Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a podcast with ideas, strategies, and tactics to help small businesses create smarter marketing. I’m Mia Fileman, a professional marketer, and the founder of Campaign del Mar. In this show, I chat with creatives and strategists about the different aspects of marketing, but without the fluff. Let’s dive in!
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
Today on the show, I have a serial offender. Ash Jurburg is joining me again. He is a writer and content creator based in Melbourne. Prior to this, he worked in marketing for 20 years and has also owned several successful businesses. He is an avid traveller. He’s been to over 105 countries and is welcomed back in many of them.
Thanks for joining me again, Ash!
Ash Jurburg 0:56
Thank you!
Also, welcome back to this podcast. It’s exciting. I’ve been on several podcasts, and I’m a serial offender. Great!
Mia Fileman 1:02
You are a serial offender. That’s right!
Today, what we thought we would talk about is tourism marketing because this is big business in Australia, right? It contributes around 122 billion dollars to our economy and is therefore one of the biggest drivers of economic growth.
Tourism has probably been the hardest hit industry in amongst all of this COVID nonsense – that and the wedding industry. And so, we thought we would dedicate an entire episode to tourism marketing, but this episode is not just about talking about high-level, expensive marketing campaigns. This is going to be some really juicy actionable stuff for anyone that works in the tourism industry – whether you are an accommodation provider, a restaurant, an entertainment venue, or a tour operator.
Ash Jurburg 1:57
Yes, absolutely. I think, even if you’re not within those industries, there are some really good lessons to be learnt from some of these examples we’ll be going through.
Mia Fileman 2:07
Yeah, that’s right. Good point! Thanks! I forgot to mention that this is great marketing knowledge for all businesses but, yes, today is specifically related to tourism marketing.
Ash Jurburg 2:18
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 2:21
Tourism marketing is a fairly broad term, but I guess a good workable definition is just thinking about all of the different marketing strategies and tactics used by businesses in the tourism industry in order to attract both domestic and international travellers.
Ash Jurburg 2:44
Yeah, absolutely.
As you said at the start of this, the big ones – the country branded ones – are Australia, New Zealand, et cetera, down to state, down to local areas. Even city councils and LGAs – which has been a buzzword of late since the COVID pandemic – doing their own campaigns. And then, you’ve got big tour operators and airlines. There’s a whole lot of umbrellas down to restaurants, events, festivals. It’s a pretty big umbrella.
Mia Fileman 3:10
Yeah, it’s very, very broad, and I will be very happy if I never hear the word LGA ever again.
Ash Jurburg 3:16
Yeah, I know. I used to think of IGA – the supermarket.
Mia Fileman 3:21
Yes.
The big news in tourism marketing this week is a grassroots campaign which has generated some serious media buzz. The campaign is “Get Chris to Cowra.” Now, you brought this to my attention, so I will let you do the honours. Tell us about this campaign.
Ash Jurburg 3:44
Well, this is a great example of how you can do a lot with very little budget.
Cowra is a small town in New South Wales. I’ve never been there personally. Have you been there?
Mia Fileman 3:56
No, but it’s quite close to Canberra which is where my in-laws live. To be honest, now I want to go.
Ash Jurburg 4:02
There you go. That’s a good sign.
Cowra is a small town. As I said, with limited budget, you have to be a bit creative. What they did is they produced a very, very low budget using very amateur actors based around getting Chris Hemsworth to visit Cowra.
Chris Hemsworth is one of the Tourism Australia ambassadors featured in a big campaign for them previously which we spoke about in a previous episode. Hopefully you guys can remember that. They basically created a very cheesy-type ad focusing on how they could get Chris Hemsworth to visit their town.
They did it in quite a clever way because they highlighted a lot of the experiences that can be done around Cowra – some of the food, some of the wine, some of the activities, history, some of the indigenous culture that is around that area – whilst also taking the piss of themselves. “You know, why would Chris come here?” It’s very Australian. It’s very laidback, but it was quite clever.
The end was, if we can’t get Chris to town, we’re going to build the Big Chris. We love our big things. There’s the Big Banana, the Big Prawn, the Big Pineapple all across Australia which has also worked quite well for the tourism industry, so they were talking about building the Big Chris.
It went viral very quickly. I worked in the tourism industry for a long time. I had about 20 people send it to me on the day it was released saying, “Hey! Have you seen this?” I sent it to you. You know, the news media captured it. It was on all the major publications. It was on TV. I think yesterday Chris Hemsworth actually responded saying, “Yes, absolutely.” He will come to Cowra.
