Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
presence. To successfully create an emotional attachment the destination brand platform has
to be:
credible;
deliverable;
differentiating;
conveying powerful ideas;
enthusing for stakeholders and partners;
resonating with the consumer.
Critical to the success of any destination brand is the extent to which the destination's brand
personality appeals to its relevant audiences. Just like people, brands should be complex and rich,
yet multifaceted personalities are quite rare in a world where brand attributes are often arbitrarily
and superfi cially constructed. Traits such as 'friendly', 'natural' and 'contemporary' are popular
hoped-for descriptors but they hardly help to build an engaging or aspirational brand. Destination
brand enhancement is all about developing a rich, relevant brand personality. 'Developing' is the
signifi cant word here - successful brands never atrophy - instead they refl ect and respond to
changes in consumers' lives and whilst the brand's core values remain the same, its personality
will continue to evolve. To paraphrase the Chinese proverb, brands should never be afraid to
grow gradually, they should only be afraid of standing still.
A brand's personality has both a head and a heart - its head refers to the logical brand features,
whilst its heart refers to its emotional benefi ts and associations. Brand propositions and
communications can be based around either a brand's head or its heart: head communications
convey a brand's rational values, whilst heart communications reveal its emotional values and
associations. Brand benefi t pyramids sum up consumers' relationships with a brand and are
frequently established during the discovery consumer research phase where consumers are
usually asked to describe what features a destination offers and what the place means to them.
Using the research, it should then be relatively straightforward to ascertain what particular
benefi ts consumers associate with the destination in question (see
Figure 30.1
).
The benefi t pyramid can be instrumental in helping to distil the essence of a destination
brand's unique proposition. This refers to the point at which the tourist's expectations and the
destination's benefi ts and relevancy intersect - any brand communication (online or offl ine)
should then encapsulate the essence of the brand. Whilst many ideas may be initially suggested,
the challenge is to develop a proposition which makes the destination brand relevant,
contemporary and appealing - establishing the brand's architecture can be critical to this process.
Brand architecture is a concept borrowed from mainstream product branding. It refers to how
an organization structures and manages a portfolio of brands, providing each brand with purpose,
relevance and clarity so that each sub-brand benefi ts the whole.
There are four types of brand architecture strategy: the house of brands; endorsed brands;
sub-brands; branded house strategies (Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000). The house of brands
strategy includes a portfolio of sub-brands that act independently of each other under an
umbrella brand. The driver here is the sub-brand, each of which is allowed to differentiate itself.
One of the most successful destinations to pursue this house of brands strategy is Spain,
geopolitically divided into 17 autonomous regions each with its own tourism destination brand
strategy, working independently of TourSpain, the national tourism board umbrella brand. Once
a destination with a reputation for poor quality service and facilities, in the early 1980s the
Spanish government began what was to become one of the most consistent and successful
brand enhancement exercises in destination marketing supported by a signifi cant fi nancial
