Fast growing independently owned digital agency Reborn has been appointed by South African Tourism to raise awareness online of the diverse range of experiences available in South Africa in order to attract more Australian visitors. The “Leave Ordinary Behind” digital platform (www.leaveordinarybehind.com.au) Reborn has developed is a hub of inspiration for South African holidays.

To create the Leave Ordinary Behind digital platform Reborn worked closely with South African Tourism and Universal McCann to devise a digital experience that would help to educate potential travellers about South Africa and the diversity it offers to visitors. The agency worked with South African Tourism’s team to develop a platform full of rich content and real Australian travel stories.

“We identified a number of reasons why Australians were not visiting South Africa; it was apparent that Australians were unaware of the diverse range of activities and experiences on offer and considered it as a destination for safaris alone, so we worked with Reborn to develop a digital strategy to raise awareness and maintain it long term,” said Tommy Lindblad, Marketing Manager, South African Tourism.

The site encourages users to “leave ordinary behind” by embarking on an exploration of South African cuisine, wine, shopping, beaches, surfing, adventure sport and safaris through real life content which we felt was really important to bring into this campaign.

The Leave Ordinary Behind site incorporates real experiences from people who have visited South Africa via an interactive map of the country. It uses custom built drag and drop functionality with Google maps, which is an exciting new way to present content and customise it. By navigating around the map users understand what experiences are on offer and where.

“We wanted to push the boundaries of displaying content and information on a map and give users the ability to play, explore and compose their own personalised holiday sneak preview. It was important we framed this whole experience in a thought provoking story that encourages Australians to leave ordinary behind and discover South Africa from a fresh perspective. We didn’t treat this as a campaign site as we identified the opportunity to create a hub of South African travel inspiration that would grow and evolve via user generated content said Jarrad Collings, Creative Director, REBORN ”

The Leave Ordinary Behind site pulls in video content from YouTube and uses Facebook Connect to personalise the experience. Whilst experiencing this rich and varied educational content users are prompted to select videos and images to create their own personal video mash-up (holiday sneak preview), which can be viewed, replayed and shared with friends through Facebook and other social networks.

Co-founder and Managing Director of Reborn, Sabir Samtani said: “Using existing technology in a new and innovative way we have been able to tap into the wealth of real life stories online, making the whole experience a truly authentic portrayal of South Africa. We are absolutely delighted with the Leave Ordinary Behind site and are looking forward to seeing some of the varied video mash-ups.”

South African Tourism complements Reborn’s existing travel and tourism sector clients including Rail Europe, Singapore Tourism Board, Tourism Ireland, Club Med, Swiss Tourism and French Tourism Board.

A specialist in lifestyle brands, Reborn now has thirty two team members and is currently working with NBN, Habitat for Humanity, Estee Lauder, ASX, Coty, L’Oreal Group, Revlon, Midori, Tourism Ireland, French Tourism Board, Colgate Palmolive, Fairfax Digital and Novartis.