Tourism Australia boss: marketing Oz is cluttered, we need to speak with one voice
Australia must speak with one voice when marketing itself to the rest of the world, Tourism Australia chairman Geoff Dixon has said.
“We all know there are many, many voices promoting Australia internationally – Tourism Australia, all the states and territories, airlines and private companies. All have legitimate messages but all also have finite resources to spend in an increasingly cluttered market,” Dixon told the Tourism Directions conference in Canberra this morning.
He said feedback from Tourism Australia’s two key markets China and India said Australia spoke with “too many voices”.
“Tellingly, most of those voices did not have sufficient resources to make a real impact,” he added.
How does this suggestion differ from the Baz & Bingle approach?
People already want to come to Australia. Why don’t our campaigns focus less on re-convincing them, and more on closing the sale?
It’s hard to argue with the need for consistency of brand voice. There’s one Brand Australia, even if we face multiple marketing opportunities and innumerable sales. The challenge is that we have state and federal governments and the private sector all in the mix – fostering collaboration has got to be part of preparing the ground for consistency.
I also agree with Tim Bennett – the real challenge is to make it cheaper and easier than people expect to come here, and to make sure that we’re the best place in the world for innovative tourism operators to do business. Not to keep filling the bucket of desire when it’s already overflowing. While marketing can go some of the way to this, tourism strategy is also about influencing visitor-centric infrastructure solutions and policy and encouraging regulatory environments that make the indsutry rewarding and user-friendly for innovation.
Now if we could only get our state tourism body to talk with industry and SA regions about collaborative marketing…that’d be a great start