Scotland as the Brand - Essay Example

Scotland the Brand Introduction Tourism is one of the growing industries of the world as more and more people across the world find more leisure time and dedicate their leisure time to travel and tourism. In Europe, Scotland can position itself as a unique brand for tourism if the marketing managers of various agencies follow particular marketing rules and methodologies which can help position Scotland as a premier destination for the world’s tourists. Towards this purpose, there are several aspects which marketers must look at. They are the integration of the various channels which they use to send marketing messages to their consumers, the relationship they have with their top clients and best customers for tourist activities, the nature of the message itself and finally they need an understanding of the marketing mix for tourism. To get a better understanding of these aspects, it would be useful to examine them individually and in detail. The Message While the message itself can be differentiated and segmented as per the needs of the market, the channels with which the message is sent to international consumers of tourism must always be integrated with each other. It has often been noted that marketing is intricate field and when ideas from one market are exported to another the chances of successful market capture vary considerably (Brown, 1995). Integrated marketing communication is a set of parameters, tools and techniques which increase the chance of a marketing campaign being successful across several different markets. However, it must be applied carefully and with a thorough analysis of the factors involved. Handling International Markets Since Scotland needs to establish itself as a brand for tourism in international terms, any international marketing campaign will need to consider several marketing related issues which can come when marketing is broadened towards the global arena (Schultz, 1996). Scotland has to be sold as a global brand with established public relations, and confirm the acceptance of the tourism laws followed in Scotland. In recent times, Scotland as a brand must also confirm itself as a ‘good’ ethical tourism destination (Adams, 2004). This idea of being an ethical destination comes from many directions but the most important one is the image of the country as a socially responsible country which can be successfully channelled through integrated marketing communications in an international marketing campaign. Additionally, the marketing message might need to handle the fundamental barrier of language. Although English has become the lingua franca of the world, there are many emerging regions around the globe where English remains unknown or at best a language known only to a few. For example, the Pacific Rim is one market where tourism is growing but the predominant language may not be English. Since marketing is greatly concerned with communications and communications is dependent upon language as well as nonverbal messages, the marketing for Scotland becomes intricately connected with how the message is transmitted and perceived (De Pelsmacker, 2001). Tourism Marketing in International Markets While translations of words can be done quite easily and even automated to some extent using digital translators, the message can often be lost in the translation. What may sound like an idyllic description of rolling hills may translate into something completely different. The translation of the message can only be handled if the marketing methods and the channels being used by the company for international marketing are coherent and present the message with local flavour where the message is being presented. The strategy used to convey the message can depend on the image the company wants to give to its customers and clients (Hackley, 2003). For instance, the examples of edgy and controversial images used in advertising by Benetton might have been successful in certain countries but could have actually hurt sales in countries where sensitivities run high or a conservative climate prevails. It is doubtful that the government would even permit some of the Benetton ads to be published in countries like Saudi Arabia; therefore, the marketing mix has to be changed from country to country and region to region depending on what is expected to be acceptable to the people. On the other hand, there have been several campaigns which have taken one idea and used almost the same marketing technique across the globe. The MasterCard ‘priceless’ campaign strikes as a particular example since the idea of certain emotions and situations being priceless is common to many cultures. The brand identity of MasterCard therefore takes on the image presented in the ads i.e. a caring, loving, fun and family oriented brand. In fact brand identity is possibly the most difficult idea to translate from one country to another and those who are able to do it can go from success to success. This is where the concept of values and meanings associated with images enters into the mix. While certain images can be completely innocent in one culture, another may see them as offensive and degrading. The most important thing for a marketing manager is to keep an open mind. There should be no prejudices or value judgments for marketing methods and a campaign should ideally be formed, explored and developed using people from the region where the marketing will eventually be done. People from within the region will be more comfortable with the given culture and they will know exactly the kind of images, words and ideas which can be presentable and acceptable to the populace. By going blindly into a region using the same communication methods as they are used in the home country