…and tourism, in general, for that matter.
Serious copywriters and direct response marketers will be familiar with the classic work of David Ogilvy promoting tourism and foreign travel.
In the the classic “Ogilvy On Advertising” (a must-have for all copywriters and marketers), one chapter is devoted to the subject (titled, no surprise, “How To Advertise Foreign Travel”).
Here’s what Ogilvy had to say…
“When you undertake to advertise a foreign country, you have to be prepared for a lot of political flak. Research told me that what American tourists most wanted to see was history and tradition…”
So, being the smart advertising and marketing man that he was, Ogilvy talked to the potential customers about the sort of things they were interested in. Amazing concept, huh?
And what was the response from the geniuses in the press and government?
“So that is what I featured in the advertisements, only to be slaughtered in the British press for projecting an image of a country living in the past.”
The critics wanted the ads to project a “progressive industrial society” (laughable, I know). And why didn’t Ogilvy do this? Because…
“…our research had shown that American tourists had no desire to see such things.”
I was reminded of this timeless wisdom when reading about Tourism Australia’s latest campaign to lure more visitors to Australia.
The new campaign features ads from Baz Luhrmann, probably best known for movies such as “Strictly Ballroom” and “Moulin Rouge”.
In an eerie echo of history, the ads don’t feature places such as Sydney, the Barrier Reef or other places that potential visitors might like to see.
Oh no. Instead they promote Australia as a hip “eco-tourist” cum “spiritual renewal” destination.
Andrew Bolt has a column with a fuller description (“Luhrmann Sells Australia Short”).
Now, Boltie’s column attracted a fascinating reply from John Richardson, a former assistant general manager of the old Australian Tourist Commission (“Hogan Was As Useless As Luhrmann”). I encourage you to read the whole thing but this comment particularly caught my eye…
“…the idea that awareness advertising alone works to increase tourism is so doubtful that it is generally not practiced. Australia had a salutary lesson with the Hogan campaign in the United States in the early 1980s. That campaign aroused enormous interest in America, awareness of Australia went sky-high and was still high a decade later. And in that decade, growth in tourism from the United States to Australia was the poorest of any of our major markets – by far.”
And why didn’t awareness advertising alone produce results? Well I’d suggest because it was missing two critical components of a successful direct response campaign, namely…
1. A “Reason why”; and
2. A strong “Call To Action”
As I suggested, well worth reading the whole thing as John Richardson sounds like he knows what he is talking about.
Something else that caught my eye. Will Tourism Australia learn any lessons from this episode? Probably not because…
“…it does not have a great reputation overall for evaluating the effectiveness of its programs. Only a couple of months ago, an Audit Office report said that Tourism Australia does not have a system in place to evaluate the effectiveness of its projects and currently is unable to demonstrate what impact these projects have had on their target markets.”
Guess Tourism Australia haven’t heard of “Testing and tracking”!
The Luhrmann campaign is apparently costing A$40 million. Yet another example of utterly wasted government spending.
Back to where I started this post, with David Ogilvy and his approach to advertising. Did he really know anything or was he a fuddy-duddy, stuck-in-the-mud?
Well, the results were…
“When our campaign started, Britain was the fifth most visited European country among American tourists. Today it is first.”