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New Zealand targets Australian tech talent with campaign to entice them to work in Wellington

New Zealand’s capital Wellington is targeting Australian tech talent with a new digital campaign in a bid to help attract the workforce needed to support the city’s growing information and communications technology and creative sectors.

The Wellington Works campaign, created by Wellington-based creative agency Touchcast, aims to highlight what the city has to offer in terms of culture, community and lifestyle through the desks of Xero strategic programme manager Erin Connelly, Carnival Mobile iOS developer Sam Jarman and Zing Designs owner Zheng Li.

Positively Wellington Tourism chief executive David Perks told Mumbrella: “Wellington is a city in New Zealand that is trying to get traction to grow its economy in many ways.

“We have a pretty sharp and focused digital sector and the businesses in those sector are needing to fill recruitment gaps, so we are looking to attract Australians who are talented in that high-tech space across to Wellington to work.”

The campaign comes after Mumbrella editor Alex Hayes yesterday published a piece asking what Australia is doing to attract creative and digital talent to the country.

For the Wellington campaign targeted banner ads and social media advertising will drive viewers to a website where they are presented with an image of each of the desks of Connelly, Jarman and Li.

There they can interact with items on the desks such as a mouse, a notepad and post-its which when clicked present information on the different facets of Wellington life including where to find the best restaurants, what the work culture is like and the lifestyle of the city. This content is presented via images and videos with links through to relevant jobs.

Wellington tourism campaign

“We are putting the campaign out there in the places the type of people we want to attract will look and to give them the feel of what it would be like to work in Wellington. This campaign comes off the back of us redeveloping our website a year ago,” said Perks.

“Part of the website allows people the opportunity to search for jobs in Wellington and we’ve had over 12,000 visits to that part of the website from Australians since we launched the website a year ago. We can see there is interest there we just need to give people good reason to make the call to look for a job in Wellington right now.”

“This campaign is on the back of lots of activity Wellington has done in Australia to promote Wellington as a city. Often Australians see NZ as being all about the great outdoors, we’ve tried very hard over the last five years to ensure Wellington is a great city and while it’s not as large as your premier cities, it’s got just as much heart and opportunities for people to enjoy as visitors. But this is about saying it’s also a great place to live.”

The campaign is part of Wellington City Council’s Destination Wellington programme, and coincides with Grow Wellington’s attendance at the NZ Jobs Expo in Melbourne on April 18-19.

The Wellington Works campaign will run until the end of April.

Miranda Ward

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