The Canadian Tourism Commission was one of the first out of the gate, going so far as to turn everything from its global TV campaign to its website over to consumer generated content. (Full disclosure: we worked on this campaign).

“Locals Know” was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the Top 10 tourism campaigns of all time and resulted in significant increases in both domestic tourism and international arrivals. The two-year effort started with a domestic campaign challenging Canadians to share their local knowledge of great Canadian travel experiences. More than 4,500 Canadians responded with text, images and video. The best content was then re-purposed, warts and all, for the CTC’s global TV campaign.

More recently, Tourism Australia borrowed a page from the CTC playbook to create their own crowdsourced campaign. More than 29,000 Australians submitted their local travel picks which now populate the nothinglikeaustralia.com website.

A few weeks ago, Australia launched its new TV campaign – an epic singalong featuring travel experiences drawn from the submissions of Australian locals. While the CTC opted to use the actual footage shot by travellers, Tourism Australia created a big production number that essentially seeks to re-create a more perfect version what was once consumer generated content.

And just this past week, the Icelandic Tourism Board jumped on the crowdsourcing trend in an effort to overcome the challenges posed by their now-infamous volcano.

“Inspired by Iceland” has so far generated some 270 travel experiences, most of which do not include having volcanic ash fall on your head. Their quirky TV campaign plays off popular internet memes from “Where the hell is Matt” to “hey, I’ve got a webcam, watch me dance”, except that it’s all professionally shot.

While tourism boards are embracing crowdsourcing and giving the locals a powerful voice in promoting their own home, the authenticity that makes the campaigns so potentially powerful seems lost when they revert to scripted hollywood numbers for the TV spots. The CTC is the one exception, staying true to the rough-around-the-edges but oh-so-compelling nature of consumer generated content.

UPDATE: New Zealand is appealing to ex-pats to help spread the word about what’s happening back home in 2011. More details on their website – click the pic:

Leaf through your favorite travel magazine and count the number of destinations claiming to offer some combination of: variety, city and country adventure, world-class dining, shopping and luxury hotels. The classic tourism ad is a patchwork of images showing a couple in a restaurant, some sort of cultural activity (often dancers), a guy golfing and the exterior of a hotel. Fluff up the pillows and chill the champagne because we’ve nailed the top activities on the list and everyone’s going to be beating down our doors, right?

Wrong. Most often, in any category, the top criteria expressed by consumers are essentially the price of entry items. If you get a check beside each item they might take a look at you — of you don’t, they’re probably going to move on (unless you offer them something special that’s not even on the list).

The trap most marketers fall into is to try and be “better” than their competition at meeting the top 10 criteria.

But consumers, especially when they travel, are looking for something different, not just better. And when faced with the challenge of trying to discern which brand is “better” on a range of criteria, different will win out every time.

The other difficulty in judging yourself against a conventional set of criteria is that you may not, in fact, be very good at offering what’s on the list. And that can be a beautiful thing. Because if being better simply isn’t a choice, you’re left with no option but to be different. For many destinations, the decision to be different comes only after a long period of struggling and not being honest with themselves as they chase the same conventional criteria. But out of that despair can be born a beautiful truth.

That’s why I’m quite liking this new campaign for Visit Wales that positions a family vacation in Wales as a great alternative to “package tour” sun & sand destinations.

Click here to visit the website.

Click on the pic to watch the (longish but worthwhile) trip film.

The campaign carries on from where a previous effort left off and continues to put a penny in the Wales brand jar – a jar filled with brutal honesty, beautifully told.

Here’s a look at their previous campaign, which is one of my personal favorites:

I’ve never been to Wales and I’ve never really imagined there was much to do there. Conventional destination marketing would say that they should launch an energetic campaign to tell me about the wide variety of things there are to see and do in the North country. But the crafty Welsh were smarter than that. Rather than engage the consumer in an argument challenging their perceptions of Wales, they decided to leverage their perceived weakness and re-frame it as a benefit to the consumer and a wonderfully different experience.

Miles and miles of undeveloped countryside becomes a chance for a peaceful escape from the headaches of modern society.

