In 2013, the global media began to point to smartphone overuse or misuse as a growing social problem.

But whilst many seemed to acknowledge the problem, no one was doing anything to solve it. So Australia’s Sunshine Coast stepped up to the plate, and in the process, generated a story that raised awareness of the Sunshine Coast in almost every corner of the planet.

To increase awareness of the Sunshine Coast as a place which enables visitors to “make the most of the moment”, we created the Sunshine Coast’s Smartphone Code of Conduct.

Developed in conjunction with “The School of Life’s” Dr Tom Chatfield, the code consists of seven simple behaviours designed to make holiday makers focus less on their smartphone and more on their holiday.

To genuinely start changing behaviour, we needed to integrate the code into the visitor experience, so we built a coalition of local businesses, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions. They displayed the code and introduced phone-free ‘Unplugged Zones’ in their experiences to encourage visitors to put down their phone and enjoy their holiday.

Without any budget for paid media, PR was the sole mass awareness driver for the campaign. We broke the story in early general news, and soon a torrent of local and global media coverage followed.

We generated 1.3 billion global PR impressions across five continents - that’s 1.299 Billion over target, resulting in a 50:1 ROI. Visitor numbers also rose by 8.7%.

We worked with ‘The School of Life’s’ technology expert, Dr Tom Chatfield to develop the Sunshine Coast’s Smartphone Code of Conduct.

The code offers seven behaviours encouraging people to alter ingrained smartphone dependency through small, incremental changes.

We integrated the code into the visitor experience by building a coalition of local tourist operators. They displayed the code across a multitude of touch points, and many introduced smartphone free zones. Mooloolaba’s “Underwater World” even trained a seal to take a smartphone from the audience and drop it in a bucket.

To ensure widespread reach, we broke the story in Australian TV early general news. The next day, all national and state Australian print news picked it up, followed by all major online news, bloggers and radio. John Laws – a notoriously cynical Australian radio personality even endorsed the campaign. In the days that followed, the story got picked up across five continents.

7,604 individual 200-word scenes were written, entered and shared via Facebook and Instagram.

602,289 organic Facebook interactions

7.4 million Facebook impressions presented the Whitsundays as movie-worthy and therefore holiday-worthy

8.14 million PR impressions in mainstream media channels.

We exceeded our overall awareness target by 57%

The latest Whitsundays visitor figures show an increase of 8.9%

As the campaign closed, a Hollywood scriptwriter and the Australian public had created the world’s first crowd-sourced movie storyboard, and a story universe with millions of possible story permutations.