INSIGHT

After years as Australia’s leading destination marketing brand, Tourism & Events Queensland saw its social and digital performance decline across key platforms including Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. This was driven by outdated content processes + creative and an imbalance in paid media investment and optimisation.

BACKGROUND

Consumer research shows that highly produced branded content is often perceived as less authentic and less relatable. At the same time, social media has become the fastest-growing and most influential channel for travel inspiration and decision-making, creating a major opportunity for brands to rethink how they show up.

STRATEGY

Queensland needed to reconnect with its core brand promise: delivering the feeling of a holiday. Instead of competing with category norms that focus on polished “travel advertising,” or trying to be everything to everyone, the strategy shifted toward showing Queensland as a real, lived-in, and authentically experienced destination with key differentiators.

This required a clear focus on defining what authentic, everyday content looks like across both organic and paid channels, and how it can consistently expresses the brand in a way that feels native to social platforms.

EXECUTION

The program began with a full social audit, followed by a clearly defined content and channel strategy built around strong content pillars and a social-first budget approach - a huge shift away from a traditional marketing content production budget, including investment in social-first content partnerships.

Key initiatives included improving asset efficiency, building a scalable content library, integrating events as a core content driver (not an outliar), prioritising social-first ad creative, refreshing the visual look and feel, developing a creator network, and establishing a sustained pipeline of social-first content production and producers.

RESULTS

• Point 0 reclaiming number 1 Australian tourism brand for travel

• Point 1 about paid metrics increase

• Point 2 about consumer research results

• Point 3 about increase average engagement

• Point 4 event engagement top performance

• Point 5 became top x 3 for tourism competitors

• Point 6 reduced production costs and efficencies