They actually achieved their goal and, the amount of publicity they’re going to get when Chris visits their town, I’m sure he’ll post on his socials. Brilliant campaign for very, very little money.
Mia Fileman 5:48
Absolutely!
It was featured on Sunrise. Getting a mainstream television channel exposure and not having to pay for it is pretty much the gold standard in marketing.
Ash Jurburg 6:00
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 6:01
Not only that, Karl Stefanovic has offered to go there next Friday and actually do the show from Cowra. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching of the earned media when it comes to this campaign.
Ash Jurburg 6:17
As you said earlier, it’s targeted at domestic tourists. You’re not going to get someone in the United States or in Europe who’s going to fly all the way to Cowra, but you’re going to get a lot of interest from Australians who have a lot of pent-up travel demand at the present who will go, “Yeah, Cowra, why not visit there?”
Mia Fileman 6:33
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s this notion of revenge travel – like revenge shopping. We just can’t wait to go. It doesn’t matter where it is. Dubbo? Wagga? Bring it on! We will go – as long as we’re allowed to leave our freaking LGA.
That’s a really interesting point that you’ve made which is that the target market is the domestic market – not the international – which is why a lot of that Aussie tongue-in-cheek humour resonates so well because, if you are a Chinese traveller, some of the jokes and the puns that they made in the film probably won’t land, but for Australians, they were schmick.
Ash Jurburg 7:15
Yeah, absolutely. It’s about knowing your audience and I think they did that really well.
As you said, Sunrise are going to go there, or Karl is going to go there and film. They’ll produce their own tourism bits of content. You know, they’ll show things to do around Cowra, so they’re going to get a lot of content produced for them for free – professional videos which they can then share and utilise. I’m sure Karl will visit the main pub and have a beer there and he’ll go out and visit whatever the tourism sites are.
I think later on we’re going to talk about user-generated content. This is media-generated content for them.
Mia Fileman 7:49
Yes, very interesting.
The campaign is snowballing. It’s now taking on a new life and a new shape as it has launched into the public domain. It’s really iterating on itself and it’s becoming bigger and bigger. What started as quite a grassroots campaign is now becoming a national media campaign on a tiny, tiny budget.
Ash Jurburg 8:14
Yeah, and what I’d like to see is what the next steps are. They’ll have Karl come out. They’ll get all this publicity. I think they should still go ahead and build the Big Chris. I don’t know if they’ve announced whether they’re going to do it or not, but they should absolutely do it and make this an ongoing feature.
Australians love their road trips. You know, some people will divert and go to Cowra and have their photos taken at the Big Chris because that will give this longevity rather than a viral campaign that quickly fades from memory.
Mia Fileman 8:40
Yeah, I think what worked really well about this campaign was the very clever copywriting. It just goes to show that you can do more with less when you use clever messaging and copywriting.
You’ve mentioned this to me – that the acting was very cheesy and definitely not polished, but I actually think that that probably added to the film.
Ash Jurburg 9:05
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 9:05
For me, I would love to see, well, who else can they try to get to Cowra since they’ve got Chris Hemsworth. That could be one iteration.
The other thing could be actually the two actors – and I use that in a very loose term – who appeared in the campaign video, they should now go on to the media circuit and start doing interviews.
Ash Jurburg 9:28
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 9:29
Yeah, there are two potential ways to extend the longevity of this campaign and get as much juice out of it as possible, right?
Ash Jurburg 9:37
Yeah, they should become minor celebrities. You know, I think one of them will end up on Bachelor Island or one of those shows like SAS where they get these D-grade celebrities.
I don’t know whether they worked within the tourism industry or if they’re just locals they pulled off the street but, yeah, absolutely, they should leverage that and make them into celebrities of their own accord. Come to Cowra and visit them.
Mia Fileman 10:00
Yeah, that’s right, but I think the fact that they used non-actors really added to the authenticity of the campaign.
Ash Jurburg 10:10
Yeah, it’s a local campaign, and it’s very grassroots. I think that makes it more relatable to people rather than if they had two famous-ish actors or two well-known actors and having Jim and Betty from the local tourism office act out. It was very smart.
Mia Fileman 10:26
But I also really love it. I’ve watched it so many times. I will definitely be dropping the link in the show notes. I’ve watched it so many times and, each time, I pick up something new that’s really very, very clever about this campaign, but it really did take a village to make this. There are so many different parts of the community that came out to help film this.
