Title	THE TOURING TOURIST
Brand	PROVINCE OF ANTWERP
Product/Service	PUBLIC SERVICE
Category	C04. Travel, Leisure & Retail (incl. e-commerce & Restaurants)
Entrant Company	DE VLOER Antwerp, BELGIUM
Advertising Agency	DE VLOER Antwerp, BELGIUM
Advertising Agency 2	PROPHETS Antwerp, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Koen Van Deun	De Vloer	Creative director
Johan Roelandt	De Vloer	Creative director
Véronique Beutels	Prophets	Account Manager
Daan Richard	Prophets	Strategy
Paul Hendrickx	Province of Antwerp	DIRECTEUR MARKETING/COMMUNICATIE
Fatima Fadili	Province of Antwerp	project leader
Hilde Verhelst	Province of Antwerp	PR
Geertrui Vanhooydonck	Province of Antwerp	webdevelopment
Raf Vorsselmans	Province of Antwerp	designer
Sam Vanallemeersch	Freelancer	Illustrator

Brief Explanation

We had to promote the summer events of the province of Antwerp to its inhabitants. Without a media budget to speak of and a target audience that was far more interested in activities abroad. So we decided to show what the province had to offer through completely new eyes. We invited an unknown Chinese girl, Zhao Dandan from across the globe to become our Touring Tourist. She had to experience every event the province hosted and talk about it through social media, providing a completely fresh way for the inhabitants of Antwerp to look at their province.

Results and Effectiveness

The campaign went far beyond the province of Antwerp as target audience. National media reported on her journey several times, arranged a segment for her in Belgium's most popular travel tv-show and she ended up meeting the royal family. In the end our campaign managed to reach 65% of all inhabitants, with a whopping 86% liking it and 69% attributing all the events to the province itself. This last result is such a big achievement that it wasn't even part of the brief. A result we never would have achieved which by a normal media strategy, considering the budget.

Creative Execution

Social media channels recorded Dandan's thoughts and activities. Bloggers and social media influencers were contacted. A second layer was added by having Dandan stay with a different host family every night, spreading the message to friends and family on social media. As Dandan's popularity grew, people checked her website, which of course contained all the activities of the province, to find out where they could meet her. This positive feedback loop resulted in the campaign growing bigger than the intended target audience with Dandan getting her own segment in a travel show on National Television and meeting the royal family.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Most inhabitants of the province know The Province of Antwerp exists as an entity but either don't know what activities and events it offers or don't care. Producing a campaign in the name of The Province of Antwerp would have fallen on deaf ears, and considering the media budget would have had hardly any reach So instead of doing a campaign we created a story about a foreign girl visiting our province and experiencing everything we're used to for the first time.