Try before buying: Tourism Victoria applies concept in real time

This May, Tourism Victoria gave all avid travellers, a chance to re-discover Melbourne through their interactive 'Remote Control' campaign. The idea was to show an entirely new side of Melbourne, that may have not been unearthed before.

Aim of the campaign was to make visitors realise that there was so much more to Melbourne than the city they already knew. The campaign was to redirect the flow of tourists from New Zealand and other Australian cities to Melbourne.

Remote Control tourists gave social media users a virtual peek in Melbourne applying the classic retail theory of trying a product before actually purchasing it.

Remote Controlled Pathway

In 40 hours over 5 days, two participants of remote controlled tourist travelled across Melbourne to discover the city. Each of their movements was live broadcasted on web in real time with the help of helmet bound cameras, GPS trackers and other live streaming technology equipments.

Every imaginable apple you can think of .@sthmelmarket #melbourneRCT fruit & veg @jenmartin pic.twitter.com/9lbJOojvnq

— Andy Martin (@andymartin) November 16, 2013

#MelbourneRCT Please go to Blue Corn Mexican in StKilda http://t.co/UkGIfZ3wCY

— Winneth Sotingco (@Winneth) October 13, 2013

grab a flower and give it to the next person you see #MelbourneRCT http://t.co/8UPlNZM27N

— Vincent Loo (@VincentLoo1993) October 13, 2013

please please please take a selfie with the Astor guy #legend #MelbourneRCT http://t.co/XFYQgztD85

— Andy (@andream75) October 13, 2013

The unique part - as their movements were being shown in real time, the viwers could send out instructions via a specific micro site and social media channels. These tourist were being 'remote controlled' via tweets/posts form the audience. They were being told which places they should visit, the kind of activities that need to be undertaken and also asked to interact with the locals on the user's behalf.

This 5 day journey was not pre-planned and was open to recommendations from the audience. The local council was informed about the campaign, prior to the journey. This campaign is also the second phase of the 'play Melbourne' campaign, where visitors were rewarded for their increasing curiosity of the city.

Memories

The campaign exceeded its target on the website front with more than 143,000 visitors to the micro site. On the digital front, the campaign received 12000 mentions,  about 53 million Twitter impressions worldwide, 7.9 million Facebook impressions and the sentiment across social media channels was observed to be 96% positive.

According to findings of the campaign, the ability to control and observe experiences via social media can create powerful and meaningful emotional connections.