Stories Beat Stuff campaign wraps with final video released

Six experiences, 20 youth travellers and a whole lot of sharing via social media has seen Tourism New Zealand's unique 'Stories Beat Stuff' (SBS) youth campaign wrap its activity for 2012 - reaching 989,000 views.
Run entirely on-line, the campaign challenged the influential youth market to give up their most prized possessions for the chance to win a trip to New Zealand and the travel stories of a lifetime.

Each trip was captured on video and documented through the blog posts of the winners on the campaign pages of newzealand.com - fully integrated with all digital and social media channels to enable sharing with friends and the wider youth market.

Tourism New Zealand's '100% Pure' facebook page has received an additional 61,000 direct 'likes' as a result of the SBS campaign.  The final-wrap videos on YouTube have also seen higher than average engagement rates and viewers staying an average of 18 minutes on the site.

"The videos offer a uniquely personal view of the New Zealand experience for the youth traveller - showing them just how fun and popular a place it can be as we work to change their pre-travel perceptions and grow arrivals," says Justin Watson, Tourism New Zealand's General Manager Marketing Communications.

Leveraged using Tourism New Zealand's social media platforms, the Stories Beat Stuff campaign has resonated strongly with the youth market.

"Throughout the campaign we worked to develop a library of resources to engage with the market in a way they could relate to using social media. Reaching almost one million views tells us we have got this right - and achieving this viewership is a great achievement."

The six videos show viewer's first-hand just how cool a trip to New Zealand can be.
"Ultimately we want to inspire viewers to book their trip to experience it for themselves," says. Justin.

The last group of youth travellers - winners of the City Splendour experience - experienced their own story of a lifetime, enjoying inner city spoils by morning and discovering the great outdoors by afternoon. During their two weeks travelling between Auckland, Wellington, Marlborough, Christchurch and Dunedin they wrote about their time here - uploading photos and sharing their stories with their friends.

With the final wrap video added to the SBS Youtube page, the Stories Beat Stuff campaign is wrapped up leaving a raft of user generated material that will feature heavily in future Youth market activity.