A lack of “modern conveniences” becomes a statement of authenticity and cultural pride.

A less diversified retail scene becomes an opportunity for adventure and discovery.

The real danger in including a new logo when you launch your finely crafted and painstakingly developed destination brand is that no one will listen to a single word you say.  They'll fixate on the logo.  And it won't matter how many hundred "consultations" and "workshops" you did, or that you surveyed every man woman and child in all your key markets and reviewed three hundred years of third party research, all of which was time and money well invested.  It won't even matter whether your idea for the destination brand is any good.  The scope of your multi-year project will be reduced to headlines that read "City spends $1 million on logo".  And you'll only have yourself to blame.

Most of the world doesn't understand the concept of a destination brand, place brand, tourism brand or whatever you want to call the thing you're trying to make travelers believe you are.  But they do understand logo's.  Logo's are what help them to buy the right can of soup.  And to the average joe (especially the average joe who just got cousin larry to make a logo for "average joe's car wash and hemp shop"), logo's shouldn't cost $1 million.

When you launch a new destination brand, launch the brand first.  Spend lots of time talking about what you want the brand to mean, the role it plays, and why it makes sense for your destination.  People may or may not understand what you're taking about, but at least they'll listen because they won't be distracted by those cool new hats and t-shirts you printed up with your new logo.  Let the idea of the brand sink in for a while.  Let people debate it.  Then, once it's sunk in for a while, introduce your new logo.  By then, people will at least have a frame of reference to think about it.  You'll still have critics, but by then the press will at least understand the broader context of the branding project and you'll probably avoid the "$1 million logo" headlines.

For a lesson in what happens when you launch a logo and a brand at the same time, check out this piece from the New Zealand Herald.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

The ads became popular on YouTube.  The campaign won a Kelly Award from the Magazine Publishers of America, a Jay Chiat award for strategic planning, and as recently as this past July won an Atlas award for best branding of an international destination.  "Bahamavention" became part of popular culture and entered the vocabulary as a buzzword for being badly in need of a vacation.  Google "Bahamavention" and you'll get more than 800 results for this made-up word.

This week, Bahamas Tourism switched advertising agencies without even asking the incumbent, Fallon, to participate.

wha' happened?

The answer is probably both simple and complex.

The simple answer is that the ads didn't work.  Visitation to the Bahamas is down 9.1% in the first six months of 2007 at a time when destinations in Mexico are up over 30% and islands such as Anguilla, Bonaire and Curacao are enjoying double-digit growth.

While the campaign was memorable, entertaining and original, it didn't differentiate the Bahamas as a tourism destination or a travel experience.  "Bahamavention" might stick in the consumer's mind, but its effect was simply to remind the consumer of the generic category benefit of a vacation: you'll feel more relaxed.  And there are a lot of places (and a lot of them in direct competition with the Bahamas) where you can go to relax.

The ads failed to provide a single compelling reason why a "Bahamavention" should result in a trip to the Bahamas, or to make an argument for why the Bahamas were a better prescription for a "Bahamavention" than anywhere else.  Tropical destinations as a whole may have benefited from the campaign, but growing the category probably wasn't Bahamas Tourism's goal.

It's a common mistake in marketing: a concept looks so good and has the potential for the much-sought-after "buzz factor" (something Fallon is famous for), that tourism marketing organizations get caught up in the buzz themselves and forget to probe the tough questions about whether the campaign will actually drive consumers to take the desired action.

The other factor that may have influenced the Bahamas to decide to ditch the agency and the campaign is a bit more complex.

For a few years now, beginning around the time the Bahamas launched their new logo:

the tourism authority has been committed to the idea that "The Bahamas represents a series of independent, individual and highly differentiated destinations.  The Ministry is establishing individual identities
for each island and seeks to eliminate the current perception in the
minds of many consumers and members of the trade that once you have
seen one island in The Bahamas, you have seen all of The Bahamas."

The "Bahamavention" campaign did nothing to further this strategy.  In fact, the ads reinforced the idea that a "Bahamavention" was a one-dimensional experience of surf and sand, available in equal and generic abundance across the chain of islands.

