In Australia this Labor Day weekend? Flash a smile in the world’s largest selfie

Nothing screams Labor Day like a beaming selfie, and if you’re lucky enough to be in Australia for the long weekend, you may want to consider participating in what is being called the world’s biggest selfie. Tapping into our gratuitous need for self documentation, Tourism Australia, the organization behind the record setting concept, is looking to attract a younger, more media-savvy demographic to the beautiful shores of Australia’s Gold Coast. Specifically, the agency hopes to bring a greater number of Japanese tourists to the continent, many of whom are known for their love of social media and their very active digital presence.

Powered by the “Giga Selfie” app, on Sept. 5 and 6 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., tourists (and locals, of course), will be able to “trigger a distant camera which captures them and the surrounding landscape.” No need for a super-sized selfie stick, folks — rather, the high powered camera located around 364 feet away will snap a memory that you and everyone in your vicinity (whether they know it or not) can treasure for a lifetime.

In a statement, Tourism Australia managing director John O’Sullivan noted that this latest campaign will capitalize on the existing interests of its Japanese tourists, who clearly contribute significantly to the industry. Said O’Sullivan, “Japan has long been an important tourism market for Australia, with more than 320,000 Japanese visitors traveling here in the past year alone and contributing more than $1.4 billion in visitor spend. With new air services coming online this year there is a real opportunity to further grow travel from Japan and capture the renewed interest in Australia as a travel destination.”

And what better way to renew interest than allow for current visitors to send family members back home a giant selfie on the Gold Coast? After the selfie is taken, both the photograph and accompanying video footage will be emailed to the subject, and they can then share the “image as a short video clip which starts as a close up selfie and pulls back to reveal their location.”

O’Sullivan continued, “The ‘Giga Selfie’ campaign will help to raise the level of conversation about Australia in Japan as people share their incredible experiences of holidaying here with their friends and family back home, and in turn helping to encourage more Japanese travelers to follow in their footsteps.”

Tourism Australia has yet to decide whether they will keep this project running after the weekend, but will first assess the overall success of its debut before making any moves. But come on, how could a selfie taken by a camera 100 times more powerful than a normal device sitting hundreds of feet away not be a smash hit?

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1QiA0J8
Lulu Chang