What you need to know:

• Having first launched its unified NSW destination brand platform, ‘Feel New’ in October 2021 to address mass pentup demand following Covid lockdowns, Destination NSW has taken the wrappers off version 2.0 this week.
• There are audacious, multiyear ambitions behind it: The NSW Government is looking to increase annual visitor expenditure by 40 per cent to $91 billion by 2035, as well as add 150,000 new jobs to the tourism industry in that timeframe.
• Destination NSW is kicking things off with a new integrated brand campaign with distinct targeting aimed at getting 25 to 54-year-old domestic travellers to change their perceptions of visiting the biggest capital city of the country in order to lift consideration and visitation.
• Brand tracking has found 79 per cent of target travellers have come to Sydney before, but have ranked the city third in preferred places behind Melbourne and South East Queensland to visit because of the belief they know everything there is to know about the city – and it’s all centred on harbour, bridge and house.
• The new campaign looks to directly counter this with a culturally fuelled experience play, supported by six nextgen ‘icons of culture’ covering the music, sports, content, experience and influencer spaces. Each has come up with personal ‘feeling drop’ itineraries designed to shed light on the diverse mix of cultural experiences locals know about but domestic travellers don’t, in order to reshape perspectives.
• Destination NSW says because of the targeted nature of the campaign it’s using a mix of channels as well as addressable targeting and plotting in order to nab its sweet spot consumers across Queensland, Victoria and regional NSW.

If version one of the NSW ‘Feel New’ brand platform was a unified, mass reach pitch to sell Sydney and NSW as a destination to other Aussies desperate for a holiday post-Covid, then the first campaign in version 2.0 debuting this week is a decidedly more targeted, creatively ambitious mid-funnel play.

The aim? Change perceptions and consideration within a specific cohort of 25 to 54-year-old, high-yield experience hunters from Queensland, Victoria and regional NSW who think they know everything there is to know about what Sydney has to offer. Destination NSW’s counter argument is a fresh array of itineraries that aren’t just about a bridge, house or harbour but showcase a blend of emotive, culturally inspired experiences.

Destination NSW’s Kathryn Illy says it’s purposefully calling on the “cultural zeitgeist” to help. The tourism body has enlisted six next-generation icons of culture across food, sport, music and content with local knowledge around what this city has to offer as key creative and content instruments in the campaign. These are: Olympian kayaker, Jess Fox; ultra-marathon runner, Ned Brockman; comedy duo, The Inspired Unemployed; radio host and influencer, Lucinda Price (aka Froomes); ARIA-award winning musician, Budjerah; and chef, Dan Hong.

The tourism body has also shifted gears on creative to tackle perceptions Sydney is purely about the Harbour Bridge, Opera house or Bondi Beach. Rather than lead with destination images, out-of-home billboards feature the faces of ad campaign actors sliced by a collage of activities across food, music and experience categories.

“Tourism marketing can often be a bit traditional, and destination marketing a sea of sameness. We’ve very purposefully pulled away from that and shifted towards being a culture brand. Certainly in the out-of-home, you will see it’s not your full-bleed images or a beach with a logo, nor a headline. It is very different. We’ve done that on purpose,” Illy tells Mi3. “We’ve done that to be able to cut through in that sea of sameness, to be bold, brave, but most importantly, to be distinct and differentiated. When you first see it, you go, wow, that’s different, but it intrigues you. Then you’ll start to look again, and get a different image every time you go back. That’s the whole purpose of it.”

Gunning for $91 billion in visitor spend by 2035

The new integrated marketing campaign from Destination NSW is a critical piece in the State Government’s ambitious goal to increase annual visitor expenditure to $91 billion by 2035 – a 40 per cent increase on its previous 2030 figure. Announced last October, the Minns Government said it’s looking to cement tourism as a critical pillar of future growth in the NSW economy, driving up to 150,000 new jobs by 2035. Right now, NSW tourism ranks fifth as an employer and supports 116,000 businesses and 292,000 jobs, making it NSW’s largest export earner.

“To grow our visitor economy to $91bn by 2035, we are focused on bold action,” said Destination NSW recently confirmed permanent CEO, Karen Jones, at a media launch for the new ‘Feel New’ campaign.  

It needs to. Destination NSW’s brand engagement monitor in April 2025 showed 79 per cent of Australians have visited Sydney and think they know what the city is all about. Sydney ranks third for these domestic travellers in the next 12 months.  

“That’s just not good enough,” NSW Government Minister for tourism, Steve Kamper, said at the campaign launch. “We need to get better visitors coming to Sydney and ranking us number one. That is what this campaign is about. What we have learned through research is Australians already know Sydney for its incredible icons. But there’s a sense once you have seen those well-known icons, Sydney doesn’t offer anything significantly different from other cities… that couldn’t be more wrong.”

The new campaign is also the Government striving to send a clear message of investment to improve business confidence. The NSW Government has already announced it’s pushing for 40,000 extra hotel rooms, a 41 per cent increase on what’s currently available. It’s additionally introduced several ‘vibrancy’ policies to instil confidence and gain industry support, including $15m in increased business event investment, plus put more dollars behind aviation expansion. In all, the NSW Government is looking for 8.5 million additional airline seats through the new Newcastle Airport international terminal opening in 2025, Western Sydney International Airport from 2026, increased capacity at Sydney Airport, and cross-border arrivals via Canberra and Gold Coast Airports.

