Tourism Queensland announced the winning candidate for “The Best Job in the World” competition today. UK’s Ben Southall will start exploring and blogging about the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef on July 1, 2009.

I blogged about the whole social media marketing phenomenon of the “Best Job in the World” a few weeks ago. Here is an article discussing the evolution of the idea and its results.

A relatively paltry $1.7 million dollar marketing initiative that reaped $100 million dollars worth of marketing exposure.

That is awesome!

I am looking forward to reading the analytics of their conversion rates after the holiday booking season. Even if the impact isn’t significant this year, I suspect that this campaign will keep paying it forward.