eTravel Project

An interesting discussion about business travel and the so called AIG effect.

AIG effect

[youtube width="325" height="244"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIqGYRuvbk[/youtube]

The Swiss Tourism Board posted a video announcing that it was seeking volunteers to join the Association of Mountain Cleaners. The video claimed, “The Association of Mountain Cleaners… makes sure that our holiday guests can always enjoy perfect mountains. Using brooms, brushes, water and muscle power, they clean the rocks of any bird droppings.”

At the end of the video, visitors to myswitzerland.com were invited to take a mountain cleaner aptitude test and submit their name for a chance to win a week’s holiday in Switzerland.

They got tons of media coverage around the world. No kidding. Simply smart!

Brand: Pilsner Urquell

Execution: For the second year in a row, Pilsner Urquell rewarded the bartenders around the globe that set the benchmark in their profession and pride in Pilsner Urquell. Fifteen bartenders selected among the best in their own country met in New York on October 13 and 14 to compete for the International Master Bartender Awards 2007. The countries represented were: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, South Africa and United Kingdom. The event coincided with the 5th Annual Lucie Awards, sponsored by Pilsner Urquell to celebrate excellence in photography, at the Lincoln Center on October 15.

Description: The competition was held at the trendy Tribeca Grand Hotel. The bartenders had to take a written test in the morning. The interviews with the judging panel followed after lunch. The bartenders showed off their pouring abilities in the evening.

What We Like: Most of the bartenders were escorted by their country’s Pilsner brand manager. The bartender becomes a real ambassador of the brand after this experience and so the brand manager. This initiative already inspired lots of publicity in each bartender’s country. For instance, the Italian competitor Marco Castellani and his business partner were happy just for being part of this event since their bar “Il Fondo” opened a little over a year ago. The combination with the Annual Lucie Awards at the Lincoln Center creates an aura of good will around the brand that even not-beer drinkers enjoy!

What We Don’t: Being only at its second year, the competition can grow and improve. Fifteen countries do not represent the global beer market.

Conclusions: the International Bartender Awards is a clever marketing and branding tool. The juxtaposition with the Annual Lucie Awards is an advantage. However, the reach of the event is still limited and constrained just to a few.

Condé Nast Traveler, at its tenth annual Readers’ Travel Awards, let the readers decide who is this year best in travel in its category.  The results are derived from the largest independent poll of consumers’ preferences, the Readers’ Choice Survey, second in size only to the U.S. Census. A record number of travelers, over 28,000, voted this year.

This year, many perennial favorites hold on to their top spots: Singapore Airlines is again the #1 International Route Airline, San Francisco, the #1 U.S. City. There is some big news this year: for only the second time in Reader’s Choice history, there’s a perfect 100 score. The honor goes to the La Scalinatella Hotel on Capri. Check the entire list of winners by category.

Brand: New York City

Execution: A 30 million dollar campaign launched by NYC & Co. aims to attract 50 million tourists to the Big Apple annually by 2015. The tagline of the campaign “This is New York” and the campaign were ironically commissioned to a British agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, partly owned by a French holding.

Description: The commercial spot is a few minute video with a remix of Ella Fitzgerald as background music portraying well-known attractions of the city in a cotton-candy way: a cab ride from JFK into Manhattan, the Flatiron building, the water towers, the Fashion Week with Vogue models (???), the subway with the F train to the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Madison Square Garden, a Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting at the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, the Yankee Stadium, New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows Queens, a double-decker tourist bus, Times Square and the Empire State Building.

What We Like: the video is dynamic and flows from place to place without boring the viewer. It is ironic too: the Flatiron building is topped with whipped cream and a cherry, the Statue of Liberty waves at the tourists, etc. The spot is really well-packed graphically and has the ability to talk to new target markets, ie. families.

What We Don’t: most New Yorkers will hate the spot. It is cheesy and New York does not seem the Big Apple you see every day. The city looks more like Disneyland in the video. Plus, anybody with a little background in destination marketing knows that too many icons to represent a place can do more harm than good. New York is many different things to every body, but a basic marketing principle is that you cannot be everything to everybody. The target market in the spot is not clear.

Conclusions: Is New York going to make the same mistake as Las Vegas trying to attract families? If so, the city will certainly lose some of the charm that turned the city into the myth that “never sleeps”.