“This is just one part of a range of wider initiatives introduced to back our tourism industry,” Minister Kamper said. “Government needs to get the settings right so business can invest with confidence.”  

Brand 2.0 investment to drive visitation dollars

Backing the campaign is equally a signal of confidence in what impact Destination NSW marketing can drive. Since launching the initial tranche of ‘Feel New campaign’ work in October 2021, brand activity has directly attributed $323 million in incremental visitor expenditure.

“We want to shift consideration and appeal and the reappraisal. But as a secondary component and objective, it’s also having a direct impact onto the visitor economy, which is fantastic news,” comments Illy.

Key measures Illy and her team will be judging themselves on this time around include improving consideration to travel within the next 12 months, along with incremental visitor expenditure improvements, plus reappraisal around key associations and attributions being tracked around Sydney predominantly, as well as NSW.

The initial focus had to be on Sydney because of the bigger and greater brand consideration challenges it faces over the rest of the state.

“If you look at all the other cities in Australia, Sydney is absolutely number one from an experience and global city perspective. Everyone knows Sydney. But when you come to the domestic market, we’re ranked number three behind the Gold Coast and Melbourne,” continues Illy.  “Melbourne is known for the culture and the food, Queensland for nature, wildlife and beautiful beaches. But no state or city has the collision of both coming together. NSW boasts the uniqueness of nature, a global city, and the ability to be at the beach surfing in 15 minutes.”

For Illy, ‘Feel New’ brand 2.0 is also acknowledgment version 1.0 was built for a specific moment in time. “This is very much about taking us into the next phase of how we really shift into a culture brand: How do we align ourselves to extend into new audiences, to tap into the cultural zeitgeist of the day, then demonstrate the breadth and depth of everything we have to offer in Sydney and New South Wales,” she says.  

To dial up more emotive connections, Destination NSW’s six cultural ambassadors have crafted personalised itineraries called ‘feeling drops’, teased out through the campaign visuals and available on the Sydney.com website. Fox’s includes kayaking on Sydney Harbour and the Beyond Skyway experience in the Blue Mountains, followed by a drink at a Penrith rooftop bar, while Hong heads out to the Hawkesbury River for a Sydney Oyster Tour and is featured in Sydney’s Chinatown. Budjerah takes a Camden’s Balloon Aloft ride and tackles Urbnsurf Sydney.   

“We’re also using those itineraries and packaging them up for influencers to experience all of those icons of culture and that ‘Feeling drop’, which is essentially how Sydney makes them feel new and different. It’s about taking them on those different experiences of what they know and love about Sydney, essentially, from a local,” says Illy.

Destination NSW’s partners for this campaign are Leos Australia (creative), OMD (media buy), Ogilvy (web), Finch (film), Rolla (content capture), production partners Photoplay (photography) The Editors (post-production) and Otis (sound).

Media choices

The new campaign is stretching across TV/BVOD, outdoor, radio/ Spotify/podcasts, digital and social channels until 30 August 2025, with an initial four films highlighting Sydney experiences produced. 

But unlike the 2021 mass market approach, the latest tranche narrows down to focus on new experience seekers with a key target audience of 25 to 54-year-olds, predominantly based in South East Queensland, Victoria, and regional New South Wales. The choice to target several locations under the ‘regional’ umbrella is no accident here: Boomtown and ABS data has shown many regional areas across Australia including regional NSW boast younger than expected residents (thanks to regional migration led by millennials) with disposal incomes that nearly match metro residents: Two-thirds work white-collar jobs (compared to just 2.4 per cent working in farming).  

“We are working through paid, owned, earned media and it’s very much a mix of where those new experience seekers are. Where are they seeking and sourcing information? Where are they listening? What are they watching? What are they hearing? We’ve got radio / audio, and some of it will be a little more immersive as far as the channel mix, but essentially, it’s how we reach that 25-to 54-year-old segment in Queensland, Melbourne and regional New South Wales. So it’s a targeted media buy,” Illy explains.

“We do addressable market, then we look at those that have travelled in the last 12 months, or wish to travel in the next 12 months. We look at those in the market segments, and we can get right down to the actual market we’re going to target. It’s not down to a person, but we do look right down to those key market segments to be very targeted on who we reach.”

Having installed brand tracking with Fiftyfive5 (part of Accenture Song) back in 2021, Illy points to significant consumer insight as well as brand metrics helping drive impact this time around.

“We’re able to see over the four last four years, the trends of when we go to market, and we can measure the travel drivers, associations, attributes, what it is people are seeking, and how that changes and shifts over time. We use that on a regular basis to inform who we need to approach, what they are seeking and sourcing. That’s a long-term measure we’ve had in place, which is fantastic to inform each of our campaigns,” she says.

“Importantly, it’s also about looking at all the international visitor surveys – NVS, IVS – and how that helps to inform what a visitor is coming for not only internationally, but also domestically. So we use a combination of things, but most importantly around the associations, attributes, travel drivers for Sydney and also for New South Wales as the key and North Star.”

Illy also highlights a focus on providing more content for the wider tourism industry to leverage. “Rolla did a huge content capture of a whole bunch of new content for Sydney we can use for industry, supply to our partners, because they’re crying out for fresh content. That was one of the key things – that we’re giving back to the industry and back to tourism operators,” she adds.