Ashburton District Council continues to utilise social media influencers for promotion, a practice currently under the spotlight.

The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union recently took aim at Tourism New Zealand for spending more than $9.4 million on social media influencers since 2023/24.

Taxpayers’ Union investigations coordinator, Rhys Hurley, said Tourism New Zealand “has racked up likes, views, and follows, but when it comes to hard numbers, the agency can’t actually show what these influencers delivered”.

“If influencers are being paid to sell New Zealand to the world, taxpayers deserve to know how much they were directly paid and what they actually delivered in return.”

Ashburton's influencer spend is dwarfed by Tourism NZ.

Compliance and development group manager Ian Hyde said the council, through its tourism arm Experience Mid Canterbury, spent $7800 (around 5% of the $160,590 district promotion budget) in 2025/26 on four social media influencer promotional trips to the district and an additional $4600 in travel expenses.

“The resulting posts from these collaborations have generated 5 million views across TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

“Since then, we have continued to use the content produced across a variety of the channels, as recently as December, which we feel represents excellent value for money.”

One of Experience Mid Canterbury’s objectives is to boost awareness of Mid Canterbury as a destination for domestic travellers from Auckland, Otago, and the wider Canterbury area, he said.

The measure of its success includes an increase in website users, Facebook, and Instagram followers, and feedback from tourism operators, he said.

The council monitors standard metrics “such as reach and engagement, to ensure we're getting value for money”.

“However, feedback from operators expressing business growth is one of the strongest indicators of success we look for.”

For the 2025/26, the council are expecting to spend a similar amount on influencer promotion of around $9,000, including travel costs, Hyde said.

So far, they have had one influencer promotional visit, but Hyde said the exact costs of each visit were commercially sensitive.

The district promotions strategy follows a mixed channel approach, he said.

“Which sees our marketing budget distributed across a range of channels such as billboards, digital advertising, and content creation partnerships.

“Tourism marketing is most successful when different channels, with different purposes, work together towards a greater strategic objective.

“Content creation and influencer work are just two of the tactics in our toolbox.”

Marketing Mid Canterbury as ‘Nowhere, worth going’

Experience Mid Canterbury’s summer marketing campaign focused on the region being ‘nowhere, worth going’.

Hyde said the catchphrase was "a play on the common misconception that Mid Canterbury is in the middle of nowhere”.

The campaign aimed to highlight Mid Canterbury’s “genuine, uncommercialised experiences”.

The nowhere campaign idea was developed by creative agency Antony & Mates and supported by imagery captured during a RoadyNZ familiarisation trip.

The marketing campaign cost $24,485, “most of which went into the creation and production of the campaign”.

It ran from December 18 until January 18, targeting summer travellers arriving in Christchurch and Auckland through airport carousels, roadside billboards, digital advertising, and a dedicated webpage, Hyde said.

“The creative will be used further, later in the year, and we intentionally kept advertising costs low during the launch so we could use data-driven decision making when increasing advertising spend in future campaigns.”

The Experience Mid Canterbury website attracted 50,000 views over four weeks, representing an 259% increase compared to the previous period (November 15-December 14) he said.

“Our digital advertising on Meta achieved over 375,000 impressions and enjoyed higher-than-average click-through and engagement rates, indicating that the new content is being well received and effectively capturing people's attention.

Influencer content wasn’t rolled out during the nowhere campaign, but Hyde said there will be “complementary content shared on content creator channels in late January”.

“Leveraging the momentum of the campaign and continuing to raise awareness of Mid Canterbury as a place worth visiting.”

By Jonathan Leask