Issues & Trends – May 2010
TA: There’s nothing like a campaign with 100% pure trade involvement
TOURISM Australia’s new There’s nothing like Australia campaign demonstrates that our tourism marketers have learned a number of valuable lessons from the decade of success enjoyed across the Tasman by the 100 per cent Pure New Zealand campaign.
However Australia’s tactics diverge sharply from New Zealand’s in one key facet – trade involvement.
Tourism New Zealand cut all ties with the trade when it implemented 100 per cent Pure New Zealand, eschewing co-operative advertising and joint marketing efforts.
But Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy assures that There’s nothing like Australia will be relying heavily on trade partnerships to achieve success.
This will become apparent at the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) in Adelaide later this month when TA will unveil the next phase of the campaign following an enthusiastic response to its opening flourish. (More than 21,000 Australians have accepted TA’s invitation to help promote Australia to the world by sharing their inside knowledge of what is unique and special about the country.)
ATE will see the launch of a new television and cinema commercial directed by Michael Gracie whose T-Mobile and Evian roller babies commercials are the number one and number two most downloaded advertisements over the internet.
If the new TA commercial similarly succeeds in going viral on Youtube, this would neatly complement the social media strategy mapped out for There’s nothing like Australia (travelBulletin, April).
McEvoy says the new commercial, which is not personality-driven and features a song, is “confident, wry and fun”. It will come in 90, 60 and 15 second versions (plus a 20 second one for the UK market).
But TA will be launching more than a commercial at ATE. Importantly, it will also be issuing a comprehensive kit designed to make it easy for the trade to capitalise on the planned advertising blitz.
McEvoy described the kit as “a prospectus” that will enable up to 2000 tour operators to get behind the campaign, with minimal rules and caveats governing the use of the tag line and logo.
In particular TA is looking to partner with airlines in a bid to add more inbound passengers to the soaring numbers of outbound Australians making use of the ample seat capacity currently available.
And it also intends to get maximum leverage from the global network of 25,500 “Aussie Specialist” travel agents which TA has built up over the years.
“Others have come and gone but we have never resiled (from a specialist agency program),” said McEvoy.
The first part of this approach – a so-called “hero advertisement” – is also a key ingredient of the much-envied New Zealand recipe for success. But the trade involvement is not.
George Hickton, former Tourism New Zealand chief executive and architect of 100 per cent Pure New Zealand told last month’s Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) symposium that a critical decision had been to focus all of Tourism New Zealand’s resources on “fulfilling the primary role of a National Tourist Office (NTO)”.
TNZ puts its total budget into establishing the 100 per cent Pure branding and leaves it to industry and regional tourism organisations “to do the rest”.
While an open admirer of many aspects of the New Zealand strategy, McEvoy rejects this part of it.
“We (TA) may have been inconsistent in our message at times, but we have been bloody consistent in maintain-ing relationships with airlines and the distribution system and that will hold us in good stead,” he said.
Other key components of the New Zealand strategy outlined by Hickton include absolute adherence to the centrally controlled branding message and a determination to maintain 100 per cent Pure beyond the usual three or four year life of a conventional campaign.
He said the NTO has been ruthless in ensuring there are no exceptions made to meet claims that “it won’t work in this or that market”.
Hickton who said danger signals for 100 per cent Pure emerged at the end of year three when the question was asked: What’s next?
Faced with this, a critical decision for TNZ was: “Don’t blink. We were only at the end of the launch phase,” said Hickton.
His words will resonate within the Australian travel industry where ATEC managing director Matt Hingerty has noted that the launch of There’s nothing like Australia was the fifth he had attended in the past 10 years.
McEvoy clearly aims to emulate the disciplined consistency of the New Zealanders. His current contract with Tourism Australia is five years and he has spelled out that he does not intend changing There’s nothing like Australia over that period and he envisages it could be a 10-20 year marketing message.
n McEvoy is delighted with the response to Tourism Australia’s Face-book site which has attracted 400,000 members so far.
He says using social media means having to take on board negative as well as positive messages.“You have to be prepared to take the good with the bad. You have to be brave enough to engage with members,” he said.
• There has been “a slightly unintended consequence” of setting up the There’s nothing like Australia website, McEvoy revealed.
“Already 70,000 Australians have visited the site and they have stayed on the site for an average of 11 minutes being exposed to the holiday attractions they can find in their own country,” he said.