As you said, they brought in some of their indigenous cultures, the local pub, the local sporting teams, the fire and rescue service. I really feel like it showed how beautiful the community in Cowra is. That was the subliminal message that I got as a viewer. “Hey! These are some really nice people!”
Ash Jurburg 11:18
I think it also gives the community ownership of the campaign. It makes them involved, and they all wanted to see it succeed. I’m sure that, when Chris posted, “Hey! I’m going to come,” they would have all been cheering and celebrating because they’re part of the campaign.
Mia Fileman 11:32
Correct. So true.
I said this in my Facebook group that, if they actually got Chris to respond, which he now has, this campaign is going to be taught in universities as a case study of how to create a marketing campaign. It is that good, and it was done by what is the equivalent of a small business. I think that that’s really testament to the fact that marketing campaigns – really successful ones – are not limited to just big business.
Ash Jurburg 12:00
Absolutely.
I think also they picked the right person. I mean, obviously, I don’t know Chris very well – although I get compared to looking like him and get stopped in the street.
Mia Fileman 12:08
Sorry! I shouldn’t laugh!
Ash Jurburg 12:11
That laugh was way too big.
Mia Fileman 12:13
Sorry!
Ash Jurburg 12:14
But he seems like the type of person who would respond. If they picked others, they might not have gotten a response.
Mia Fileman 12:20
Exactly.
Ash Jurburg 12:22
He has that persona of being the nice guy, the laidback Aussie, approachable guy you could have a beer with over in Byron Bay type of thing.
Mia Fileman 12:30
Yes, exactly.
Ash Jurburg 12:32
That worked really well.
But what I don’t want to see now is other small businesses – particularly tourism campaigns – try the same thing and say, “Hey! Let’s get whoever. Russell Crowe, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman to our little town.” You know, it’s one and done, I think.
Mia Fileman 12:51
Very good insight. That’s right. This is not a good time to try to copy this strategy. It’s not going to work.
Ash Jurburg 12:58
No, it’s one and done. They did really well.
The only criticism I had was I think it was 3.5 minutes. I would have liked to see it a little bit shorter.
Mia Fileman 13:09
Me too. Yes, absolutely. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I was laughing at your joke – not at you. I hope you understand. It was a good joke! It was a good one!
Let’s move on and talk about another textbook marketing campaign – not that getting Chris to Cowra is a textbook marketing campaign, but it will be taught as a textbook campaign just because it worked so well.
This one that I want to talk about is Wander out Yonder by Tourism Western Australia. This ran last year in amongst the first round of lockdowns. It was really about getting Australians to travel to Western Australia to explore the wonders of WA.
What I really love about this campaign is that this is a good example of playing it safe, following great marketing principles and great so-called rules and getting the job done really beautifully without having to be too creative, too controversial, too risky. For me, the success of this campaign lies in the absolutely stunning visuals. I mean, Western Australia is gorgeous, so why not just use the assets already at your disposal? Don’t overthink it. And then, fully integrating it so that you can do more with less.
I always say that, if brands use a smart mix of paid, earned, and owned channels, it creates this multiplier effect. That’s exactly what Tourism WA did. They used digital, radio, video, print, out of home, socials, of course, but there was also a massive user-generated content component to this campaign which again allowed it to take on a life of its own.
As we know, Ash, UGC is so much more authentic and so much more trustworthy than paid advertising.
Ash Jurburg 15:18
Absolutely.
Sometimes, creatives – people in the advertising and marketing scene – try and be too creative. They think that everything has to be completely different and award-winning and ground-breaking. When you’ve got a product like Western Australia, utilise it. It’s very scenic. Australia is very fortunate from a tourism perspective that we’ve got great photographic images. Most of our highlights are about the outdoors and natural attractions. Use that. We don’t have to work as hard as some other countries or regions around the world. They’ve tapped into that.
Even if you go to the first page of their website, there are nine images and they’re absolutely colourful and stunning. What I think they’ve done is they’ve highlighted this – again, to the domestic market – to Australians who aren’t aware of that. The Indian Ocean Drive which has the pink water – I’m making up a statistic here because I like to do that, but – I’d say 90 percent of Australians wouldn’t even know that existed.
Mia Fileman 16:23
I didn’t know that.
Ash Jurburg 16:24
There you go. A lot of this is new.
