Marketforce Perth’s ‘Love My Rotto’ campaign wins WA Tourism Gold to kick off summer

Summer is here – and West Australians are once again being urged to head for the State’s island playground with the relaunch of the award-winning ‘Love My Rotto’ campaign.

The launch marks the second successive summer the campaign has been run, and follows success for the ‘Love My Rotto’ campaign at the recent WA Tourism Awards where it took out Gold for the best Tourism marketing campaign of the year. The award was accepted by members of the Rottnest Express team and Marketforce chairman John Driscoll (pictured below).

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Created by Marketforce for Rottnest Express, ‘Love My Rotto’ was first launched in December 2010 as an extensive summer marketing campaign with the aim of increasing visitors to Rottnest Island.

Using a broad media mix including radio, television, press, online and outdoor advertising, the campaign – the first major brand campaign for the island in more than 20 years – proved a huge success, with visitor numbers for the 2010/11 financial year up 14% on theprevious year.

Marketforce Director of Client Services Rick Multari said the agency had been given a brief of reconnecting the people of Perth with Rottnest, while providing a platform to advertise retail deals available on the island and great travel offers to get there.

“The aim was to re-engage the community with the island, and reignite that sense of passion and ownership West Australians have always had about Rottnest,” he said. ‘Love My Rotto’ summed that up perfectly, and as the first major brand campaign for the island since “Take Me To My Island” in the 1980s it exceeded expectations.” Such was the success of ‘Love My Rotto’ that the campaign has been taken on for this summer as a co-operative marketing effort, backed by the Rottnest Island Authority and the island’s business community.

The campaign will continue as the key platform for the promotion of Rottnest Island throughout the summer of 2012, and this season is being used to support a major promotional initiative for the island – the Rotto Savings Passport.

The Passport contains over 60 Rotto deals and is available free of charge throughout the summer. It allows travellers to Rottnest to unlock great value offers on getting to the islandand shopping, eating and relaxing once there.

Multari said news of the WA Tourism Awards win and the renewal of the ‘Love My Rotto’ campaign further underlined Marketforce’s destination marketing credentials.

“This is an area we’ve built a strong name in, as evidenced by our reappointment to the City of Perth account earlier this year,” he said. “We’re currently in development of amajor new brand campaign to revitalise the City’s positioning, and look forwardto unveiling that in 2012.”