(1) As part of the campaign to promote travel to Australia, we featured Ian Thorpe, the Australian Holiday Ambassador to Japan, for advertising, while introducing the refreshing experiences available in Australia. In particular, by using pictures of young women vacationing in Australia, we planned to stimulate the desire of female office workers (our main targets) to travel throughout Australia and encourage them to make this desire a reality. We also offered an open prize to enhance a sense of participation among readers.

(2) The strength of newspaper advertising is that it lets us communicate our messages not only to primary targets, but to a wide range of people. We expect advertising to inform readers of the charms of Australia, while actually increasing travel demand. Another advantage of newspaper advertising is that it encourages readers to visit our official website which help expand the impact of the ads.

(3) We chose The Asahi Shimbun because of its upscale audience and market penetration. Moreover, “be on Saturday” edition lets us place color ads in the national edition within a limited budget, which also appealed to us.

(4) One month after the advertisement was placed, we received more than 18,000 applications by postcard, on the Web site, or via Internet-connected cellular phone. One week after it was placed, we also received almost 1,000 applications for the book “Travel Australia” (containing information on Australia for tourists). Although external factors such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) have adversely affected the overseas travel market, the response was greater than expected.

Yukiko Takayama
Marketing Communications Manager