Reach an audience that does not respond to conventional destination marketing, and would not have put Ethiopia on a shortlist if you had asked them to write one: runners.

Creators from the UK, Europe and North America travelled to Addis Ababa to train with the great Haile Gebrselassie and run the Great Ethiopian Run alongside tens of thousands of Ethiopians. They published the training sessions, the pre-run party and the race itself, live. Afterwards, they travelled the country — the highlands, the churches, the coffee — and kept publishing.

Blog posts, video and several hundred social posts reaching an audience in the millions, and a measurable rise in demand for the following year’s race and for country visits around it. The audience arrived because of the run and stayed for the country, which was always the plan.