On Friday, the tourism body launched its new brand campaign - Wollongong Press Play - highlighting the diversity of options the city offers to tourists.

The Visit Wollongong website is the first focus of the rebranding, because it's so often the first place potential visitors go to find out about the city.

"Every time Wollongong makes a major international announcement we see massive spikes in website visitation," Destination Wollongong general manager Mark Sleigh said.

"When LaMelo [Ball] posted that he was coming to Wollongong the website went crazy. We felt, given the website was seven years old, it was time to refresh that and give Wollongong a new face in many respects."

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The new branding was one of four options worked up by Destination Wollongong and Mr Sleigh said it was the overwhelming favourite in consumer testing trials.

The new brand isn't likely to replace the surprise success of "We Love the Gong" campaign - and Mr Sleigh said it wasn't meant to either.

"I don't know that it replaces We Love the Gong," Mr Sleigh said.

"That was a three-month community pride campaign that lasted 15 years. I don't think anything will ever replace that.

"What we did with this brand was when we last launched the Visit Wollongong website it was seven years ago and obviously Wollongong has changed so much in those seven years."

At the end of the day, the measure of the branding's success will be whether more people choose to "press play".

"The visitor economy has grown by 15 per cent in the last 12 months," he said.

"We'd like to see similar figures to that as we move forward and this campaign will move towards driving visitation to region both from Sydney but also nationally and internationally.

"As long as those figures continue to grow at strong rates we will believe we're on the right track."