When Wellington NZ (Government Tourism body) briefed Bauer Media on a campaign to build awareness of Wellington through a food lens and drive consideration of the New Zealand capital as a weekend destination, it was obviously pre-Covid – and a story we were excited to continue to tell after our successful collaboration a year earlier.
Leveraging the power of Gourmet Traveller’s food- and travel-obsessed audience, plus our reach of W25-54 (the target audience), our award-winning Sales and Story54 teams set about crafting a video-led strategy to inspire a wild weekend in Wellington.
THE IDEA
We recognised that food was a defining factor in driving travel hotspots (a word that, again, had a different meaning pre-Covid). Food could create or contribute to the overall image of a destination and more than ever, people were travelling specifically and solely for food. They were immersing themselves in destinations; getting a taste of the place through unique, local and authentic food.
From these insights, we landed on the idea ‘For the Gourmet Forager’ positioning Wellington as a must-visit culinary destination with a wealth of produce to explore.
The hero execution of the digitally-led campaign was a series of 4 x 60” native videos featuring NZ-born chef, Ben Shewry. The ‘Wild Weekends in Wellington’ video series (a nod to the abundance of exciting produce available there) would be released fortnightly as part of a Create Once Publish Everywhere (COPE) strategy.
Shrewy, head chef and owner of Attica, is a passionate advocate for sustainable and responsible sourcing of produce, and is a strong believer in the philosophy that food has a deeper meaning. As such, we felt he was the perfect storyteller for our four-part video series profiling the best food that Wellington has to offer.
The four videos were shared on Gourmet Traveller’s website – in native articles – and also amplified via organic and paid Gourmet Traveller, Country Style and The Australian Women’s Weekly social posts to drive awareness at scale within the relevant target audience.
Images captured on location were used within the native articles, as well as in Gourmet Traveller DPS advertorials in print and Solus eDMs across multiple Bauer Media brands.
The campaign also included a premium visual story, which served as a digital content hub profiling Wellington producers, featuring an interactive map and showcasing some of Wellington’s best places to eat, drink and taste with a teaser video to entire readers to book their own wild weekend in Wellington.
RESULTS
Mid-campaign reporting indicates that the four videos have collectively had 140,364 video views (over-delivery on the 80,000 guaranteed video views by 56%). The amplified video posts have a social engagement rate of 16.23% with videos 1-3 receiving 65,559 interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves etc.) on amplified YouTube and Instagram posts. The mid-campaign social reach, at the end of March, was 887,158.
The client was thoroughly delighted with the videos and the combined effort to bring them to life.
“A massive thanks to the whole team again as well, the work is just beautiful, the best campaign I have ever worked on!” Jessica Van Arts – Senior Marketing Manager,
Marketing and Communications | WellingtonNZ