World

27 June 2016

One of Tourism Australia’s most innovative recent tourism campaigns has received international recognition at this year’s prestigious Cannes Lions Advertising Awards.

Australia’s national tourism organisation picked up three awards for its GIGA Selfie promotion, which involved the world’s largest selfie service being offered to travellers in two of the country’s most popular and iconic destinations:

• Gold in the Cyber - Tangible Tech category
• Bronze for Direct Use of Ambient Media - Large Scale 
• Bronze in Mobile - Social Trends

Tourism Australia Managing Director John O’Sullivan said it was the first time a Tourism Australia campaign had been recognised at Cannes. “Global tourism is a highly competitive marketplace which means we are always looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate to potential travellers why they should visit Australia over other rival destinations.

“The selfie has become an integral and almost essential part of many people’s travel experience today and, with our GIGA Selfie campaign, I think we managed to take social media advocacy to a whole new level,” he said.

The Giga Selfie idea originated out of Tourism Australia’s Japan office, working alongside Tokyo creative agency TBWA\HAKUHODO. Using ground-breaking camera technology, giant selfies taken of Japanese travellers on the Gold Coast’s Main Beach were shared on social media and generated extensive coverage around the world.

A few months later, Tourism Australia teamed up with Canon and the City of Sydney to repeat the GIGA Selfie promotion in Sydney, as part of the 2016 Lunar New Year celebrations. This time Sydney harbour was used as the iconic backdrop for travellers to be captured in the mega-sized selfie.

Cannes Lions is the most coveted accolade in creative services industry, this year receiving more than 40,000 submissions across 23 categories.