I mentioned to you (here) in early January about this job which epitomises the 2oceansvibe lifestyle and mantra – “Work is a sideline, live the holiday.”

To recap, the Queensland Department of Tourism offered a job (here) as “an island caretaker” paying $150,000 a year, involving a lot of chilling, a lot of snorkelling and 12 hours of work a month – mainly to update a blog.

The Best Job In The World
Official website here

Whilst the lifestyle on offer is freely available right here in Cape Town, there were a large number of applications for the job. But there could only be one winner, a young Brit by the name of Ben Southhall.

The Age reports:

BEN Southall from the United Kingdom is the winner of Tourism Queensland’s World’s Best Job competition, according to its official website.

The TQ website congratulated him on the win – half an hour before it was due to be formally announced on Hamilton Island at 3pm.

 

Ben Southhall – enjoys the vibe

 

Within days of the first job ads appearing in the employment sections of international newspapers and online on January 12, the campaign went viral, generating thousands of news stories in newspapers, on television, radio and the internet. Blogs thrummed with anticipation.

Typing Best Job in the World into You Tube today throws up 19,000 entries. Typing it into Google nets you 182,000,000.

All this for the bargain price of $1.7 million.

“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.

“Early on, we joked about being able to do a global campaign on a classifieds budget – well that’s pretty much what happened.

“The fact that this was being picked up and run as news on CNN and BBC World – you just can’t buy that sort of publicity.”

Tourism Queensland admits it has kicked in an extra “two or three-hundred thousand” for media management since applications closed in January, but estimates put the value of the return at about $110 million.

That figure is expected to grow by a further $30 million by weeks’ end, when the island caretaker position will no longer be vacant.

The winner will be announced at 3pm today.

Hartley believes the success of the Best Job campaign comes down to its multimedia interactivity and ability to “change someone’s life unlike any other ordinary prize.”

[more here]

Good work, Ben – you did well.

It should be mentioned that there were some absolute ANGELS in the final 16. IDEALLY Ben would’ve been able to take one of them WITH him.

Like young Hailey here..

Hailey made the final 16

I’m just saying – that would have been a nice touch.

Do YOU want to live the island lifestyle? Are YOU stuck in a rut? Then I’d definitely advise you to enter this week’s mammoth R1.5 billion EuroMillions lottery. Let’s face it – you’re out of options.

I’d give it a bash if I were you.

I have.