You probably heard about this – and may have even secretly applied for the job: it’s Tourism Queensland’s multiplatform ad campaign for “The Best Job in the World.” Basically, the campaign used classified job and display ads to kick off web traffic to a site advertising a dream job – hanging out on your own tropical island near Australia, and blogging about the experience. The ad campaign disguised as a reality-TV and multimedia contest has won Golden Lions at Cannes, as well as 3 Grand Prixs (Cyber, PR and Direct) for its innovative way of building an international sensation and enlisting User-Generated Content to further its message.

What’s new here is the YouTube video that shows how they conceived and executed the campaign – check it out here.  The video shows how they blended elements from several different media platforms – branded Twitter, branded Facebook, and its own YouTube channel -  to do what so many advertisers dream about: ignite a viral marketing campaign, where your users become your evangelists. Obviously, the internet is littered with notable failures to leverage the social media and sharing power of the web. The video tracks how the campaign built to the point that it attracted 35,000 video applications from more than 200 countries, as well as countless hours of “earned media” publicity in virtually every language on earth.

If you really want to feel envious, check out the blog of the lucky winner of the contest.

The larger point is that print classified ads still retain a great deal of power – and that when they are employed correctly, they can kick-start a revolution even in the newest of “New Media.” Of course, the strategies needed to successfully execute these kinds of campaigns are still more of an art than a science, and obey a totally different set of rules than ad campaigns in traditional media.

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