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FYI is your source for the latest news and information about tourism and marketing from here at home and around the world. Please feel free to download and print any of the articles contained in this section.
- The Reinvention of City Places
- Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions Part 3
- How to Include Green Requirements in Meeting Planning RFPs
- Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions - Part 2
- Top 10 Best Green Practices for Meeting Planners
- Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions
- How to Keep Your Website Interesting and Visitors coming back
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Creating a Winning Destination Brand
Crafting a winning city or region brand that resonates positively with all customer groups, including local stakeholders, is not an easy task. It requires an approach that differs from that used for consumer products and services. Here are 18 tips for navigating the challenges of creating a winning destination brand.
1. Take a realistic perspective.
Being realistic means looking from the outside and not simply adopting the internal view. It means realistically appraising the strength of your competition, assets, market trends, the needs of consumers and stakeholder values.
2. It’s more than a logo.
Experience has shown us that fundamental to developing a winning brand is recognizing that it is much more than a new logo, new graphic design, or a fresh coat of paint. And a destination’s brand is not an advertising theme, campaign, or a tagline either.
3. The objectives must match the budget.
Don’t try to change the world on a shoestring. Implementing a basic destination branding strategy is important. You do not need to wait until you have millions of dollars. It does, however, require a dedicated budget with a long-term commitment. Do not let a small budget stop you! Having the framework in place and consistently conveying your brand identity will greatly strengthen your marketing efforts no matter what your budget. Just do not promise too much and stretch yourself too thin!
4. It’s not an option!
Creating a positive brand identity is really not an option! If you do not proactively engage in branding, you run the risk of being positioned anyway by your competitors, and to your disadvantage. You must decide on the brand identity that you want, set the plans for developing it and then carefully and creatively manage it.
5. It takes time.
Just as your current image may have evolved over many years, trying to re-position perceptions in the minds of people outside of the area does not happen overnight.
6. Lots of little victories, again and again.
Your image is the result of hundreds and hundreds of influences and influencers. It is the long- term accumulation of your messages and experiences that counts. Similarly, a Grand Slam approach to branding a destination is a sure fire way to blow the budget with little long-term impact. True success will come from the ongoing messages and experiences from many sources hitting their mark again, and again, and again.
7. Go for the strongest emotional benefits.
The image of a city or region is the result of many influences, both tangible and intangible. The trick is to consistently highlight those emotional benefits that connect with customers and convey the most meaningful of those emotional benefits.
8. Looking good!
Get off to a good start with the best professionally designed visual identity system that you can afford. If this means using vendors from outside of your city, then do it. Also make sure that you have design specifications to direct and control the use of all the visual and verbal elements. Set clear rules as to what can and cannot be done, then follow them!
9. Influence the influencers.
There will be many influences on the destination image that are planned or are outside of your direct control e.g. media, travel writers, books, documentaries, celebrities, marketing partners and local companies. However, it may be possible to influence them to some degree to at least minimize any negative effects.
10. Understand what they want.
To the extent that your budget allows it is important to research the needs, wants and perceptions of prospective visitors as well as those of internal and external stakeholders.
11. Build the right organization.
Be sure that you have the organization and structure to develop, manage, and maintain the brand over time.
12. Local champions are essential.
The commitment, enthusiastic support, and endorsement of the highest-level politicians, opinion-leaders, business and community leaders are usually needed for the successful development and adoption of a community-based branding strategy.
13. Create a symphony.
Harness the power of the many messengers within your community to minimize noise and create a powerful symphony that conveys consistent messages. These messengers may be your marketing partners, media, major local businesses, exporters, celebrities, sporting teams and leaders.
14. Build healthy alliances.
One of the hallmarks of successful city and regional branding is a healthy partnership between public and private sector organizations. From the outset your branding program should aim to foster a collaborative approach between key private and public sector organizations, residents, partners, stakeholders, and opinion leaders.
15. Establish realistic evaluation criteria.
Objectives and benchmarks should be agreed from the start so that everyone knows what the outputs should or should not be. This will ensure that the program stays focused and that a realistic performance assessment can be made.
16. Do not limit yourself to local vendors.
While many communities have buy local programs and rightly so, there are occasions when it benefits everyone to engage outside vendors. When it comes to branding this can apply not only at the stage of revealing the brand identity and creating the strategy, but also in the initial designs, collateral, advertising and web site templates. The brand must be interpreted and projected to the highest creative and production standards affordable. You only get one chance to make a good impression. Success will benefit everyone – even the local vendors.
17. Bring them along with you.
Ensure that stakeholders, particularly those who may be co-operative marketing partners, are involved in the building process and understand basic branding concepts. This will contribute to the success of your brand marketing efforts and the successful integration of their products and services.
18. The brand Czar.
The most senior marketing executive in the organization hosting the brand should be appointed as the Brand Czar or Champion. This person must be in a senior position, with the credibility, experience and vision to guide the brand implementation and relationships. He or she has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the internal and external control of the brand that it is always aligned with the brand strategy and specifications.
Our final suggestion to enable you to gain the greatest benefits from branding is to engage outside assistance to develop the brand strategy. Some clients have called on us to create their brand strategy after they attempted to do it themselves. They found it too difficult without the objectivity, field experience, practical insights, and time savings that we bring.