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Countries, states, provinces, cities. Leaders of many such governmental units share an interest in developing an effective brand, one that drives tourism traffic while at the same time serving as a magnet for business investment.
Destination branding often refers to efforts to increase tourist visits and tourist spending for a particular travel destination. On the other hand, place branding is about defining your country or city to attract tourists, and attract investment capital, while simultaneously building a reputation of benefit to your constituents. An attempt to accomplish the latter is the Republic of Turkey’s Turquality project initiative.
Although the terms destination brand and place brand are used by some interchangably, we offer commentary on both, accessed by clicking through the listing of Categories on your left.
Check it out.
[ More posts about Destination Branding | More blogs about Destination Branding ]
We found this country slogan analysis performed by the Wall Street Journal.
From Incredible India to Uniquely Singapore, each of these place brands make the often repeated mistake in believing that cheerleading is branding. An approach of “let’s trump the competition by use of a chest thumping slogan” is a zero-sum game. The reason is any nation competing for business development and tourism dollars can trot out a one-up message such as Korea’s Something More.
Trumpeting a country or other place brand as unique does not make it so, as any effective brand strategy offers a demonstration rather than an explanation of uniqueness.
In addition, each of these exotic and dynamic slogans are all about me, me, me…rather than about the tourist or business audience a country seeks to attract. The only way such messages have any chance for a cultural breakthrough is if they are supported by large advertising spends over a number of years. For any country seeking a breakthrough onto the global stage, an advertising strategy is a money loser.
The solution is for government leaders and tourism officials to grasp the stark difference between advertising and branding. Unless they wish to don those cute little cheerleader outfits.
Another U.S. state takes a stab at branding and is instead snookered into expensive advertising.
The Los Angeles Times reports on this effort by the Washington Tourism Office:
Washington state’s new tourism brand campaign, “SayWA,” has its own website, which doesn’t extol the rain forests near the coast nor the wineries east of the Cascades. Instead, the website explains the brand itself.
“On the most basic level, WA=Washington,” the text reads. “So when you ‘SayWA,’ what you are saying, in effect, is ’say Washington.’ This device functions to keep Washington top-of-mind, on the short list when considering travel destinations.”
Offering a textbook example of what is often wrong with place branding efforts, Washington becomes lost in a clinical explanation of the message, rather than demonstrating a compelling and memorable point of difference. SayWA offers no meaningful bridge by which an audience might connect with the message. This flaw is fatal.
Branding is demonstrating. Advertising is explaining. Demonstrating engages your audience to lean forward and pursue you. Explaining is pleading with and chasing after anyone who might invest the time to listen.
By offering an engaging brand consumers are drawn to, you can stop chasing them. The cost savings will make any Governor look good.
Those behind SayWa also mistake cheerleading with branding, as seen in this brand promise:
Curious travelers will have a deep and rich experience because of the endless discoveries Washington has to offer, leaving them wanting to come back for more.
Change out Washington for any other U.S. state and the promise is equally true, and thus is worthless as the basis for a breakthrough brand. Brand promises such as this one are also irrelevant to audiences Washington seeks to attract; it prompts an eyes glazed over and tune-out reaction having heard it in various forms so many times before.
Perhaps SayWA means something to Washingtonians. But to the Washington tourism prospect living in Colorado or Iowa, SayWA is meaningless. As a professor at Temple University’s School of Tourism in Philadelphia says, “You might as well be speaking Chinese.”
Sun-Maid raisins is an example of successful branding. Authentic and simple, the brand is positioned as a healthy and nutritious snack with the tagline, nothing but Grapes and Sunshine.
The icon of the brand, the Sun-Maid herself, has undergone a makeover and is now animated, as seen in these television spots.
The story from the San Francisco Chronicle.
[ More posts about Brand Positioning | More blogs about Brand Positioning ]
In commenting on the many problems facing General Motors, we excerpted a portion of a column authored by Jack Trout in Forbes.
In 1981, Jack Trout and his partner at the time, Al Ries, published what would become the classic book on the topic of brand positioning, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind. As a retail company CEO earlier in my career, struggling with a real world business problem, Positioning opened the door to an entirely new way of thinking about marketing, and the realization that the three advertising / PR agencies our company was then working with were incapable of the critical thinking necessary for world class brand development. Shortly after reading the book, we fired each of the agencies.
Branding was so different from advertising, and from public relations; the realization was like a bolt out of the blue. This simple realization changed a company’s fortunes, and it changed a career.
The book purchased some years ago is still around. It’s since become a dog eared volume filled with scribbled margin notes, and remains a great read.
