Winternships: Turning Tasmania’s Off Season Into the Hottest Content Opportunity in Travel

Campaign and Content Design, Consumer PR, Public Relations, Social

The challenge

Every winter, Tasmania faces the same issue: travellers don’t just avoid the cold, they actively reject it. As audiences favour warmer destinations, visitation drops during the Off Season, creating a critical demand gap for local tourism operators when they need support most.

Following the global success of Tourism Tasmania’s 2024 Odd Jobs campaign, the challenge was to evolve the platform without repeating it. The brief called for a fresh, culturally resonant idea that could cut through globally, drive engagement and visitation, and help expand into key international markets including Singapore.

At the heart of the challenge was perception. To succeed, the campaign needed to reframe winter from something to endure into something worth seeking out and sharing. The audience was culturally curious, experience-led travellers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, who are heavily influenced by social and editorial content and drawn to unique, shareable experiences.

The solution

Rather than simply promoting winter, Tourism Tasmania turned it into a participatory content platform.

Introducing Winternships: the world’s first winter internships. Developed with local operators, 10 one-of-a-kind roles, including Devil Sitter and Sauna Skipper, transformed off-season travel experiences into story-led content opportunities.

The idea worked because it combined a strong cultural cue with an invitation to participate. The familiar format of an internship made the campaign instantly understandable, while the application mechanic turned audiences from passive viewers into active contributors.

The campaign was built around a fully integrated content ecosystem designed for multi-platform storytelling:

Strategic approach

Story-first design: each role was created as a self-contained narrative with strong editorial and social potential
Participation as content: applications, experiences and outcomes became part of the campaign story
Cultural familiarity: the internship format delivered immediate relatability and shareability
Authenticity at scale: real operators, real participants and creator voices built credibility and emotional connection

Content execution

Four hero films featuring Celia Pacquola undertaking Winternships anchored the campaign
16 social cutdowns were created for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
LinkedIn job ads presented the roles as real opportunities, integrating naturally into audience behaviour
A dedicated content hub supported applications and deeper exploration
Local creator content in Singapore helped extend relevance in international markets

Distributed across earned media, paid and organic social, platform-native formats and international media partnerships, the campaign was tailored to each channel to maximise relevance, engagement and shareability.

The results

373+

Coverage appeared across major outlets including:

Broadcast: 209 pieces, including Channel 9 News, The Morning Show and Channel 10 News
Online: 102 pieces, including News.com.au, Delicious, Time Out and The Straits Times
Print: 3 pieces, including The Mercury

315M+

Reach and visibility

373+ pieces of earned coverage
315M+ earned reach
12 hours of broadcast exposure
28M earned social reach

Engagement and participation

94,000+ unique website visits
10.7M paid social reach
13,400+ total applications
10,682 applications in Australia
3,700 applications for the Devil Sitter role alone

24.6M

International impact: Singapore

35 pieces of coverage
24.6M reach
2,700+ applications
528 bookings in 6 weeks with zero paid media investment

This outperformed previous campaigns that delivered 400 bookings over 8 weeks with paid support, proving the efficiency and scalability of the content-led model.

Most importantly, Winternships helped shift perception of Tasmania in winter, repositioning the season from something to avoid into something people wanted to experience. It demonstrated how storytelling, participation and platform-native content can turn a seasonal tourism challenge into a culturally relevant campaign with real commercial results.