Facing declines in visitation and no doubt a lot of pressure from the local industry over the campaign and the lack of strategic consistency, Bahamas Tourism decided to cut and run.  And they're probably right.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

But I guess that's the point of having a Second Life.

I have terrible fashion sense and haven't read a sci-fi book since grade school.  So when it came time to design my avatar and visit Second Life, my only real option was to go another direction.  Let's just say I dressed down:

My avatar's name is Reality Maximus.  Which resulted in the unintentionally hilarious bonus of forcing anyone who wanted to speak to me to utter words rarely heard in the fantasy world of Second Life: "Hello, Reality!"

As it turns out, aside from the impossible perfection of most avatars, much of the rest of Second Life is disappointingly similar to real life.  In order to earn Linden Dollars (the in-world currency used to buy better clothes, helicopters, and essentials like a better skin tone), avatars must perform virtual labour.

You can mop floors in a shopping mall:

Do hard time crushing stones:

Or even participate in a fashion show:

You may wonder why someone would pay me anything, even "pretend" dollars, to participate in a fashion show.  Here's how a large portion of the Second Life economy works:

• Much like the rest of the online world, the prosperity of SL merchants and land-owners is tied to the number of visitors they can attract. 
• By paying members Linden Dollars to hang around and in many cases do literally nothing, the sponsor's area of SL "appears" to be a popular destination to members viewing the traffic map used to navigate the SL world. 
• Bigger crowds attract more visitors and ultimately more revenue for the sponsor.
• The opportunity to "earn" Linden Dollars and buy new stuff whets the user's appetite for consuming more and more virtual bling.
• Eventually, the user might commit real world dollars to buy more Linden Dollars to pimp their avatar with the really good stuff and everybody wins(?).
• In other words, it functions much like the real-world economy.

As a result, and especially to a newbie like myself, exploring Second Life can become nothing but one big lunchbag letdown after another.  You consult the navigation map, find a "popular" spot where you think something cool must be happening, only to find a bunch of zombies accumulating Linden dollars while their owners are away from the keyboard packing lunch for the kids.

Sponsors seem to have made the assumption that having beautiful avatars lounging about will create a positive impression of their "brand."  And in a world where almost everyone is beautiful and exotic, that's not necessarily a bad bet.  But it's an easy system to subvert.  One popular club offered spots to earn Linden Dollars right outside the club entrance, thinking that sexy dancers at the doorway might encourage visitors to venture into the club.  Until Reality creeps in. 

Let's just say the club was a little slower than usual that night.

Relying on the big brand names to deliver a worthwhile experience doesn't seem to help.  American Apparel went so far as to render a virtual chain and padlock to announce the closing of its venture into SL.  Another retailer took a simpler approach and conjured up a large paper bag to hide their online folly.

But it's not all disappointment and loneliness  in Second Life.  There are places with an active social scene and the anonymity of the avatars encourages people to chat freely.

Here's Reality Maximus at the dance club:

And hanging out at the beach:

But the really interesting parts of SL seem to be the out of the way spots frequented by regulars, who use the world as a virtual StarBucks to get caught up on each others' lives.  One group of line dancing enthusiasts was particularly welcoming:

As I traveled through Second Life, the question I got asked most often was "why did you make your avatar look like that?"  The assumption seemed to be that if you could choose your physical appearance (as you can in SL), you would never choose to be anything but perfect and beautiful.  It's your Second Life, after all.

At first, I tried to explain that I had been working on my avatar for quite a while and spent a lot of time in front of the mirror trying to get it just right.  That didn't seem to satisfy anyone, and the conversation usually turned into this weird parallel universe where people assumed I must be good looking in real life if I chose to make my avatar so dumpy in SL.  All of which begs the question: what should people who are actually good looking in real life do with their avatars in Second Life?

In the end, I had no real answer, other than to ask in response "why did you make your avatar look like that?"

The really interesting part for me was that I found I attracted a lot of attention everywhere I went.  In a world of boring perfection, I stood out as something different.  And maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere for marketers who want to jump on the SL bandwagon…  maybe "different" is more interesting than "better"…  maybe a different online experience with your brand is better than creating a perfect replica of your real-world brand… minus the black socks and sandals, of course.

