Last Sunday I asked whether an island management job advertised in Australia was “the best job in the world”. It seems a great many people think so – so much so that the agency’s Web site was crashed by the overwhelming response! An Australian newspaper reports:
A woman has tattooed a permanent advertisement for Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef in her bid to score a $150,000 tropical island dream job.
More than 2,000 desperate job seekers have joined the queue to become Hamilton Island’s new caretaker.
Their 60-second video clips uploaded to the competition’s website show people from Mongolia, Romania, Turkey, Brazil and the Vatican bragging, begging and singing for the job.
A Queensland woman’s clips shows her visiting a tattoo parlour to have a 10-centimetre tattoo spruiking her love for the reef engraved on her arm.
YouTube comments on the video claim the tattoo is a fake, pointing out that the tattoo is not protected and the skin is not red, as it should be, after getting a tattoo.
A Greek woman promises to do laundry for every Australian if she gets the job.
A Swiss Olympian, 48-year-old ex-British Army session commander and Italian doctor are also keen for the job.
The site had by this morning received four million hits with one million unique visits, the unprecedented rush causing it to crash yesterday.
It’s expected more than 10,000 will apply by the February 22 cut-off date.
I must admit, whoever gets the job, this was an absolutely brilliant marketing idea by the Queensland Tourist Board. People all over the world are talking about it; news media in almost every country have reported on it, including photographs and video of the islands concerned; and they’ve got more publicity out of it than any advertising campaign could ever have generated. The expenses of advertising the position, and the high salary, are peanuts by comparison. I hope whoever thought this one up gets a well-deserved pat on the back for their marketing genius!
Peter