Economic power is not where marketers think it is A few days ago, Mumbrella Asia published an article summarising a keynote by Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman’. In it, Hoffman questioned why marketers are fixated on a youth demographic when women over 50 control 95% of household expenditure. The statistics on this generation should be a marketer’s dream. Not only is the Baby Boomer cohort large, it’s disproportionately wealthy. The US Boomer generation on its own constitutes the third largest economy in the world (if it were a country only US and … [Read more...]
Defending and building your destination’s budget.
Using the Aces Up your Sleeve In the first quarter of 2017, the New Zealand government announced that it was increasing Tourism New Zealand’s funding. But this was a rare event in funding for Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) – globally it seems that budgets for promoting and supporting tourism are under pressure. Differing political realities have meant that many US states are facing dramatic budget cuts. There is even talk that Brand USA may be scrapped whilst in the UK a long term focus on austerity has seen the Visit Britain’s … [Read more...]
Toilet Tourism: Why toilets and tourism is a perfect match
Every year I love reading about the Ig Nobel Award. This is an international science award that every year recognises a great truth about humans. If we can make an emotional connection to an issue, we are more likely to do something about it. The idea of the award is to recognise science that ‘first makes you laugh and then makes you think’. The same is true of #toilettourism: the impact that toilets can have on the visitation of a place. Whenever we talk about it – including when Bron published her piece last year on the subject - people … [Read more...]
Why Tourism Marketing IS Your Real Job
A few weeks back I wrote a short piece about why the changes to Google’s semantic search mean that digital tourism marketing is now enjoyable even if you don’t like marketing. In it, I mentioned the prevalence of the view in the tourism industry that somehow marketing is not our ‘real work’. Marketing is seen as a chore and as somehow less important than the business of delivering the experience. … [Read more...]