Destination branding: Legacy thinking still prevailing?

Amazing, Truly, Uniquely, WOW, even Bloody - you name it, every adjective has been thrown at destination branding. Is there still too much legacy thinking attached to the business of destination branding when customers are changing so rapidly? Yeoh Siew Hoon reports.

At every tourism conference I attend, there's always a lot of angst that goes on about destination branding.

The recent national MICE conference in Subic Bay, Philippines was no exception. A panel discussion debated the merits and demerits of the "WOW Philippines" brand and slogan and when a poll was conducted, the majority voted for a change.

It seems in today's world of instant everything, everyone's always wanting to change something. We do it with our gadgets. We do it with our celebrities - instant fame and then, instant nothing-ness. We do it with our social networks - from "friend" to "unfriend".

With branding, change usually comes when there is, well, change at the top. A new chief executive takes over and usually the first thing he or she wants to do is new branding. I suppose it's because it's the most visible thing one can do to show one is doing something.

It's of course also one of the most expensive and intricate things to do. A rebranding involves more than just a slogan or a tagline, it creates a chain of change from top to bottom, from side to side, from every which way to any which point.

Every destination has struggled with branding and spent millions of taxpayers money in the process. Australia had some bloody good campaigns until "Where the bloody hell are you?" blew its reputation out of the water. Thailand had an "Amazing" run until political troubles erupted and now the word has taken on an amazing twist. Taiwan tells you it will "Touch Your Heart". Malaysia claims it is "Truly Asia". "Uniquely Singapore" was accused of being bad English.

Brett Henry, vice president of marketing of Abacus International (right), believes all this talk of destination branding - one slogan, one tagline - is legacy thinking. He believes travellers travel by interests and may not be influenced by the choice of destination.

Being a kite-surfer himself, he seeks out the best waves for his sport and will go anywhere, regardless of destination, as long as the waves are good. He thinks more and more travellers are like him, experience-driven rather than destination-specific.

And in today's world of social media, which allows people to be grouped by interests regardless of where they are, he feels this is the way destination marketing should go. "Coming up with some slogan and tagline and then advertising in traditional media, that's pretty old school to me. I don't think people say I will go to Malaysia because it is ‘Truly Asia'."

Morris Sim, CEO of Circos Brand Karma, taking part in the same panel discussion as Henry at MICECON, is less dismissive of the idea of destination branding, provided it is done right of course.

He thinks people like Henry, even if they are only after the best waves, are still seeking the spirit of something - freedom, adventure, for example - which can be captured by a brand. So, to him, destinations still need to capture some form of spirit in their brand promise.

However ask him the best destination marketing initiative he's seen in a long while and he cites Tourism Queensland with its "Best Job In The World" competition in which the state body offered A$150,000 to the right candidate to be an island caretaker and to promote the islands of the Great Barrief Reef to the world.

Ben Southall, who won the job, records his daily activities in a blog at http://www.islandreefjob.com/ and people can follow him on Twitter, Flickr and various other social media vehicles.

Sim proposed that the Philippines, with its more than 7,000 islands, and obviously a limited marketing budget, should dream up a similar competition. "It's tailor-made for such a viral campaign," said Sim during the panel.

So let's see - how about a "7,107 dream jobs" competition?