17th April 2008

1. The Ultimate New Zealand Tour!

2. Viral Marketing

3. New generic promotion DVD

4. Korean Web Campaign

5. ‘New Zealand Through My Eyes’

E-news special edition: Generic Promotion Campaigns.

The Web 2.0 promotion campaign for 2008 is underway! Over the next few months you may see aspects of the campaign online, and we will be asking you to help promote aspects of it. So we thought it was a good time to summarise what is going on!!

The overall goal of the promotion is simple - to drive traffic to www.newzealandeducated.com To do this, we are using multiple approaches, but with a common objective of spreading the message via social networks.
The campaigns are all targeted primarily at the student age demographic. We know that parents are important, and there is information relevant to them on the portal website. But young people are the major users of social networks, and in particular participate in sharing content. We want to spark their interest.

1. The Ultimate New Zealand Tour!

The posters are going up, online promotion has begun and the excitement is building…
 
This is our major current initiative. During April and May, we are running part one of a two part competition for international students. Part one gives the winning student a chance to bring a friend from anywhere in the world for the Ultimate New Zealand Tour.

There’s also an 80GB iPod to be won during each week of the competition.

So what do they have to do?

To have a chance at the ultimate tour, students need to make a music video about their study adventure in New Zealand.

We have supplied the song and some video clips all they need to add are their own pictures and videos to bring your story to life. They can even remix the song to turn it into any style they want.

And while they are doing all this, they can click through to the main site to find out more…

And Part 2? That is targeted towards offshore participants.

The interest from students is already gaining momentum and we have already seen traffic to www.newzealandeducated.com almost double since the promotion has begun.

In the next few days you will receive an ‘Ultimate NZ Tour’ newsletter which will give you details of how you can help to promote the competition.

To find out more about the contest, visit http://www.ultimateNZtour.com.

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2. Viral Marketing

There are also a number of viral targeted promotions underway. Our “get further away from your parents” viral videos will be popping up on content sharing sites like YouTube, Bebo, Facebook and elsewhere on the web. We will then leverage off these with additional content to build the viral reticulation. In addition, we will be rolling out a uniquely Kiwi widget, plus more targeted advertising on all the major social networks and youth orientated media. All this ‘guerrilla’ content has a website call to action, and is designed to prime interest and drive traffic.
Of course, much of the traffic won’t be at the point of making an offshore education decision. But our aim is to sow the seed of New Zealand as an option if and when the time comes.

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3. New generic promotion DVD

A completely new promotional DVD is currently in production that will highlight the seven New Zealand Educated brand values. This will be suitable for fairs, seminars, agents and other promotional use. Customised versions will focus on more targeted sector areas, and be suitable for movie or TV commercials.

Launch of this resource will be at the end of May…

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4. Korean Web Campaign

A market specific online generic campaign is currently underway in internet-savvy Korea. New Zealand Educated click through banners are appearing on popular websites Naver, Daum and Chosun. As a result, daily Korean visitor numbers to www.newzealandeducated.com have increased 20 fold. The second half of the generic campaign will be an online viral mini-game. The game will necessitate a visit to www.newzealandeducated.com, and should further increase Korean visitor traffic.

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5. ‘New Zealand Through My Eyes’

We also have a specific web based promotion, entitled “New Zealand Through My Eyes”, underway in China.
The promotion started with an essay competition amongst students from three of China’s top universities. Twelve winners were then chosen to open a blog about themselves and New Zealand at http://zt.blog.sohu.com/s2008/newzealand. From these twelve bloggers, six finalists were then chosen to come on a 10 day blogging tour of New Zealand. Beijing finalists were presented their certificates by the New Zealand Minister of Education, Hon. Chris Carter, during his recent trip to China.

Creating and viewing blogs are very popular pastimes in China.  Even though the bloggers’ New Zealand tour has yet to commence (April 28 to May 8), the blogs have already attracted over 150,000 visitors.

The social networking phenomenon and the importance of the Web to our target demographic give us an unprecedented opportunity to help you by getting New Zealand onto the radar of intending students. We can reach a global audience that would be impossible to reach through traditional means, via their communication mediums of choice.
However, in our view, there is no exact ‘science’ around how to best exploit the Web. Indeed, net-savvy students are not necessarily exploitable, and are suspicious of overt marketing. And the ‘hot’ networking sites and ‘cool’ content styles are changing all the time! Because of this, we are undertaking a range of initiatives aimed at different audiences – and are adapting what we are doing on an ongoing basis.

At Conference in August we will present on what we have done, what results we have had, and more importantly what we have learned that can help you with your own Web based marketing! 

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