PLAY NZ: How to gamify a country and playfully disrupt tourism marketing

TBWA’s Matthew Moran offers a walkthrough of Tourism New Zealand’s PLAY NZ campaign and explores how tourism marketing can embrace new ways of storytelling.

The allure of experiencing the wonders of the world from the comforts of home has been a pipedream since the creation of the stereoscope back in the 1850s. Worldly aristocrats would return from their travels with black and white images inserted into a clunky wooden viewfinder that would project a 3D image – in their heyday, it was touted as a 'virtual tourism experience'. It was almost as if they could capture a piece of their travels to share with friends and family forever.

The distant dream of ‘virtual travel’ has enticed us for centuries. But it sparks...

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