Flush with my new-found expertise on all things Second Life, I decided to give a little something back to the community.  When you first join Second Life, having fine-tuned the beauty of your avatar and taken a bit of a newbie training course, the first place everyone "lands" is Orientation Island.  There are usually a few SL veteran here to kindly answer any questions you may have.  And so that's where I figured my talents were best put to use.

In hindsight, if you've just spent a good couple of hours downloading software, setting up your account and creating your perfect fantasy body, maybe being greeted by a chain-smoking guy in shorts shorts and a wet t-shirt wouldn't quite live up to your hopes and dreams for a Second Life.

But that's Reality.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

Managing revenues, staffing levels and marketing programs through this cycle is one of the greatest challenges facing any tourism operator.  Everyone talks about creating a "four-season" tourism industry, but the real goal is to turn a 3-season business (off, high and shoulder) into a 1-season business (high).  And some innovative operators are making real progress toward doing just that.

At Camping Orleans, a five-star campground on Ile D'Orleans in the St. Lawrence River, Quebec, Canada, the fall was always a very soft shoulder season.  After Labour Day in September, the operator would more or less "fold up his tent" and take some time to enjoy the Fall colours and the ships passing by the the St. Lawrence River.  Ship-watching became a bit of a local obsession and what few visitors were left in the campground joined in the fun.  Fast forward a few seasons and the social sport of ship-watching has put Camping Orleans' Fall business almost on par with its summer occupancy. 

Camping Orleans now publishes its own version of "The Shipping News" alerting campers to the timing and details of ships scheduled to pass through the busy and beautiful St. Lawrence.  Fall is the busiest time for shipping in the Saint Lawrence as many large "Lakers" head to warmer climates for the Winter, and the annual passing of the Queen Elizabeth II is a highlight of the campground's Fall season.  It's a great example of creating a unique tourism experience through clever packaging and a fresh look at one's surroundings.

In Kerala, India, the Monsoon season puts a real damper on tourism industry revenues.  But a newly announced marketing program is aimed at converting the "rainy season" into the "dream season." 

The idea is to lure domestic visitors to the region using a combination of savvy advertising and discounted rates.  For the potential traveler, it's a great opportunity to experience product that may be out of their price range or sold out during the high season.  To the individual operator, it's a chance to reach new customers and create buzz using what some have called "sampvertising" — giving consumers easy access to your product in exchange for the resulting positive word of mouth.

On Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, the Wickaninnish Inn has become world-famous as a winter destination for storm-watching.

Each year, a growing cult of storm enthusiasts flock to the luxurious inn on Canada's Pacific coast to watch massive winter storms roll in off the ocean from the comfort of their beachfront jacuzzis.  It's now almost as difficult (and as expensive) to get a room at the Wick in winter as it is during their traditional "high" summer season.  The product hasn't changed at all — the operators simply made the decision to stop moaning about how the bad weather was hurting their business and apply a little creativity to marketing what was right in front of them.

Are there untapped gems in your own backyard that you could turn into a new tourism product?  Why are your shoulder and off seasons soft?  Maybe, with a bit of clever thinking and creative packaging,  the very thing that makes those seasons soft can turn them into a new revenue opportunity for you.  Can you shift the consumer's focus from "bad weather" to "storm-watching"?  Can you turn "rain" into "romance"? 

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

And yet that’s exactly how a lot of regional CVBs behave when they set out to establish their own independent “destination brands” in the shadow of a larger and better known destination.  Hubris gets in the way of doing what's right and they bravely ignore the fact that what attracts people to their general whereabouts probably has a lot more to do with the reputation of the big city that shall not be named than it does with the wonderful yet comparatively less wonderful wonders of their suburb. 

So I was encouraged this week by news out of Ohio that the regional DMO’s surrounding Cleveland had joined forces to promote themselves as “Cleveland +”

Rather than spraying their already-too-small budgets to the four winds, they’ve reached the inescapably logical conclusion that they’re each far better off to hitch their wagon to the star that’s already known: Cleveland.