Similar to the book, in the Forbes column Mr. Trout offers these contemporary nuggets on positioning and brand extension:
A successful brand has to stand for something. And the more variations to attach to it, the more you risk standing for nothing. This is especially true when what you add actually clashes with your perception. If Altira’s Marlboro stands for cowboys out in Marlboro Country, how can it sell Marlboro Menthol or Marlboro Ultra Light cigarettes? Real cowboys don’t smoke Menthols or Ultra Lights.
Should Wal-Mart Stores try to sell more up-market products to compete with Target? No, that’s not its market.
Should Porsche risk its sports car image by selling SUVs? No, it’s an iconic sports car brand.
[ More posts about Brand Extension | More blogs about Brand Extension ]
Donald Trump is starting a mortgage business. As the Orange County Register reports, Trump Mortgage is out to develop a national brand within the highly fragmented real estate lending industry:
The world seems pretty full of mortgage companies.
Donald Trump disagrees.
The real estate mogul turned name brand, turned TV star, officially rolls out Trump Mortgage…in New York. The purported goal of the business is to provide luxury-style service to both residential and commercial borrowers.
“Donald Trump is putting the suit and tie back in the mortgage business,” says a press release announcing today’s kickoff.
…Trump, always master of spin, dropped enough hints…on the mortgage company’s Web site, to guess at his assumptions:
[One] Orange County mortgage broker…thinks Trump might be on to something: “How many people want to boast that they have a Trump mortgage?”
We suggest, “Not enough.”
Trump is banking the success of this venture largely on the perceived value of an affiliation benefit, revolving around how a customer wants others to see them due to their affiliation with Donald Trump.
This brand extension has an all too familiar smell.
The naming conventions of auto makers are the topic of this story in the Wall Street Journal:
For decades auto makers preferred to give comprehensible names to their cars. 
To lend an air of prestige, Lincoln called its top-of-the-line model the Town Car. Cadillac was already playing that game, with models including the DeVille and Eldorado. But in the past several years, car companies, particularly luxury auto makers, have favored combinations of letters and numbers, like the BMW X5 and Lexus LS 450. Their thinking is that this builds the image of a whole brand, not just one model.
But with a finite number of letters available, and some of them way sexier than others, car makers find it more and more difficult to think up letter combinations they can call their own and that haven’t been taken by products in other industries.
This approach to product naming is often copied in other industries, such as home builder products emulating the BMW 3/5/7 series naming architecture.
It’s a system calculated to direct brand equity to the umbrella brand such as Audi, Lexus or Mercedes Benz, rather than to a particular model, and in stark contrast to, for example, GM’s naming convention. It’s an effective strategy owing to its simplicity.
When competitors become copycats, however, those who do it first usually win the hearts and minds of consumers. Which means Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is feeling good about their naming architecture, first used in 1929 for the second car produced by the company, the BMW 3/15.
As far back as 1903, an automotive manufacturer used an alphabet naming system. Today, Henry Ford would feel right at home.
In February we threatened to go public.
Weeks later, our threat became reality, when we spilled the beans on what it takes to create a great brand. For those of you not in the audience, we feel your pain.
According to this report in Bloomberg, Greece will focus on branding its olive oil to boost the economy and drive tourism:
Greece will spend 5 million euros ($6.1 million) to improve the branding of its olive oil…
“Our aim is that olive oil will be one of the vehicles for the promotion of Greece, tourism and Greek products in general,'’ George Alogoskoufis, the country’s economy minister said at a press conference in Athens.
Greece is third in the world in global olive oil exports, behind Italy and Spain. Unless the Minister and his staff intend to successfully segment the olive oil industry and develop a new niche, or if the government’s strategists are dead set on targeting a food product to demonstrate their brand, it would make more sense to focus on a product uniquely Greek, rather than creating the substantial advertising and promotion expense needed to overcome the market association of, for example, Italy with olive oil products.
Olive oil aside, the fact remains that Greece has a far more effective way in which to differentiate itself globally, and to engage the tourist and business development currency it seeks. Greece should brand Greece.
A number of readers commented recently about the USA Network tagline Characters Welcome, such as this one:
I get so annoyed hearing that insipid phrase over and over: “Characters Welcome”. I figured it was supposed to make one feel cool and unique, a real “character” for liking Monk, however it has had the opposite effect on me. I’m not watching USA anymore.
At the time USA Network announced their new brand strategy nearly one year ago, we saw the tagline as part of a promising strategy to differentiate USA from other US cable channels. But thus far, the power that could be generated by this branding falls short.
