One of the most successful marketing campaigns in years generated another round of global buzz this week – and someone else did all the work.

Out of nearly 35,000 entries, the 50 finalists for the “best job in the world” were announced this week. Canadians make up seven of the finalists, the most from any single country.

The brainchild of the Queensland Tourism Board in Australia, the job offers one lucky blogger the chance to live in exclusive Hamilton Island for six months, charged with simply telling the World Wide Web how much fun he or she is having. It also pays $150,000 and comes with an oceanfront home.

But rather than advertise the campaign merely through traditional means, the tourism board asked prospective employees to post one-minute application videos to YouTube, from which the 50 finalists were selected.

The result was a virtual chain reaction that bought the campaign more exposure than any traditional ad campaign could: Applicants started Facebook groups in support of their efforts; friends posted links to the videos on the micro-blogging site Twitter. A flurry of resulting visits overwhelmed the campaign's website, crashing it on multiple occasions.

The campaign has largely relied on public relations and social networking activity,” Queensland Tourism Minister Desley Boyle said after announcing the finalists. “It's captured the imagination of the world and to date it's generated more than $70-million in publicity value.

“Apart from brilliant television, radio and newspaper coverage, the campaign has been the catalyst for special online discussion groups, bulletin boards, blogs and websites, with applicants critiquing their competition, having detailed discussions and swapping ideas and tips,” she said.

Tourism Queensland isn't the only entity to jump on the Web-fuelled, social marketing bandwagon recently. To celebrate their website's relaunch this week, the people behind Skittles candy replaced the site's front page with a search result for the word “Skittles” on Twitter.

Essentially, any time someone wrote a post with Skittles in it, it showed up on the Skittles front page. A little while later, the front page was a copy of the Skittles “fan page” on Facebook, then the Skittles entry on Wikipedia, then Skittles photos on Flickr.

But in both cases, marketing-by-the-masses didn't work out as planned. Many micro-bloggers included the word Skittles in otherwise irrelevant or negative notes, knowing those notes would show up on the candy-maker's website. Many of the Queensland applicant videos on YouTube were laced with offensive missives in the site's comments section, sometimes authored by other applicants.

Still, the gamble appears to have paid off, with tens of thousands of applicants submitting videos that ranged from brilliant to bizarre.“I wanted to do something that was creative, fun and quirky,” said Christine Estima of Toronto, who made the shortlist with her video bid, delivered in rhyme. “I didn't even have video editing software – I figured I could be entertaining enough for 60 seconds.”

Finalist Marcella Moser from Vancouver took the opposite approach. For two weeks, she and her boyfriend worked on a slick, effects-heavy video, putting up a green screen in front of their bookcase and using video editing software. She even set up a supporting blog.

“A friend e-mailed me an article about [the contest] in The Globe and Mail. I decided I'm really going to go for it,” she said.“I'd be honoured to be a Canadian on an island blogging to the world about how much fun I'm having.”

Eleven finalists will be flown to Hamilton Island for interviews before a winner is selected this summer. Queensland tourism officials will select 10 finalists and public voting will determine the final candidate. Voting ends March 24. After the first days of voting, a finalist from Russia is in the lead, followed by Canadian Mitch Moffit, a contestant from Guelph, Ont.