Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
…and what other PR firms and tourism boards should learn from them.
I don’t have an MBA and I’ve never studied public relations or marketing formally, but I spend a good bit of time talking with tourism boards and the PR firms that work with them. Through these conversations, I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes the promotion of a country successful… or what makes their efforts unlikely to gain traction.
It’s true–so let’s just get it out of the way–that one country’s successful marketing campaign is not necessarily going to produce the same results if replicated by another country. Indeed, a surefire formula for failure is to mimic the strategies used by another country without considering how those strategies might not apply to your country.
For this reason, each country’s tourism board and PR firm need to answer a few critical questions before embarking on any campaign:
*What’s our core target audience?: While most countries would love to corner the entire tourist market, from backpacker to luxury traveler, that goal is overly ambitious, especially for countries that are considered “developing” or which are emerging from recent conflicts. Target audience doesn’t just refer to budget, though; it also refers to nationality, adventure vs. relaxation traveler, and many other demographics. Many countries make the mistake of trying to pitch themselves to every potential traveler, thus diluting their marketing message.
*What’s our main draw?: No matter how spectacular, no country can be everything for every traveler. Even in a country as incredible as Chile–which really DOES have it all–a tourism board and its PR firm must develop a clear focus around which it can build a tagline, visual components, and the spirit of its campaign.
*What are the primary resources our core audience uses to learn about destinations and plan trips? Time and again, I listen to tourism representatives talk about strategies for reaching their target audience that sound incredible in theory… but which are unlikely to be effective for capturing the attention–and then, the buy-in–of their target audience. If you’re investing the bulk of your meager PR budget on trade shows and travel agents, then you’re unlikely to reach the end user.
Let’s take a look at a country that’s doing its PR campaign right: Aruba**.
Photo: atomicshark
Aruba’s target audience: New Yorkers.
Specifically: cold New Yorkers.
At the beginning of winter, Aruba rolled out a print-based campaign whose primary platform was the interior of subway cars. Perfect location: Aruba now has a captive audience. NYC subway riders have an average commute of 45 minutes. Even if they’re reading or zoning out to their ipods, subway riders are likely to give the ad at least a cursory glance.
The ads are incredibly appealing and have tremendous personality. Beautiful, rich colors take you straight to the tropics. For the length of your commute, you can fantasize about what it would be like to escape the cold North and warm yourself on a Caribbean beach.
Photo: animalvegetable
And Aruba makes it even easier to nurture that fantasy… each ad features a smiling local who shares his or her story in their own handwriting. Each anecdote also reveals an insider’s tip about a special place or experience on the island. Smart! The tourism board conveys information without making you feel that the campaign is at all didactic.
The tagline? Brilliant: 90,000 friends you haven’t met yet. After looking at these tanned, smiling people who’d opened up a page of their lives to you, you’re ready to consider them friends! And guess what… they’re real people. I know because Francisco met one of them at the New York Times Travel Show last month!
But that’s not all. It seems simple, but the easy to remember website– www.aruba.com– appears at the bottom of each ad. Go to the site and what do you find? The same smiling people! The same beautiful colors. The same font. Consistency is critical. Any successful brand knows this.
What else is on the website? TONS of information that keeps you on the site– you don’t need to look anywhere else. A community forum where visitors can share their experiences and tips (remarkable transparency). And two other features that seem so obviously necessary but which are all too often overlooked: a search function and language options.
Aruba ads have appeared on other platforms; I saw an ad in The New York Times Magazine, and, as mentioned, the tourism board participated in the New York Times Travel Show. Fine and fine. But what really worked were these highly specific, seasonally targeted ads that stimulated visual interest and personal investment in a country that maybe you didn’t know much about– but in which you were suddenly very interested.
There are other things Aruba could do better: Get rid of the Lewis Black gimmick (a satirist who makes videos about Aruba–doesn’t quite fit with the vibe the campaign has established). Develop a stronger presence on Twitter. Open up a Flickr pool. But it’s definitely on the right track…and other countries should take note.
What countries have campaigns that engage you? What are they doing that works? What could they do better? Share your opinions below!
**I have not met with any Aruba PR or tourism board employees or their representatives, nor have I conducted any interviews or done any formal research about their current campaign. My opinions here are based entirely on my observations of their campaign, considered against the successes and shortcomings I’ve observed in other marketing efforts with countries and officials with whom I do have relationships.
Wow, a very well-presented rundown of both tourism campaigns in general and Aruba’s in particular. I learned a lot! I don’t have anything constructive to add, as I’ve never really been conscious of these things before. But now I’ll start paying attention.
The Natalee Holloway disappearance and aftermath was very well reported in the states and made many parents have second thoughts about Aruba. Wonder if they have been greatly affected.
Hal- Thanks! I didn’t pay much attention to these things either until I started talking with tourism and PR folks so frequently.
DES- You’re right– the Natalee Holloway case was a major blow to Aruba tourism, but since I don’t know much about how it has quantitatively affected tourism rates or how it has shaped their campaign, I didn’t address the issue. Still, I’m very interested in how adverse events affect travelers’ perceptions of places and their willingness to visit other countries., When Francisco attended the NY Times Travel Show, a group of protesters outside were complaining about Mexican resorts, accusing them of negligence that caused deaths. I’m actually working on a piece right now to study this issue more.
Really interesting piece and something definitely worth thinking about when traveling–how does the country/region you’re visiting market itself? Mexico’s marketing campaigns trouble me sometimes because they’re highly contradictory with the country’s actual social/economic realities. They juxtapose images of white women diving into crystalline waters with images of beaming indigenous women in woven dresses showing their artisan goods…and these two realities don’t exactly coexist peacefully. I think in a lot of places, in Latin America and elsewhere, the government embraces the folkloric/exotic power of the indigenous while at the same time neglecting them politically and economically. The Aruba campaign sounds really interesting because it sounds like it has the complicity, and even active participation of, the people there.
Sarah- You’re absolutely right (and this issue could be the subject of a post all its own). When I went to the Brazilian consulate to apply for a visa and was handed a big glossy book highlighting the “best of Brazil,” I was very troubled by what I saw. Everyone was white. In fact, everyone was foreign. The tactic, it was explained to me when I asked, was to show tourists (with face paint, which was a whole other bizarre element) having a great time in Brazil, showing the country is safe and fun. “But I don’t want to see tourists,” I said. “I want to see real people. And real people in Brazil aren’t all white!”
Obviously, a country isn’t going to showcase its poverty or its social problems. But as you point out, quite rightly, is that beyond a flashy tourism campaign is a much more profound question we should be asking as travelers, namely: How does this country treat all of its people? And are certain groups of people either being exploited by their ad campaigns or being left out of them entirely?
Icelandair recently joined Twitter. I started following them because I love Iceland and I love their airline, but I haven’t seen a lot of tweets. I know it’s usually rough going in the beginning with social media for any of us, but countries and companies really need to know what they’ll be tweeting and how often they’ll be doing it before they start.
Tanya-
Great observation! I think what happens is that someone in a company or tourism board gets assigned to social media as an add-on to their regular position when it’s really a full time position. There is SO much potential for the hospitality industry to use social media to monitor what customers are saying about them, to intercept gripes before they become big problems, and to provide value-added service. Management, however, doesn’t always get it. I’d love to know if you come across a company that does social media well– I’ve seen a few that have been using it well, but not consistently, and I think that’s key, too.