Here’s why. USA fails to demonstrate to viewers just what this brand position means to the audience it seeks to convert as regular viewers. Is the benefit offered to the viewing audience one of compelling programming content, or is USA Network simply an outlet for viewers to trumpet how they too are characters?
USA seems focused on defining characters as its audience, as these commercials demonstrate. But to the audience, it doesn’t matter why some viewers might explain themselves as characters. What matters instead is a promise that USA Network is worth watching, consistently, due to compelling programming with evocative characters and plotlines.
A tagline by itself is nothing more than an empty slogan. And that is exactly what USA Network has done…pushed the slogan out for public consumption without offering a compelling demonstration of why viewers should care.
While USA Network’s stab at branding is better than the mess at Paxson, it falls far short of the more effective brand position demonstrated by cable channel Bravo. Owned by NBC Universal Cable, which also owns USA Networks, Bravo viewers watch what happens, which puts the focus clearly on where it should be, the programming content.
Market analysts predict Starbucks is on course to overtake McDonalds as the world’s largest fast food brand. The careful nurturing of the Starbucks brand identity is behind this growth:
Coffee is a daily habit for many. However, the Starbucks model has been instrumental in taking that staple beverage and turning it into a premium indulgence with the associated pricing benefits.
The Starbucks network of comfortable stores offers aspirational lifestyle associations and affiliation benefits for consumers on an easy to access basis. More to this story at Business Review Online.
As our sister product naming group Igor demonstrates, even an Ivy can be engaged rather than chased.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania identifies a single required reading text for the product marketing session of it’s product design course. The required text? The Igor Naming Guide.
Better than an honorary degree.
According to this report from the Business Times of Malaysia, branding is a focus priority of many CEOs:
Strong brands are built on strong internal branding. CEOs of leading companies understand this and consistently develop effective approaches to align employee behaviour to fully support the brand…
In a survey done by Grant Thornton, three quarters of the CEOs from mid-sized companies are aware that having a strong brand is more important than just two years ago. Many CEOs believe…it is important to personally oversee brand management and that…employees hold the key to the wellness of the brand. Thus the CEO’s visible backing of the brand is the most important signal that employees can have.
We agree. It’s the basis behind any good brand, and seems so self-evident as not to require emphasis. However as often stated on these pages, simple concepts can be among the most difficult to understand.
Addressing the question examined months ago by Business Week, what is the cut to the chase definition of the word brand?
Rather than the often bewildering and verbose definitions offered by trendy ad agencies and PR firms, the answer is much simpler, and essential to grasp:
Your brand is your promise. How you keep it means everything.
We trust Leonardo would be proud.
Talk with us when ready to learn more.
A law firm proudly announces what they refer to as their new corporate branding. The firm, Phoenix Law Group, explains their new brand in this way:
This website highlights PLG’s refreshing philosophy of direct client-to-lawyer contact without middle layers. The home page reflects this approach by stating that the firm “was founded on one simple belief: To serve our clients more efficiently and cost-effectively.” By reviewing the partners’ posted biographies and specialty areas, site visitors can select an appropriate attorney for their particular needs. A mouse click leads visitors immediately to the partner’s email address and direct-dial phone number to connect directly with an attorney, not a receptionist.
“We strongly believe that our clients should never be filtered through other people or a generic electronic inbox for the firm. As our new site reflects, someone visiting our site or calling us deserves to talk directly to someone that can help,” said…a PLG partner.
PLG is fooling itself into thinking it has a new brand, in yet another example of a failure to grasp the difference in branding vs. advertising. The advertising strategy used by PLG is one of improving the firm’s website. Yet, the new website reveals the same meaningless stock photography and adulatory messaging seen on behalf of any number of law firms. In contrast, a brand strategy would offer a market position never before seen or heard, one so authentic and compelling it prompts the audience to stop and engage in a real conversation about the firm.
PLG explains themselves, rather than demonstrating their key point of difference. The distinction is crucial, as demonstrating can eliminate advertising. If forced to explain yourself, the only way to build awareness and create the opportunity to convert prospects into clients is by substantial advertising, public relations or new media expenditures. An example of a firm that understands this distinction is Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer, by use of their website to demonstrate their difference.
We previously addressed the topic of law firm branding. PLG joins an infinite list of law firms failing to grasp the competitive advantage achievable through branding. PLG, as good they may be, is for now stuck on discussion of WHO they are, rather than demonstrating WHY they matter.
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Friday, April 28th, 2006 - 1:36pm |
Destination Branding + Government Strategy + Nation/Place Branding |
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