ASIA-PACIFIC – CHINA, APRIL 30, 2012: To invite the Chinese community to visit Australia, Tourism Australia in China recently launched its online drama five-part series called "Heartbeat again" that starring Taiwanese heartthrobs, Show Lo and Rainie Yang.
The five-part series of ten-minute episodes was filmed in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania in Australia. The love drama launched exclusively on Tudou, aims to tug the heartstrings of more than 500 million Chinese netizens. The stars who feature in the series have a combined following of more than 25million fans on online channels and micro-blogging sites.
“Show Lo and Rainie Yang are extremely popular within Greater China. Their appeal, magnified through this new online drama series, will create a great platform for us to promote the very best of Australia,” Andrew McEvoy, Tourism Australia managing director said. “This campaign is another example of the power of advocacy through social media and digital platforms in tourism marketing, allowing us to reach an international audience through the web which they are actively using to plan and book holidays.”
“Tapping into strong cultural insights that Chinese consumers love drama and romance, will pull weight and eyeballs. Allowing these viewers to also actively engage with the online drama will further drive action and influence. Igniting word-of-mouth through the power of Six Degrees, is what we at DDB strongly believe in,” said Leo Chu, managing director of Tribal DDB Shanghai.
DDB China group aims to engage audiences to play with, participate in and pass on content that will promote Australia in a more romantic and touching way. The agency’s role was to create engagement via the online campaign site on Tudou, which is where the first episode of the series is released. There will be an episode released every week for the next four weeks. Audiences can also watch behind the scenes and vignettes of travel destinations that explore Australia’s iconic places in more depth.
Users can participate by answering two questions from each episode that relates to the drama and Australia, audiences will receive an e-postcard and be entitled for a weekly draw to win ts and souvenirs from Tourism Australia. Audiences are encouraged to watch all five episodes to answer all questions correctly to vie for the Grand Prize Draw (Six round trip air tickets to Australia).
The campaign encourages active sharing of the online drama & e-postcard each week within Weibo or other social networks to increase users’ chances of winning the grand prizes.
Credits:
Campaign: Tourism Australia Online Drama Campaign
Client: Tourism Australia
Creative Agency: DDB & Tribal DDB Shanghai – DDB China Group
Creative: Chris Jones, Kevin Chiu, Eggie Huang, Ever Song, Lynn Li.
Account Management: Margaret Wu, Stefanie Liew, JC Wu
