New Zealand is a small isolated nation at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean with an economy that heavily relies on tourism.

Through a Reddit thread (r/MapsWithoutNZ), we discovered that our country was being left off world maps, with over 25k subscribers sharing thousands of examples of maps missing NZ – from products like wall maps at Ikea, Starbucks murals, company logos, and scenes in popular movies and TV shows.

While this could be considered a nightmare scenario for New Zealand tourism, we saw this as an opportunity to promote New Zealand as a tourist destination.

Objective: Increase travel consideration to New Zealand from Tourism New Zealand’s key international markets (USA, Australia, United Kingdom and Europe), while overcoming our main travel barrier of being so isolated that we’re off the radar as a travel destination.

Our idea was to create a social campaign that turned the unfortunate issue of New Zealand being left off world maps into a global conspiracy, suggesting jealousy as the reason for other countries’ leaving us off the map.

Fronted by New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and one of our country’s most popular actors, Rhys Darby, our social film light-heartedly made this issue a matter of national importance and brought attention to some of NZ’s key tourist attributes that the world may be jealous of.

We then encouraged viewers to help put us back on the map, by sharing all the great reasons to visit our country using the hashtag #getNZonthemap.

Our target audience were based in Tourism NZ’s key markets (USA, Australia, United Kingdom and Europe) who may have heard of New Zealand, but presumed it was too far away to visit.

Rather than relying on the typical tourist themes of landscapes and activities, our strategy was to rally the world behind their love of a small nation.

Through a simple hashtag (#getNZonthemap), we gave past visitors and advocates the global stage to endorse NZ as a place that shouldn’t be forgotten about, and call out brands that have left NZ off maps.

To increase relevance with our audience, we fronted our campaign with NZ’s Prime Minister and actor Rhys Dsrby, who both have captive social followings across Tourism NZ’s key markets.

To spark social conversation, we scripted our social film to light-heartedly point fingers at our key markets, suggesting they were particularly jealous of what NZ has to offer.

Our social campaign was entirely centred around one single 2-3 minute social film.

With $0 media spend, to generate mass social reach we launched our social film via the personal Facebook accounts of our talent – NZ’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and actor, Rhys Darby.

Knowing their combined popularity in Tourism NZ’s key international markets meant that we were confident of an initial burst of attention.

But our next phase was entirely user-generated, relying on our social film’s call-to-action to ‘Help us #getNZonthemap’ to spark advocates for our country to continue our campaign.

Both the social film and hashtag generated the awareness about New Zealand missing off world maps, but also ignited the right social conversation about why New Zealand should be on everyone’s radar as a travel destination.

- $0 Media Spend

- $10 Million Worth of Earned Media

- 11 Million+ Organic Views Worldwide (and counting)

- 1.3 BILLION Total Reach

- 66:1 Return on Investment

With $0 PR and media spend, our single video captured the attention of the world through purely organic social sharing and media pickup.

New Zealand instantly became headline news with earned media from multiple leading news publications across Tourism New Zealand’s key international markets: USA (New York Times, Fox News, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Conde Nast Travel), UK (BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph), Australia (Sydney Morning Herald, Mashable, Lonely Planet, Sunrise Breakfast), Europe (EuroNews, Business Insider, Le Monde, Berliner Zeitung). And many, many more.