I think Western Australia has more of a challenge than other areas in Australia because it’s so far. You know, prior to the pandemic, it was cheaper for us to go to Singapore or Bali or Hawaii than it was to go to Perth from the east coast, so they’ve really got to highlight to Australians why to come here. I think they’ve done that quite well here.
Mia Fileman 16:52
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with all of those sentiments. Let’s unpack exactly what we loved about this.
First of all, really clever use of language. I love the campaign tagline – Wander out Yonder. It really rolls off the tongue. It is intriguing. It sounds like something that you would read in an Alice in Wonderland kind of book. “Wisdom begins with wonder.” I think that’s the Lewis Caroll quote. To me, it starts to trigger nostalgia and that kind of emotional sentiment.
There is no mention of lockdowns. There is no mention of COVID. It is all about family, reconnecting, and discovery. Discovery is a beautiful word, especially when you think about WA because, like you said, there is just so much of WA that is just so remote and so expensive – or previously expensive – that we just have not yet discovered. Absolute eye-candy which we’ve covered off.
Bucketloads of user-generated content. Yes, it’s great to get a top tourism photographer to go and take these incredible images, but is that what it really looks like? Then, seeing all the user-generated content images come through and go, “Wow! The water is actually pink! It’s amazing!”
And then, there were spin-off campaigns. I think WA Tourism – and this is me totally spit-balling – treated this a little bit like a master brand campaign. From there, they iterated. They had another campaign – which was an intrastate campaign prompting Western Australian residents to discover their backyard – called A Million Reasons to Wander out Yonder where they gave away 10,000 100-dollar vouchers.
The second spin-off campaign was Work and Wander out Yonder which was all about getting young people to take a working holiday in regional Western Australia.
Ash Jurburg 19:15
Yeah, which they needed to do because we’ve lost that international working market. It was targeting a very important market. The working holiday market in Australia was one of the biggest – the youth market. I attended a few roadshows with Tourism Australia across Europe to target that particular market, so that was a big blow of losing them and getting younger people to go.
But I think the timing of this campaign was also good. If you look at all the photos on the website, there are no people in them. It’s one thing that people were scared of around COVID. “Well, I don’t want to catch it.” This is all outdoors. Look, you’re not going to see anyone for miles and miles. You’ve got it all to yourself which I think is a good psychology to tap into at the moment. You can have the whole coast to yourself. There won’t be people coughing. You won’t have to wear a mask. It’s all outdoors.
Mia Fileman 20:03
Spot on. Yeah, that is a really great insight.
You’ve raised a really interesting point around overt messages – you know, it is what it says on the box – and then subliminal messages where we can use really clever imagery and photography and even messaging to imply rather than have to shout that. Rather than cramming too many competing messages into one campaign, they ran with the hero messaging, but then – exactly as you said – used the visuals to tell more of the story.
Ash Jurburg 20:42
Yeah. In advertising, generally, people sell, so most ads you will see will have a photo of a person – a model or what-have-you – because people sell, but in all of these images, there’s not a single person. I think that was a very clear strategy from them.
Mia Fileman 20:58
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Now, we are on over to a couple of not-endorsed campaigns. These are unofficial.
Ash Jurburg 21:45
Yes, I raised this with you previously, but these fake campaigns were created initially anonymously by two creative people who have an agency. One was the CU in the NT. I have to make sure I say this carefully.
Mia Fileman 22:04
Yes, we need to be really careful!
Ash Jurburg 22:07
Which was several years ago. It was highlighting tourism in the North Territory. They use a very clever visual around that – CU in the NT. And then, earlier this year, they did the same with South Australia called Go Down South with Your Mouth. Both of them had really great headlines, great images, and went viral, particularly the Northern Territory one. It went viral across the US. It was in Huffington Post and a lot of major outlets.
But what the tourism bodies behind them did wrong – in my opinion – is they both came out straight away and said, “These are not endorsed. They have nothing to do with us. We don’t appreciate this,” and canned it when they could have had fun with that and leveraged it and said, “Thanks.” Maybe even launch a competition. “Can anyone else come up with some taglines for us?” Get some creatives. There were so many opportunities. I appreciate that government bodies would have to be a bit conservative, but there’s a missed opportunity for mine here.
Mia Fileman 23:04
Interesting perspective.
I lived in the Northern Territory for five years.
Ash Jurburg 23:08
I’m sorry.
