Tourism Australia is expected this month to announce a gianormous contract for a global marketing campaign, in hopes of redefining its brand and thus its sagging travel business.
Remember Paul Hogan? He was an Australian comedian who had a brief run in the movies as Crocodile Dundee, and his goofy charm translated brilliantly into an ad campaign that had him promise to "throw another shrimp on the barbie." Tourism skyrocketed.
Those numbers have steadily dropped off over time, and despite a series of less-memorable, though no less creative, marketing campaigns. The branding palette of sun, babes, and humor has failed to prompt the same enthusiasm -- and, more importantly, travel spending -- than it did through the last years of the last century.
That's the salient point, isn't it?
Hogan didn't t make his pitch in a vacuum. Economies were booming. Prices were reasonably low and steady. Incomes were going up. Employers were employing. For a generation of vacationeers who thought they'd consumed the world's best fun in the sun destinations, Australia was a discovery.
Further, though it's hard to remember, those were the Dark Ages when it came to things like the Internet and its media, like ratings sites and social networks. So much of what worked from an outbound marketing perspective had more in common with the environment for branding in, say, the 1950s, than it does with today.
Context matters, if not more than creative invention, than at least before it. So it's highly unlikely that Tourism Australia could ever hope to replicate what it did in the past without first understanding why it worked.
And those answers have little to do with creative branding.
This is a great opportunity for Australia, not to mention all of the other destinations competing for a share of the family vacation travel market.
Have you ever noticed that almost all travel advertising looks the same? Beaches, babes in bikinis, smiling couples toasting with wine glasses while seated in deserted, picturesque restaurants? It's as if they're all trying to brand themselves as this absolute vacation fantasy...a lifestyle moment defined as a Platonic Ideal.
Be the vacation, and they will come.
The smarter strategy would be to identify the steps people take when making vacation purchase decisions, and craft a marketing strategy to enable and support it. OK, even if the pretty beach picture is a requirement, what are the actual tools that would move consumers closer to choosing your destination over another?
I'd have to imagine that there are obvious criteria that Tourism Australia would consider (now, in 2008, that didn't factor as much in the 1980s), such as:
- Distance: High air travel costs are a fact of life, so is it reasonable to even target visitors from the U.S. over, for instance, China?
- Facilities: What would visitors need/benefit from -- like translation services -- that another destination might not offer?
- Pricing: Are there novel ways to help families budget and pay for visits (steal some ideas from Disney on this front)
- Community: What does it take to get rating and info sharing communities to explore and promote Australia's unique benefits?
In order to develop a marketing strategy, it would first need to identify what those unique benefits might be...not in terms of consumer perception, but actual, deliverable, truly unique reality. These would be the actuality of the brand experience, not just the background for it.
The creative ad component would simply build on that knowledge, not replace it.
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