Australia is the spiritual home of the sickie. Piggybacking on this behaviour, we wanted to show Aussies that a spring trip over the ditch would give them the raddest snow experience ever.

We created Sick Day Stow Away.

Using the epic Queenstown ski fields as our dramatic backdrop and an Aussie comedian as our host, we showed the audience just how ‘fully siiiiick’ Queenstown is in spring, via a video brochure disguised as an entertaining instructional video on how to call in sick and stow away to Queenstown - because everyone knows that a fresh powder dump and a cheeky sick-day go hand-in-hand.

We created the following assets to drive awareness of just how epic Queenstown is in spring, and leveraged these assets via a targeted editorial and social media strategy:

• Video content: We captured an entertaining video teaching Aussies how to ‘pull a sickie’ encouraging them to use it to stow away to Queenstown and enjoy all the epic spring snow adventures

• Talent: We engaged Aussie comedian, Dan Ilic to host our video. We leveraged his social channels and offered him for media interviews discussing the video content

• Research: We conducted research to uncover Aussies’ attitudes to sick days, sparking conversations over this time honored tradition & encouraging Aussies to use it to go to Queenstown

• Spokesperson: We recruited workplace psychologist to act as independent spokesperson around Aussies love of the ‘sickie’

Like a cold, the results were catching:

• 38,765,566 opportunities to see just how epic Queenstown is in spring secured across editorial coverage

• Over 90% of editorial featured the video in full

• 1,371,454 total video views

• 1,289,402 total social engagements

• Resulting in 9.8% YOY growth in visitation from Australia in the month of launch