In a moment of political weakness, perhaps exhausted by yet another round of Meetings & Incentive Travel trade shows, where their staff had met one too many conventioneers asking directions to the Cleveland booth, they finally saw the light.  And so a 16-county area in northeast Ohio formed the Greater Cleveland Marketing Alliance.

Akron, Canton, Youngtown, Alliance, Massillon, Louisville and 10 other places whose residents probably respond "I live near Cleveland" when asked will now market themselves under the collective umbrella of Cleveland +.

Chicago has made a viable sub-brand out of its Chicagoland concept and several years ago, the municipalities surrounding Kansas City made a similarly brave move in creating OneKC, a collective marketing program spanning two states, 18 counties and 50 plus cities.  The coolest part about this collective is that they formalized their commitment to a shared fate in creating a Declaration of Interdependence, establishing the vision and ground rules for their partnership.

A rising tide floats all boats, etc.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

“We've got everything most people want in a vacation, except most people” is at once an appeal to travelers seeking something off the beaten path and a promise of comparative solitude.  Most importantly, the brand promise is true to one of the fundamental rules of tourism marketing: be true to yourself and true to what people believe to be true about you.

Panama skates dangerously close to a “best kept secret” strategy here, but manages to put a fresh spin on the idea of positioning a brand based on its relatively small customer base.  Luxury brands use this type of exclusivity to add prestige and badge value to their brand.  But can you position a destination brand (and in this case a whole country) on the idea that it attracts very few visitors?

Florida's Space Coast thinks so.

Presenting a brand, product or service as a “best kept secret” has always struck me at best as a quaint throwback to the days of covered wagons and snake oil, and at worst as a sign of brutally lazy strategic planning.  It’s right up there with strategies that begin with “Discover…” or “Visit…”.  The fact that very few people buy (or have ever even heard of) your brand is pretty weak rationale for making a “secret” claim.  Marketers are always trying to turn unknown or low-selling products into  “niche brands.”  But there’s often a more apt description for “niche” brands:  crap products and services that no one wants to buy.  The Pontiac Aztek, for example, was a niche brand that appealed to such a niche market that it eventually va-niche-d altogether.

But back to the role of real and perceived truth in tourism marketing.  If you’re like me you probably haven’t thought much about Panama since Noriega was ousted to the strains of Bon Jovi.  And though I haven’t checked its tourism satellite account lately, I don’t think Panama is exactly lighting up the scoreboard with record arrivals.

But there is a role in the tourism world for a destination brand that offers an escape from the often over-commercialised world of travel product.  It may work for Panama.  The Space Coast, on the other hand, is so intimately tied to most peoples' perceptions of Florida that its lack of "tourists" may be seen as more of a negative than a positive.  We'll watch and see how long they remain on this track.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

The Pala Casino Spa & Resort in California did just that.  Check out hownottowin.com for a look at this counter-intuitive campaign, complete with a free instructional DVD and lots of great online content.

Whether they've managed to diferentiate the experience of the Pala Casino is open to debate, but they've definitely differentiated their advertising and I'll bet built a lot of awareness around their brand in the bargain.

It's a great lesson in zigging when everyone else zags.  The tourism world is awash in attractions and destinations chasing the same "price of entry" attributes that show up as "important" on consumer surveys.  Think of the ski industry — everyone wants to talk about how much snow they have.  Great snow will show up as a critical factor in surveys of consumers.  But here's the thing: most years, most ski hills will have snow (it's kind of why they exist).  Some years, you may get lucky and have "more snow" than the other guys, but it's not a sustainable position.  The same holds true for golf courses, shopping malls, casinos, and lots of other sectors that are often marketed using the same tired cliches with very little differentiation.

Give the consumers something new to consider — or better yet, attack the conventions and assumptions that exist in their heads, and you'll stand apart.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.

I'll let the ads speak for themselves…

Yes, the last one's a bit over the top, but you try to market a monsoon season and see how far you get.

Note: We’ve re-published article as part of a series of the most popular pieces from our former blog (BrandCanadaBlog). We can’t promise all the links will work, and some of the references may be a bit dated, but we think the examples and insights are still valid.