Civic
Pride
What is the most boring marketing campaign you have ever run?
Was it a 2
for 1 voucher offer last Easter? Perhaps you spent thousands
on a door-drop campaign in Manchester? Or maybe you were
lucky enough to attend the Day’s Out Fairs in exotic locations
around the country?
We work in
such a glamorous industry don’t we? Where is
the foreign travel and strategic campaigns with airlines and far-flung
destinations? Hey, it ain’t gonna happen.
For those of
you with no more stomach for what the Mayor of London thinks
will keep our industry afloat, why not try something really
dull? It is perceived as being so dull in fact, it isn’t
even on the radar. Except in East London.
TourEast London, the destination marketing organisation for East
London will be working with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets
on a campaign that we hope will encourage the 200,000 or so residents
living there to take a fresh look at their neighbourhood.
Tower Hamlets
boasts some of the most diverse tourism products in the country,
including such wonders as Canary Wharf, the Woman’s
Library, Ideas Stores, Lounge Lover, Billingsgate Fish Market,
and Subterranean art to name but a few.
Residents will be invited to visit local attractions, open spaces,
galleries etc so that they can sample the local tourism offer with
the aim of harnessing not only their buying power, but their powerful
word of mouth recommendations which we hope will reach the ears
and purses of their Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR).
Why, I hear you ask, would you want to do something as unglamorous
as that? Well -
1. We believe we can broaden the audience for any tourism operator
and leisure provider.
2. We can undertake research into the VFR market through the participant
s of the campaign.
3. We can support a sense of civic pride and identity.
4. We can encourage the residents of Tower Hamlets to support
their local businesses.
5. We can help
the borough to revitalise their resident’s
impressions of the borough and its attractions.
6. We can also use it to explain why visitors want to come and
what the value is to the local economy.
7. We can also use this campaign to thank the residents for putting
up with the thousands of tourists who wear out the cobbles and
drink all the cold beer in summer.
8. Best of
all, it isn’t going to cost very much.
There are quite
a few cities across the country who run similar campaigns – which begs the question, why hasn’t London? – and
here are some of the outstanding results from Birmingham City’s
campaign run in 2003/04.
• They
ran the campaign for one week, pre-season and they estimate,
they generated a minimum of 6,000 additional visits.
• They
discovered that 66% of their residents had an overnight visitor
from outside Birmingham in the past 12 months.
• Extensive press and PR support from local media, including
television (there’s the glamour!), radio and press.
• 49%
of those surveyed said they would not otherwise have visited
the attractions.
• A staggering
69% of those surveyed visited later in the year as a direct result
of the campaign.
• 81%
agreed the campaign had made them more aware of what is on offer
in the city.
• 97%
said they would recommend venues and attractions they had now
visited to their friends and relatives.
Get lobbying. Get onto your local council, regional tourist board,
or start calling in some of those favours. These projects take
considerable time and partnership working, and I hope to be to
report a positive outcome in Tower Hamlets campaign early next
year.
Mary Tebje
mary@tourismleisure.org.
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