Mia Fileman 23:10
I love the Northern Territory. I’m actually moving back there in a couple of months. I have done some work with Tourism Northern Territory, so I’ve definitely lived this. What’s really interesting to me is that so many people to this day still think that CU in the NT was a Northern Territory Government campaign.
Ash Jurburg 23:30
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 23:36
I mean, it’s profanity. I guess this is why the government needed to step in and shut it down, but I think that I definitely agree with you – that it was a missed opportunity.
Ash Jurburg 23:52
Yeah. I mean, all they had to do was say, “You know, it’s clever. We appreciate it. Well done. Well played, guys. We don’t like the language or around it, but if anyone has got ideas – family-friendly PG-type taglines – send them in.” They could have run a competition. “You know, we’ll pick the best one to run for a month. We’ll do something.” I don’t know.
Mia Fileman 24:09
Correct.
Ash Jurburg 24:10
It could have just been a really nice social media campaign instead of just saying no.
Mia Fileman 24:15
Correct. It almost goes against what we just spoke about which is the value of user-generated content. Involve your community. We reach out to influencers all the time and pay them thousands and thousands of dollars in order to create content for our brand, but it seemed like the government were just not interested to play even though these campaigns were so successful – to the point that people actually thought that they were real campaigns.
Ash Jurburg 24:45
Yeah. The two guys that were behind it, they didn’t come out. They didn’t make it easy to discover. Office address was hidden. Find out who registered the domain behind it. It wasn’t like they did it blatantly just to get publicity. They just had a bit of fun with it and I think they said, “We love the Northern Territory and want people to come.”
Mia Fileman 25:05
What was their end goal? Was it to generate awareness for their agency?
Ash Jurburg 25:10
I think subtly, but they didn’t make it that easy. If you rang the number for the campaigns, it just went to an answering machine. There was no other message around them. They only listed a virtual office on the websites. Like I said, it was only the media when they found out who registered the domain names and dug deeper that they found out it was these two creatives behind it.
I mean, maybe they missed an opportunity. Maybe they could have come out from the start and said, “This is Mia and Ash Agency. We can do your campaigns for you.”
Mia Fileman 25:45
Yeah. “We can create controversial viral campaigns.” I do feel like, what was the point of that?
Ash Jurburg 25:50
I just actually found a quote from the guy when he was uncovered by the media. If you’ve heard a more Aussie-type quote than this, I’d be surprised. It says, “We’re just a couple of blokes, knocking up some ideas. It’s an invitation to the greatest territory in the world, mate. That’s all it is.”
Mia Fileman 26:05
Okay. Sure. No problem-o, dude! But we’re still talking about it!
Ash Jurburg 26:15
Exactly, and that was 2016 – five years down the track, yeah.
Mia Fileman 26:20
Yeah. Interestingly, recently the Northern Territory changed their master brand for the Northern Territory, and I was interviewed by the ABC. They asked me on live radio whether I thought it should actually change to CU in the NT.
Ash Jurburg 26:37
There you go! What did you say?
Mia Fileman 26:40
I said, “Absolutely not!” because – and this goes back to our earlier point – while that might appeal to the domestic market, that is not going to appeal to the international market. You know, Americans and English people and Chinese and Japanese travellers, they do not share our Australian sense of humour. It would just not resonate with them.
Ash Jurburg 27:08
Well, even I think Australians, it would appeal to the younger market – you know, that backpacker-type market – but it’s not going to appeal to the family market. It’s not going to appeal to the seniors. It’s a bit of fun, but a small percentage would find it cheeky and funny and act on it.
Mia Fileman 27:25
Correct. Do you know anything else about Go Down South with Your Mouth?
Ash Jurburg 27:30
It was the same guys that did the See You in NT and the same sort of thing. They were just having a bit of fun and released it. You know, the South Australian Tourism Commission came out straight away and knocked it back. The one thing they did do is they actually released a video for this one as well.
Mia Fileman 27:48
I saw that.
Ash Jurburg 27:50
There’s a lot of double entendre and sexual entendre. “Your tongue yearns for a certain sensation. It’s time to let our abundant delights burst in your mouth.” It was very cheeky. Again, the South Australian Tourism Commission could have done something. I mean, they even produced merchandise for this, and the SAT said, “We wouldn’t even buy a T-shirt.” They were very anti it.
