Title	THE TOURING TOURIST
Brand	THE 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	web development
Raf Vorsselmans	Province of Antwerp	designer
Sam Vanallemeersch	Freelancer	Illustrator

The Brief

The province of Antwerp had to promote its range of summer activities to its inhabitants on a shoestring budget, with hardly any media. To make matters worse, most Belgians are more excited about summer activities abroad than those close to home. We used our budget to have someone experience what we had to offer with fresh eyes. We invited an unknown Chinese girl, from across the globe to become our Touring Tourist. Instead of a typical promo campaign we got our message across by telling the story of a young girl visiting a strange country.

Campaign Success

There was no budget for a classic media campaign or a targeted online media campaign. So we created a story that would get people interested and generate its own buzz. 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. Our campaign felt real, human and heartwarming and not like your average promotional campaign at all.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The campaign went far beyond the inhabitants of the province of Antwerp as target audience. National media reported on her journey several times, proposed and 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. A result we never would have achieved with your average media reach (pretty much zero considering the budget) and without the storytelling content strategy. Don't believe us? If you're judging in Antwerp, go out and ask some of the people you meet about "Dandan, de Chinese Toerende Toerist" (our Chinese Touring Toerist)

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

To get the inhabitants of our province excited about its summer events again, we invited a pair of fresh eyes, an unknown Chinese girl, Zhao Dandan from across the globe to become our Touring Tourist. A completely different approach to get people both interested in and to our events. Dandan’s mission: to experience every single event the province had to offer and talk, blog, tweet and instagram about it to the rest of Antwerp. Each night of her stay Dandan was hosted by a different local family. The content Dandan provided was picked up by all major media in Flanders with Dandan’s trip even ending as a segment in a popular travel show. Her journey was broadcasted several times as news as well. On radio, TV and in newspaper. Instead of the requested ad campaign, we told the story of a girl visiting our province for the first time.