Go! Go! Go! SAMOA & SAMOA DAY all Go!

The SWAP Foundation is pleased to announce that the proposed Go! Go! Go! SAMOA & SAMOA DAY promotions have been approved by the Prime Minister and Samoa Cabinet and are now “all go!”

The SWAP Foundation will issue a MEDIA RELEASE on Monday 2nd May 2011 with more details suitable for publication. (UPDATE: Media Release delayed awaiting written confirmation of Cabinet approval.)

Background

Samoa is an emerging third world nation. Its young struggling tourism industry was decimated in the 29 September 2009 Tsunami and will not recover without serious creative energies on many fronts.

Samoa has a rich cultural resource but little capacity to capitalise on its true potential on-island as it is undercapitalised, and is only just starting to engage with modern Internet Marketing technologies. It does however have a large ex-pat community with strong loyalty to their home islands.

The SWAP Foundation is a private Samoa registered charitable trust dedicated to lifting Samoa on the Internet.

The Go! Go! Go! SAMOA promotion

The Go! GO! Go! SAMOA promotion (www.gogogosamoa.com) is a SWAP initiative that will take place to launch the inaugural INTERNATIONAL SAMOA DAY (currently proposed for the fourth Saturday in September).

This event is likely to be the first in a series of online initiatives spearheaded by the SWAP Foundation for marketing purposes in Samoa.

The basic concept is a Social Media planned event with participants from around the world, using Social Media to discuss, plan and agree on activities to be held in various countries around the world throughout a one-day dawn-till-dusk (35.5 hour) event. This worldwide celebration of all things SAMOA will be a combined fundraising, marketing, awareness and prospecting event that will commence at dawn and run throughout the daylight hours in possibly 20 or more countries.

We also plan on running a world record attempt in Apia – perhaps the world’s largest Umu.

Events will be conceptualised, organised and co-ordinated by Samoans or Samoan supporters local to where the event will be held, so that for example Samoans living and working in Alaska (yes there are some!) will organise and do their own thing; Samoans in Henderson or Manukau (yes there are ‘some’!) will plan and organise their own events; and Samoan sympathisers in Slovakia (yes there are even some Samoan supporters there too!) can arrange events suitable for Europe in Autumn/Fall.

All events will be registered online with prizes for a variety of different contributions – such as perhaps the most creative activity, the most successful fundraised, the most successful Facebook page, most hilarious commentary, the best, the most, “whatever”.

Social Media will be the primary form of marketing and will seed traditional media coverage. YouTube Videos, Flickr photos, Facebook pages and the main websites will carry the bulk of the promotional work and communications.

The Purpose

There are two primary purposes for the Go! Go! Go! Samoa promotion:

1. Networking – developing relationships with Samoans and supporters – generally lifting awareness of post-Tsunami Samoa online by generating online activities and building subscriptions/memberships.
2. Generating business – increasing tourism and foreign investment.

Marketing

One primary website www.gogogosamoa.com (the various promotions/activities/leaders) that feeds www.clubsamoa.com (membership/loyalty) and www.samoaday.com (the “official” annual event). The SWAP website and Ambassadors will also be busy: www.swapsamoa.com

All activities/events/systems come under the management and control of the General Manager of the SWAP Foundation (Tom Vitale – in SWAP Headquarters, Samoa). Team participants are expected from many areas internationally.

Samoan Ambassadors, Samoa Tourism Authority, Samoan Ex-Pats, Local Church & Civic Leaders are all likely to be involved.

Timelines

An international one-day event will be coordinated with the following timelines, starting on the beach in Gisborne as the sun rises (the first city in the world to see the sun each day), flowing through in turn to Manukau, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne Japan, China, Perth etc around the world as the sun rises and finishing in Falealupo, Samoa, where the sun sets last in the world. Updates will be made online (and in some cases a live video feed will be possible):