Mia Fileman 28:17
Do you think that that’s because – and this is me being devil’s advocate – it could negatively affect the [tourism] bodies? I was definitely fooled by the Go Down South with Your Mouth because it appeared on Ad Age. There was actually a media release that was sent presumably by these two Aussie blokes – “Just having a bit of fun, mate!” Sent to Ad Age as an official tourism essay campaign and it was later pulled off Ad Age. I was fooled. I actually thought, “This is absolutely ridiculous. Why did Tourism do this? This is so dumb.” Do you think that the reason why they shut it down so quickly is because, apart from the double entendre, there was nothing else to it? It wasn’t particularly clever or insight-driven?
Ash Jurburg 29:11
Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t as clever as CU in NT. I think they did pull on some insights because our food and wine are very big in the tourism industry. I mean, there is a whole Restaurant Australia campaign that Tourism Australia ran for three years based on coming to Australia for the food and wine, so they were tapping into that.
Be it, I mean, I think it was two things. They were annoyed at what these guys did. Maybe they thought it was better than what they could produce. I don’t know. And then, yeah, there was the sexual aspect of it. But, again, I think they could have had a bit of a laugh around it and said, “Hey! It’s not us. We don’t condone it. Well played, guys!” and invite them to South Australia. “Why don’t you come to South Australia and do some of the experience? We’ll film you doing that.”
I always look at the opportunities rather than just saying no.
Mia Fileman 30:00
Correct.
Look, this is not from a tourism perspective, but a brand that was able to do this really well was Ocean Spray when the Apodaca guy was on the surfboard.
Ash Jurburg 30:19
The TikTok guy.
Mia Fileman 30:20
Yes, the TikTok guy.
Ash Jurburg 30:22
It was the second most viewed video on TikTok last year.
Mia Fileman 30:26
Yeah, and he just made this seemingly just fun TikTok with him on a skateboard to Fleetwood Mac’s awesome track, drinking Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray – which is actually run by a collective of cranberry growers, so good news story right there – quickly jumped on the skateboard and was like, “Okay. How are we going to make hay out of this?” and sent this TikTok star a cherry red truck because they had found out that his truck had been banged up and he had lost it. Cranberry-coloured! Sorry, not cherry red. Cranberry-coloured truck full of Ocean Spray in the back.
And then, the CEO of Ocean Spray also did a parody and then they pulled the guy from Fleetwood Mac out of retirement and got him to do it. They just capitalised, capitalised, capitalised as opposed to like, “Oh, this has got nothing to do with us. Let’s leave this alone. Let’s let it pass through to the keeper.” They saw the opportunity for what it was – potentially less offensive than See You in the NT and Go Down South with Your Mouth. It was all just good times, high fives.
It just goes to show that there is definitely merit in mobilising quickly and going, “Okay. This is going viral. How can we turn this into profit-generating marketing for Ocean Spray?”
Ash Jurburg 32:01
Absolutely. Fun fact: that was the very first video I ever watched on TikTok.
Mia Fileman 32:06
Really?
Ash Jurburg 32:08
It was only because I wanted to write about it, so I read an article about how Ocean Spray capitalised on it. It came from an authentic place. This guy just filmed a video of himself going to work and he just happened to be drinking an Ocean Spray. He wasn’t doing it deliberately. It wasn’t product placement. He wasn’t trying to go viral. That’s what worked. It was just authentic and genuine. It wasn’t trying.
Mia Fileman 32:30
Yes, so true, and so many people have said, “Was it staged?” Because it was just so good, was it staged? It’s like, no, sometimes you can get this lucky.
Ash Jurburg 32:40
Yeah, I see a lot of people write articles on how to go viral, and it is 95 percent luck every time.
Mia Fileman 32:48
Yeah. What can we take out from this discussion for potentially smaller tourism brands looking at rebuilding and reconnecting with travellers?
My first one is that the website needs to deliver. It’s all well and good to go and create this beautiful video or great imagery or something really controversial and funny like Get Chris to Cowra, but when they actually then take action, you need to complete the customer experience and the actual website needs to deliver.
The truth is – and I don’t know how you feel, Ash, but – so many tourism websites are clunky and not user-friendly and buggy. We were talking about this before we pressed record that Stays is a great example of a platform in Australia where the website is just so annoying to use.
Ash Jurburg 33:59
Yeah. I mean, travel needs to be easily booked. You need to find the information. You need to be able to book easily. It needs to be dynamic. Instant confirmation and all that sort of stuff. But even before the website, I think where a lot of tourism campaigns fall down is getting consumers to actually take any action at all.
