present the challenges of having to completely bust through tired misconceptions of an entire region, grapple with a baseline of near-zero market awareness or drill down to identify niche segments to enable a relevant value exchange in an underdeveloped patch (with no research budget), it also means engaging person to person among a breadth of different communities, each fighting with blind passion for their town or paddock,” Ms Witmitz said.
“No project flies to success without community buy-in in this world.”
Since its launch in March, Adventures In A Different Light has been hugely successful, reaching more than 1.8 million people across digital marketing platforms and attracting more than 2000 competition entries through the use of highly targeted advertising on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google.