After a long, tourism industry crippling COVID-induced lockdown, Fiji reopened its borders in December 2021. But after two years of health fears and bureaucratic red tape, Australians were still wary about travelling overseas and had lost the habit of jumping on an overseas flight to go on vacation. By the time Australian 2022 winter came around in June/July, travellers were starting to feel more positively disposed, but Fiji was far from the only destination vying for their attention. Pretty much every South Pacific destination as well as other traditional Aussie favourites like Bali were bombarding would-be holiday makers with images of blue skies, turquoise water and white sandy beaches. Our task therefore was to cut through the barrage of picture postcard destination advertising and get Fiji firmly on the vacation consideration list for affluent busy professional Australians.

Travel and tourism advertising has traditionally relied on beautiful destination photography. But with a raft of beautiful destinations bombarding our audience with typical postcard images, we knew that to cut-through, we needed to take a different approach. We knew that in the Australian states of NSW and Victoria, the colder winter months are a key period when people spend time researching and booking holidays. And these days, when it comes to booking holidays, a digital calendar is a ubiquitous part of the process. So we used the digital calendar as the blank canvas on which to create a collection of Fijian holiday landscapes. We coloured the graphic time and day “blocks” of the calendar and used them as the components to build scenes that ranged from classic beach landscapes to sunset infinity pool settings, tropical fish, sailboats, and even a traditional Fijian Kava bowl.

Pre-COVID, Fiji was one of Australia’s favourite winter-time holiday destinations, so our audience was already familiar with what the country has to offer them. The challenge was to cut through and get them to pay attention to Fiji by speaking to them in a different way - beyond the white sand and turquoise “wallpaper” they were being bombarded with. This campaign ran mid winter in the Australian states of NSW and Victoria, where the weather at that time of year is often pretty miserable by Australian standards.