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Naturally iconic.

  • Tourism Whitsundays
  • Branding
  • Advertising
  • Graphic Design
  • Strategy
  • 3D & Motion Design

The Whitsundays is one of Australia’s most iconic destinations; a place where natural beauty, relaxed lifestyles, and unforgettable experiences meet. But beyond the place, The Whitsundays is also a brand. One that shapes how people see, speak about, and ultimately choose to experience this extraordinary part of the world.

This brand plays a vital role in uniting the region’s diverse offering around a shared identity, and after a hotly contested national agency selection process, we were engaged to evolve the existing brand and create a consistent, compelling story that could be experienced, communicated and shared across every touchpoint —from marketing campaigns to trade shows and the digital experience— by both Tourism Whitsundays, broader tourism bodies including Tourism and Events Queensland and Tourism Australia, and hundreds of local operators.

Our goal was to create a unique and distinctive brand for The Whitsundays and to stand out from the tourism industry’s ‘sea of sameness’. To evolve the destination brand to sharpen its relevance, unify its operators and reassert its position in a highly competitive landscape, all the while retaining the cornerstones of its identity, being the core logo and tagline “The heart of the Great Barrier Reef”.

Through discovery and stakeholder engagement, we learnt that one of the key drivers for travellers globally is seeing iconic landmarks: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal in India. 

Here in Australia, we’re known for 3 iconic destinations: Bridge, Rock, Reef. The Whitsundays is at the heart of one of them. With a growing global trend of environmental tourism, we saw an important cross-section. While most icons around the world are manmade, those in The Whitsundays have always been. Unlike cities shaped by steel and stone, our icons weren’t built. They were sculpted by time, shaped by nature, and left in their original brilliance.

This insight led to “Naturally Iconic”, a brand platform that reflects the region’s confidence in its offering and provides the foundation for a broad framework of messaging across key pillars, experiences and audience segments, representative of the region’s broad offering and set of stakeholders.

In collaboration with Tourism Whitsundays and Dentsu Queensland, the brand was launched with a bang. Our “Naturally Iconic” campaign went live across every corner of Australia, pairing the cheeky tone of voice with relevant out of home placements (such as “The only deadline here is sunset.” within office towers, or “You built your icons, that’s cute.” directly in front of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge), all supported by a multi-channel approach. 

In building an ownable brand personality, we took the ‘Whit’ (the charm and laid-back humour) and ‘sundays’ (the relaxed, approachable and warm nature) of the region’s namesake and articulated a distinct tone of voice that would permeate through every headline and paragraph the brand would be responsible for, and allow the brand and region to stand out from the crowd.