I remember when I used to do some things with Tourism Australia, in the United States, in every survey they ever did, Australia was the number one country they wanted to go to out of any country in the world. It was very aspirational, but they just didn’t do it. Tourism Australia would produce these amazing campaigns, and everyone goes, “I would love to go to Australia! Fantastic!” but they didn’t go. That was the first thing.
These campaigns from a creative point of view and advertising point of view were great but, if you don’t get bums on seats on those planes out here, it’s a failure, so that’s the first step. If you get them to the website, you’ve ticked that one box, but then it’s about getting them to actually then make the booking or find the information – whether you’re running a B&B in Illawarra or you’re running an airline, you still want them to hit that Book at the end and it has to be easy to do so.
Mia Fileman 35:09
Totally.
If that was me, I would be commissioning a study into why people are saying that they want to go to Australia but are not – to really understand what it is. Is it the price? Is it the distance? What is it? To really get those insights and use it to fuel the next campaign. I agree that that definitely needs to come before the website. It’s just that it’s really heartbreaking for me as a marketer when you’ve dragged them all the way to your website. They’ve made it there and that’s when you let them down.
Ash Jurburg 35:43
Yeah absolutely. There’s no excuse. In the year 2000 perhaps, but now, you know, the website is your storefront. It is your brand. It is everything, so there should be no excuse. No matter what budget you have, it doesn’t cost much to get a website that does what you want it to do.
Mia Fileman 36:02
Exactly. So true.
The second thing is quite personal because I had an underwhelming experience with Riparide which is an Australian competitor to Airbnb. The second thing is that, before you should focus on any flashy marketing, anything about the line, any kind of outwardly promotional campaigns, go back and focus on your customer experience and customer journey mapping. This is so important. This is because a recent study found that one bad review is all it takes to undermine a brand’s efforts.
Just one negative review decreased purchase probability by 51 percent on average and raised the chances that a consumer would search for a substitute by 11 percent. And then, customers who found and then went on to purchase a substitute, they actually spent 16 percent more on it, suggesting that people will pay a premium to avoid the uncertainty triggered by a bad review.
Before anything outwardly, I think brands should redouble their efforts to please customers who register their displeasure, or just by designing a really great customer experience from the get-go.
Ash Jurburg 37:32
Yeah, just an interesting thing around reviews which is travel-related. TripAdvisor is one of the biggest travel websites in the world. It’s highly based on reviews. A few years ago, I don’t know if you know this, but a gentleman in the UK created a fake restaurant – he called it The Shed which was just him in the backyard – to see how he can manipulate TripAdvisor and reviews in general. He got it within six months to become the number one restaurant in the United Kingdom.
Mia Fileman 38:01
Oh, my gosh.
Ash Jurburg 38:02
It was literally photos of him. He created a fake menu. He created the photos he put up of the meals – you know, like a can of baked beans tipped on its side over a piece of bread. People started reviewing it and saying, “I can’t wait. I want to book. This is my dream when I come to London.” It just shows you how reviews can be manipulated.
Mia Fileman 38:21
I hear this all the time and it’s really sad when people say, “I just had a horrible Google Review from someone that has never walked into my hair salon” or “who has never eaten at my restaurant, and it’s obviously a competitor just trying to mess with me.”
I remember this customer. She was an A-hole. She was such a cow. She was so rude to my staff. Still, we did everything to please her, and now she’s gone on and left this atrocious review which, of course, can impact all the others. But I think the key thing is responding – not taunting them. I’m seeing this really ugly thing play out on social media where the brand is actually responding in an even more child-like fashion.
Then, the reviewers are sharing it across their socials and, you know, half calling out these customers rather than just responding straight away to say, “Look, we don’t actually have any recollection of you coming to our salon,” or “We did everything to help you on this day. You are welcome back any time. Have a nice day.” It will get eventually drowned out in the wave of positive reviews, but it’s almost like an occupational hazard now, right?
Ash Jurburg 39:52
The power is with the customer. You know, someone can walk in and say, “Well, if you don’t do this, I’m going to leave a bad review.” Whether it’s your local café or a bigger business. For good and bad, the power lies with the customer.
Mia Fileman 40:10
Yeah.
Ash Jurburg 40:12
Speaking of social media, I get side0tracked all the time.
Mia Fileman 40:14
That’s all right.
Ash Jurburg 40:15
Speaking of bad responses, I don’t know if you saw earlier this year – the whole Harvey Norman fiasco on social media.
Mia Fileman 40:20
Oh, yes.
