Some of the most memorable advertising campaigns have been for travel destinations. Past favorites of mine include the inspiring and enduring "Virgina is for lovers", campaign by David N. Martin and George Woltz of Martin and Woltz Inc. of Richmond, Virginia – which Ad Age called one of the most iconic advertising campaigns in the past 50 years. Another favorite is "It's Better in the Bahamas", and another top shelf idea is the classical campaign in travel advertising by the great 60′s New York Ad Agency Doyle Dane Bernbach for Jamaica [from 1960s]. At roughly the same time David Ogilvy started an ad campaign for Britain, the fifth most visited European country when he started. When he was done it was first. What did he recommend for would be destination brands?
About the communications side of nation branding, David Ogilvy said:
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Advertising for countries should be designed to plant a long term image in the reader's mind.
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Choose to illustrate things that are unique to the country concerned and not something people can do at home.
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The job of the advertising is to convert people's dreams about visiting foreign countries into action; this is best done by combining "mouth-watering photographs with specific how-to-do-it information" (Ogilvy 133).
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Whenever the advertising is for a little known country, it is important to give the people a lot of information in the advertisement such as the weather, language, food, etc.
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Charm and differentiation work well in tourism advertising.
When my agency, StrawberryFrog, was asked to brand Dubai Downtown, and help put it on the world stage, we studied these great campaigns of the past even though the destinstion we were tasked to position is a city of the future.
Dubai is the glittering city in the gulf. It is also the city that is at the geographical center of the new world taking shape before our eyes. Visiting the Dubai Mall at the heart of Dubai Downtown is unlike anything I have seen. It's part fifth avenue with its iconic stores but in addition it features hot stores from Hong Kong, Australia and unheard of brands from the four corners of the earth…and something called "Billionaires".
But what I noticed when I visited was the extraordinary mixture of shoppers from across the planet mingling, shopping and hanging out; Chinese teens on a weekend shopping spree, British tourists, Brazilian businesspeople, young Nigerian entrepreneurs, Russian politicians, American travelers, German football fans, Indian movie stars, Canadian figure skaters…and all age groups from across the Middle East (there are 350 million people living between Turkey and Pakistan under the age of 20).
Following David Ogilvy's advice we set about developing an idea that would create a global place for this brand that could stand alongside Roppongi Hills Tokyo, the Champs Elysee and Fifth Avenue.
"The Centre of Now" was the tagline we dreamed up with an advertising campaign shot around the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building made famous in the latest Mission Impossible film, photographed by world fashion photographer wunderkid Mikael Jonsson and an unconventional digital experience centered around a 24-hour sun dial.
Source: Forbes
