Most of the English speaking world has heard about the “Island reef Job” or “The Best Job in the World” contest run by Tourism Queensland in Australia. The promotion has been heralded as one of the greatest marketing phenomenon ever and initially appeared so.

Well it is more than a well crafted promotion. It is a HOAX.

The winner was already determined before the contest even opened. David Whitehill and his agency Creative Representation are in league with Tourism Queensland and Cummins Nitro in designing this hoax. It was loosely based on the current crop of reality shows currently on TV. Sort of a survivor / big brother blend except the winner was already decided before Christmas in 2008!

Unfortunately for them the contest side of the promotion grew out of control when the world media ran with the initial story. Thousands of media outlets and tens of thousands unsuspecting applicants inundated the poorly designed TQ operation. Some folks have spent significant resources providing video (estimate $30 – 20 million in total) and media outlets have to this date (March 4, 2009) provided ($80 million) in free publicity! “For a $US1.8 million ($NZ3.6 million) campaign we have received nearly $US80 million in publicity,” said Ms Boyle (State of Queensland Minister of Tourism).

The applicants who put their heart and soul into this hoax are very angry about this revelation. The millions of viewers are disappointed. The media outlets have expressed disbelief as to their gullibility.

After viewing the top50 and looking up David Hill’s cult status in Queensland the hoax becomes obvious. David is miles ahead of the selected top50 applications. That and the obvious bias for less than 30 years of age crowd were also given away to the selection process plan. A few of the top50 videos were over the 60 second rule that caused some applicants so much grief. One top50 video from China didn’t even have any spoken English. The real big clue to the hoax was that the final winner is ultimately to be decided by Tourism Queensland. This will allow for David Hill to be given the work and use it as a launching pad for his acting career.

The Queensland people will accept this much better now that a local boy is keeping the cash in the area.

“There were rumours of a hoax from the beginning.” Michael Branagh, boss of Cummins Nitro’s Brisbane office said he was delighted with the success of the project which had generated huge amounts of worldwide publicity. He said the video was put on the site to “seed” it and AAP had only itself to blame for being fooled. He said: “Bad luck to them. They should have known better.”

Caitlin’s last blog post..Photo Friday: Queen Elizabeth’s hunting lodge