• by Les Luchter , August 1, 2023

Last week, Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, hosted the Women’s World Cup match between the U.S. and the Netherlands.

This week, Wellington takes its show on the road with a campaign designed to recruit job talent in such fields as technology, hospitality and entertainment.

WellingtonNZ, the region’s economic development agency, kicks off its“ESC to Wellington” marketing campaign Tuesday afternoon with an experiential pop-up in New York City’s outdoor Big Screen Plaza featuring a 375-pound, several-feet-high “ESC” key which, when pushed, will search through job postings. In the background, the Plaza’s 30-foot-high digital billboard will be showing scenes of the Wellington lifestyle -- part of what the agency calls a superior “work-life balance.”

Content captured during the activation will be used in a paid media campaign being bought by Wellington’s EightyOneM agency.  Ads will run on LinkedIn, Meta, TikTok and Twitter in what WellingtonNZ says are selected markets in the U.S. and UK.

Prospects will be directed to a dedicated landing page at wellingtonnz.com/esc. featuring stories of people who have moved to Wellington to live and work, plus job ads, information on visas and immigration, and more.

The campaign’s success will be measured by reach, video views, landing page visits and equivalent advertising value from earned media efforts.

WellingtonNZ says the region’s attributes include a significantly lower cost of living than such cities as New York and London, a much lower gender wage gap, the highest salaries in New Zealand, and very affordable rents for housing --  amounting to just 22% of income.

This is not the first time Wellington has run a recruitment campaign in the U.S. In 2017, not long after Donald J. Trump’s election as president, an effort called LookSee Wellington offered a free trip for 100 tech developers to explore the region, reported The New York Times. While campaign strategists expected 2,500 applicants, actually 48,000 people applied.