Quinn & Co. Public Relations of New York, NY, won a Stevie Award for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in The 2009 American Business Awards

You couldn’t ask for a better client. New York City-based Quinn & Co. Public Relations was tapped by Tourism Queensland (Australia) to promote their first global marketing campaign—"The Best Job in the World"—in North America. Conceived and developed by Tourism Queensland and their ad agency CumminsNitro Brisbane, it was executed in the United States and Canada by Quinn & Co. 

The Job
The ground-breaking campaign created an international search for a real, six-month job—paying about $100,000—for an "island caretaker" to live rent free on Australia’s Hamilton Island, Queensland. The job description was for the caretaker to travel the islands of the Great Barrier Reef and to report back via video and blog to Tourism Queensland's head office and the world.  Hot, dusty work … but somebody had to do it.

Other key partners were XCom Media (digital agency) and Livingstones Australia (human resources).

The Goal
The public relations goals of the campaign were to create global consumer awareness for a minimum investment, to promote the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef as a desirable destination, and to establish the concept of "Life Above The Reef." 

The PR Campaign
The story broke with Quinn & Co.'s Reuters placement around sunrise in Australia on January 12, 2009. By breakfast time in London, AP was interviewing Tourism Queensland's UK director for a broadcast package which turned up later that day on the morning shows in the U.S.  Within two days, Tourism Queensland's monitoring service had found 1,100 TV placements in the U.S. alone.

A total of 34,684 candidates from more than 200 countries posted one-minute video applications explaining why each should be chosen as island caretaker. As of March 18, 2009, the Web site for the "Best Job in the World" (www.islandreefjob.com) had a total of 6.7 million visitors, with 26%, or 1.7 million visitors, logging in from the U.S. These totals blasted past Tourism Queensland's original goal to get 400,000 new visitors to the Web site over the course of the one-year campaign. Global interest also sparked increased visitation to all Tourism Queensland web sites and doubled monthly registrations for Tourism Queensland's Image Gallery online.

A social networking frenzy began with 336,000 Facebook-referred Web site visits, more than 3,170 @Queensland followers on Twitter, and over 338 members on the campaign's Wiki (islandreefjob.ning.com). By March 18, some 423,000 people (including 210,000 from the U.S.) had voted for their favorite top-50 finalist.

Good News
The "Best Job in the World" campaign married a great creative idea with perfect timing and execution. The campaign launched during the Northern Hemisphere winter, when many people were longing to escape the snow, and during a global economic crisis, with around 10% unemployment in the U.S. alone.

The island caretaker competition provided the media with a coveted piece of good news during a gloomy period.
 
Quinn & Co.'s work promoting "The Best Job in the World" campaign in North America continues to produce powerful exposure in the significant broadcast, print and online media, with total U.S. audience impressions equaling 627,230,154 and a growing total publicity value of over $11 million.

About the Quinn & Co. Team:
John Frazier is executive vice president of Quinn & Co. With more than 25 years' experience in travel public relations, he has won dozens of HSMAI awards including Gold, Platinum, and Best of Show (three times). John runs a highly motivated and effective travel team, helps with new business, and serves on the Executive Committee. His clients have rewarded the agency with additional business many times over. John has conducted successful PR campaigns for the following destinations: The Cancun (Mexico) Hotel Association, the "I Love New York" campaign, the State of Connecticut Tourism Division, the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, the Greater New Orleans Tourist and Convention Commission, and the Canadian Province of Newfoundland.

Melissa Braverman, account supervisor, is a creative thinker who generates top-tier coverage for travel clients. Melissa has won several HSMAI awards and was part of the dream team that garnered Quinn & Co. its second Best of Show award in 2006, for creating Starwood Caribbean's Procreation Vacation. Prior to joining Quinn & Co., Melissa worked in broadcast news for seven years, writing and producing for top outlets such as Fox News Channel, WNBC-TV, and COURT TV. She also contributed to TravelWithVal.com, a leading New York-based consumer travel web site. Melissa is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and received her Master's of Science in Journalism from Columbia University.
 
About Quinn & Co.:
Quinn & Co. is an award-winning PR firm that has made its mark in travel, real estate, and food, wine and spirits.  Quinn & Co. produces results-oriented work that is both strategic and creative, and they seamlessly integrate all communications channels:  print, broadcast, digital, and direct-to-consumer social networking.
  
