Over 150,000 Australians visited New Zealand last winter. However, Tourism New Zealand has struggled to target the youth market. Our brief was to encourage young Australian travellers to be advocates for the New Zealand South Island snow season. We needed to increase the number of visitors to newzealand.com.

Knowing that current travellers to New Zealand rely on their mobiles to stay in touch with friends and family, we wanted an idea that worked with their normal behaviour and allowed those travellers to share the beauty of the country with their networks. To connect with young, mobile-savvy Australians we needed to tap into their existing mobile habits and innovate.

NZdronie is a selfie, shot with a drone, which captures the landscape and promotes New Zealand instantaneously.

We launched the idea on Australia’s morning TV show, “Sunrise”, and released our campaign idea to influential bloggers and news sites. The campaign then went live to the public on the slopes of New Zealand.

A Phantom II DJI drone fitted with a GoPro Hero 3+ camera, along with an operator, travelled to ski fields and places of interest for the two months of the ski season. We covered the South Island including Coronet Peak, Cardrona, Mount Hutt, Mount Cook, Queenstown and Lake Tekapo.

Travellers were encouraged to take an NZdronie for free and share that on their social networks with the hashtag #NZdronie. The best shared NZdronie of the day won prizes that included activities to experience more of the area.

Almost every tourist with a phone takes selfies. But selfies don’t show off the scale of New Zealand’s beauty. And we can’t force people to share their photos either.

To connect with young, mobile-savvy Australians we needed to tap into their existing mobile habits and innovate.

NZdronie is a selfie, shot with a drone, which captures the landscape and promotes New Zealand instantaneously.

Using innovative drone-based tech, NZdronie videos could be shared on social networks immediately via their mobile, turning travellers into our media broadcasters.

The campaign had a total reach of over 405.5 million with a social reach of over 36 million across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. There were over 124,000 visits to the ski hub on newzealand.com.

We garnered nearly 90 pieces of earned editorial coverage, across international news in titles such as the Daily Mail, Mashable, Telegraph and Huffington Post, and News Corp, mX, Yahoo and Pedestrian TV in Australia, creating a possible 369 million opportunities to see the campaign.

And, most rewarding, was the 7% increase in holiday arrivals across both Queenstown and Christchurch.