Best job in the world filled? No worries, mate.
The 鈥淏est Job in the World鈥� has been filled.
A British charity worker will get paid $112,000 for the next six months to babysit and blog about a tropical Australian island.
But Ben Southall didn鈥檛 just fall into the job. He had to beat out 35,000 other applicants worldwide. His video resume got him into the final 15. to watch it.
Then he and 14 other contestants 鈥� and, really, we鈥檙e talking about reality TV meets global marketing 鈥� spent four days on Hamilton Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, selling themselves. Oh yeah, there was a swim test too.
As much as we all would love to be Ben, the big winner here is Australian tourism. This was a brilliant marketing campaign at a bargain price of $1.3 million, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. The Queensland state tourism agency values the return at .
"You couldn't get a decent mainstream national campaign for that amount of money, let alone a global one," said Nancy Hartley, creative director of Brisbane agency CumminsNitro, which developed the project for Tourism Queensland.
Of course no plan goes without a hitch 鈥� or two.
A dream job ad in the midst of a global financial crisis meant that their website 鈥� islandreefjob.com.au crashed in the early days. It was swamped by the demand.
And there was the Russian porn star who made it into the finals. Oops. And that someone who claimed to be .
So, the best job in the world is taken 鈥� for the next six months. But this campaign has been so successful at putting Australia's Whitsunday Islands on the map, you can bet that others will follow. It鈥檚 like the 鈥淪urvivor鈥� series.
My advice: Start polishing your video resume. There's bound to be an island caretaker job opening up in Tahiti.