Quinn & Co.’s innovative initiatives are recognized globally.  Their unique approach has resulted in a number of industry "firsts" and earned hundreds of awards, including two HSMAI Adrian Best of Show awards for best travel PR campaign of the year worldwide.  For more information go to www.quinnandco.com.

Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking of Johannesburg, South Africa, won the Stevie Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year in the Middle East and Africa in The 2009 International Business Awards.

Big Fish
Big Fish, a school of digital filmmaking based in the suburbs of Johannesburg, was founded in 2003 by Dr. Melanie Chait. Its mission is to create jobs and provide skills training for historically disadvantaged South African school-leavers who would otherwise have no access to further education.

Big Fish is the only accredited not-for-profit, Section 21 film school in South Africa. It offers world-class training in cutting-edge technology with award-winning tutors.

The film school has so far received some 2,000 applications and trained 700 people in fully sponsored courses, with an 85% employment rate for former students, and the remainder working on their own projects. And Big Fish is having a wider impact: It is bringing sustainable change and improvement to the lives of around 5,000 members of those students’ extended families.

The school’s recipe for success has been a practical hands-on approach. Students receive intensive training from an impressive list of tutors (including the likes of Gavin Hood, director of the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, and Jacques Pauw, (a  multi-award-winning special assignment producer for CNN); and at the end of their courses, students are ensured workplace experience through the efforts of a full-time Big Fish staff member whose job is solely to find the students internships and, ultimately, paying jobs.

Proof of the high quality of its courses is that the film school has won a number of awards since its founding in 2003, beating out other South African film schools with its prize-winning documentaries.

In addition to film-festival awards, Big Fish was the recipient of an “Investing in Culture” Platinum award for outstanding performance in 2008, presented by the South African Minister of Arts and Culture, Minister Z. Pallo Jordan. This prestigious award recognizes excellence in technical innovation, capacity building, and sustainability. Other awards include the Mail & Guardian award for Investing in Education and Drivers of Change, and the Impumelelo Award for innovative work in fields of poverty reduction and community development.

No other educational facility in South Africa can boast these significant achievements, let alone in the highly competitive and ever-growing world of digital production. Big Fish films are invited to festivals around the world, from China to Sweden, Zanzibar, and Kenya.

Little Pond
Big Fish’s ongoing challenges include fundraising and the need for publicity to educate the public on its work, and to help the school secure Corporate Social Investment and Corporate Social Responsibility funding. Another challenge for Big Fish is that many students applying for its courses require training in professional and life skills, and financial  and entrepreneurial skills—abilities not normally provided by an impoverished upbringing.

Thus far Big Fish has successfully managed to secure funding for accommodations, transport, and stipends in addition to making this world-class training free to committed, talented youth from all around South Africa. 

All Big Fish camera equipment is available for use by current and former students, as are the computers and editing labs.

Looking to the future, Big Fish has set up a trust company, Little Pond, which enables its former students to receive ongoing mentoring for their productions and secure their own funding as emerging filmmakers.  Big Fish is ensuring that its little fish will grow.

For more information on the school and its successes go to www.bigfish.org.za.

About Dr. Melanie Chait:
Dr. Melanie Chait is a former Fulbright Scholar who received her doctorate from Oxford University. She spent many years in England where she worked as an award-winning TV political documentary filmmaker covering stories in Eastern Europe, Central America, the Pacific Rim, and, clandestinely, her native South Africa, where she was Persona Non Grata until this status was withdrawn in 1995.

That same year, Dr. Chait returned to South Africa to take up the position of special advisor to the Group Chief Executive at the South African Broadcasting Company. She established a department focusing on program policy, planning, and co-productions.  It was during that time that she became aware that world-class film training was not available in South Africa for disadvantaged youth, and started researching the viability of a film school. In 2003, she launched the Film & TV Unit at Monash University’s South Africa campus. In 2007 the department set itself up as an independent NGO and became Big Fish, the fully accredited film school.

SchoolDude.com, the U.S.A.'s leading provider of on-demand operations management solutions designed exclusively for the unique needs of schools, colleges and universities, won the Stevie Award for Front-line Customer Service Team of the Year in the 2008 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Started in 2000, SchoolDude.com now has more than 4,000 clients.

We recently spoke with Joan Maddox, VP-Client Services with the company, about how the firm began, what it does, and how she's built its customer service department into a world-class operation.

Joan will be one of the final judges for the 2009 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

		Listen to the Podcast Interview with Joan Maddox of SchoolDude.com ...

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