Ash Jurburg 40:21
They were getting a lot of people complaining. It was around jobkeeper. Harvey Norman and Gerry Harvey, the owner, got paid – I can’t remember the exact figure, but it was like 20 million dollars – for jobkeeper payments, then earned record profits, and there was a big push to give that back. There were a lot of people commenting on social media.
And then, the person who ran the Harvey Norman Twitter account would just berate them and said quite a few insulting things, triggered someone around mental health, and I think there was even something around suicide. It was really, really poor. It just went extreme. Eventually, they took the most childish action like a five-year-old storming off. Harvey Norman just closed their account.
Mia Fileman 40:58
Oh, my gosh. I read your article about that. That was awesome. Also, Smart Company did several articles about it. As a result, I have decided I’m never shopping there again.
Ash Jurburg 41:11
Yeah, neither am I. I just couldn’t believe that a big company ran social like that.
Mia Fileman 41:18
Yeah. Well, no fucks given, right? They’re so big. You know, I used to live in Toowoomba and Darwin. Harvey Norman was all we had. We didn’t have competitors. If you wanted a fridge, that’s where you had to go. I just think that they just thought that they were too big to fail, but public sentiment is moving away from that kind of behaviour.
Ash Jurburg 41:45
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 41:47
We totally deviated from that.
Ash Jurburg 41:51
I told you this would be relevant for not just tourism but for all companies and all brands.
Mia Fileman 41:55
There you go. Yes, excellent.
It’s really important to map the customer experience. Think about under-promising and overdelivering and making sure that you do everything that you can to avoid the bad review. I think a lot of that, Ash, comes down to proper targeting.
I see a lot of brands who are overmarketed. You know, I booked an Airbnb in Boomerang Beach which is north mid-coast of New South Wales. It was marketed as a villa. It was not a villa. They obviously shot the property really, really beautifully, but when I actually arrived, there was a lot that they hadn’t photographed.
I don’t think the role of marketing is to polish up a turd. That is not what we do. It’s not about making something better than it is. It is about finding the right customers for that product. Often, bad reviews are because the expectation doesn’t meet the experience. That’s where we need to start.
You don’t have to be the best restaurant in the world if you manage people’s expectations about what they’re going to get. The best five-dollar-pub meal in the Northern Territory is not going to be Michelin star, but it’s five bucks, you know.
Ash Jurburg 43:26
Yeah, it’s finding whatever that selling point is and just capitalising on that.
I think the worst ones are real estate agents. When you see a property – well, this was last year, looking to buy a new place – you see the description, you see the photos, and you turn up and you feel like saying, “Is this the same place?”
Mia Fileman 43:43
Yes, and they Photoshop in window views and it doesn’t actually have those views. This is really dangerous because they are selling these properties off the plan. And so, people can’t even go and fact-check. I think that they’re going to land themselves into some serious legal hot water if they keep going like this.
Ash Jurburg 44:05
Yeah, absolutely.
Mia Fileman 44:06
The lucky last thing to take away for small brands – whether you are in tourism marketing or not – is that user-generated content has had meteoric rise. I actually wrote an article about this in Entrepreneur’s Handbook about just how so many brands today – from MECCA to Apple to Samsung to Microsoft – are all tapping into the power of user-generated content to really provide that layer of authenticity in an era of widespread mistrust.
Ash Jurburg 44:42
Absolutely, and it doesn’t have to be big brands.
Your local café, you know, when they go in, they’ll take a photo of your meal. That’s what a lot of cafés are trying to do now. They’re trying to produce Instagram-worthy coffees or cakes or muffins because then they know that people will come and share that content. Any local business can take advantage of this sort of thing.
Mia Fileman 45:02
Yes, very true.
Don’t ask, don’t get, right? You just need to have a plan in place to ask your people for that user-generated content. How can you make it fun? How can you incentivise them to supply that content?
Ash Jurburg 45:16
Yeah. Like a lot of cafés, get a dollar of your coffee if you post a photo. It’s pretty simple stuff you can run and get a whole lot of content for free.
Mia Fileman 45:27
Yeah, totally.
Ash Jurburg 45:28
Or for a dollar.
Mia Fileman 45:28
Well, it has been an absolute pleasure again, Ash. Thank you so much for joining me on the show!
Ash Jurburg 45:35
Thanks for allowing me to serial offend.
Mia Fileman 45:38
You’re welcome. All right. Bye!
Thank you!
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