World’s Travellers Have Low Opinion About 2012 Plan and Progress WAYN Provides Platform for Integrated Strategy Perceptions Shift to Make City a Top Destination of Choice

Johannesburg Tourism is enjoying the results of a highly successful social media campaign on the travel and lifestyle social networking community website WAYN.com (Where Are You Now) which has helped change perceptions and create endorsement for the City as a major international traveller destination.

The campaign which launched on November 17 had the multiple objectives of engaging travellers, addressing negative perceptions, building user generated content, driving site traffic and promoting brand awareness.

Using the strapline “Joburg - a world class African city”, the campaign celebrates the South African capital hosting Miss World and forthcoming international events like the Confederation Cup, Lions Tour and FIFA World Cup. In a first for both parties, Johannesburg Tourism and WAYN devised an all embracing strategy to reach and engage members and visitors. Key elements included member’s surveys; a holiday prize competition; newsfeeds about Miss World, banner ads; a newsletter and internal communications promoting the JoburgTourism profile to WAYN’s 14 million members across 193 countries.

Results to date have been highly impressive. Over seven weeks from November 17 the pre and post survey showed a significant change to highly positive perceptions of the City and it becoming a top destination of choice.

Mean while the increase in site traffic resulted in www.JoburgTourism.com jumping 150,000 places*; advertising generated 9.5 m. impressions and nearly half a million WAYN members acquired the JoburgTourism skin to their profile and generated 650 new traveller reviews and opinions.

Lindiwe Mahlangu, CEO of Johannesburg Tourism said: “These results have been outstanding and exceeded our very best expectations. We wanted to exploit and integrate the unique range of tools that the social media environment offers and deliver a real and tangible ROI. We set WAYN some tough objectives and I am delighted to say that they delivered on all fronts. We are especially pleased about how well the social medium worked in persuading people to re-assess their perceptions about Johannesburg and how user generated content can be leveraged to endorse our messages.

Said WAYN joint CEO and founder, Jerome Touze; “Johannesburg is fortunate to have one of the most innovative and forward thinking DMO’s in the industry. Johannesburg Tourism has demonstrated how imaginative use of social media such as WAYN can go way beyond simple brand awareness and how an integrated strategy can be used to deliver both marketing and sales objectives. Through their work Johannesburg Tourism is well on its way to placing South Africa’s capital on the premiere list of must visit destinations. This is a very exciting partnership and we look forward to developing more integrated and bespoke campaigns for Johannesburg as a world class destination”

*Alexa.com traffic rankings

ENDS

About www.Joburgtourism.com The Johannesburg Tourism Company is the official destination marketing organization of Johannesburg. It operates a convention bureau aimed at attracting major international events to be hosted in Johannesburg of which Miss World 2008 was a recent example. Previous major events include the World Summit of Sustainable Development in 2002, the Cricket World Cup in 2003 and a host of other major cultural, business and sport events. The Lions Tour and 2009 FIFA Confederation Cup will be hosted in July 2009 to be followed by the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010.

About www.wayn.com WAYN.com (Where Are You Now?) is the world's largest travel and lifestyle focused social networking community website. The site operates in 193 countries and membership has grown from 45,000 users in March 2005 to over 14.5 million today. WAYN.com allows its members to keep track of their friends' whereabouts and make new friends based on where they are now, where they have been and where they're going. Services on WAYN.com include travel guide and trip planning tools, unlimited photo and video storage; interaction tools such as email, SMS and instant messenger, forums and travel related tools and products. Headquartered in London, UK, WAYN was founded by entrepreneurs Pete Ward, 30, and pal Jerome Touze, 29, who started the site in their spare time after returning home from a 'round-the-world' trip in 2003.