a manager could quickly turn an expansion plan into a retreat plant. Once the image of a brand has been created in the minds of the people it might even take a name and identity change along with significant investment before that image can be broken, adjusted or modified. A good marketing communication campaign has to get the mix just right on the first attempt because there will be little chance for a second shot at the same target. Handling international markets is a complex issue because countries and even regions within a country have cultural differences that strongly affect communications which in turn have an effect on how a message is interpreted. Brown (1995) reports that certain values, languages, ideas and even social interactions could be vastly different across countries while a company might be trying to market a product using the same messages as it is used in the home country. The easiest way to understand and even use these differences to the company’s advantage is to be educated about them and to use good marketing techniques which integrate various channels into one. In the simplest of terms, integrated marketing communication can be described as a management concept that promotes the combination of various market communication tools such as advertisements, PR campaigns, direct marketing and sales promotions (Acheson, 1993). As described by Debreceny and Cochrane (2004, Pg. 28), “There’s A maxim that says it always makes sense to truly integrate public relations and marketing activities in the drive for the hearts and minds of consumers”. However, while this idea makes perfect sense, brand managers are often hesitant in combining these marketing forces for various reasons (McLaughlin, 1997). Debreceny and Cochrane (2004) go on to say that: “The maxim has been honoured more in the breach than the observance. But now, we must partner to create and demonstrate a single message-whether through public relations or marketing communications-or risk confusion and a mistrusting public (Debreceny and Cochrane, 2004, Pg. 28).” The situation mentioned above is not limited to tourism alone, rather it has global implications for the field of marketing because international marketing goes hand in hand with integrated marketing communications (Schultz, 1996). Shimp (2000) gives the best application of integrated marketing communications and suggests that it can be approached in a several different ways depending on the requirements of the company and the current marketing position. For the needs of Scotland as a brand with regard to tourism, there are five conceivable elements to an integrated marketing system which show that: 1. The central goal of integrated marketing is to influence the behaviour of global tourists in general and of the regional tourists in particular. 2. The process starts with an examination of the current offerings made by Scotland in terms of tourism and fitting the offerings to match the needs of tourists rather than creating a need for the product being sold. 3. All forms and methods of communication from the brand logo to press releases should be used as opportunities to deliver the message of Scotland as a positive tourism location. 4. Coordination between various departments of the brand management company is necessary to ensure that the same message is given by all individuals to all customers. 5. A relationship must be established between Scotland and those who come to Scotland for tourism. The Advantages By pursuing a unified communication and marketing strategy, Scotland as a brand can gain three practical advantages to boost its image and make it self a unique destination. The first advantage comes from having a unified message for the consumers since the consumer base is considered in its broadest possible sense. The second advantage is the cost benefit that comes from having a single marketing services provider and last but not least Scotland branding and marketing messages based on integrating marketing will create a marketing model which is tightly focused on tourist needs. Without integrated marketing communications, Scotland runs the risk of having a divided message with different tunes coming from tourism group sales operators, public post holders and even airline customer support agents (Sevier, 2004). While the message might have some overlapping tones, it is certainly not unified since it can only be unified with integrated marketing (Duncan, 2002). If the supporters and suppliers of the brand are given complete clarity on how the message is to be given to the clients or even what exactly the message is supposed to be then Scotland can be said to have made the first steps towards a cohesive marketing strategy for tourism. For example, the company may choose to promote a particular unique selling proposition (USP) for their services such as an untouched environment. If every individual connected with promoting tourism in Scotland knows that USP and its application to their job then everyone from the president of a tourism company to customer support representatives of the same company can be supporters for Scotland in a big way. Using the broadest possible approach to find customers, every member of a supportive company can find him/herself acting as a salesperson for Scotland (Hackley, 2003). Integration of marketing channels would inevitably lead towards a single message being put out which would reduce the costs of marketing for the company. The unification of the message is particularly important when it comes to the public and media relations of Scotland as a brand (Wood, 1997). On their own, both PR and marketing are important for a brand of any size, but once the message carried by both marketing and PR are more or less unified in their meaning, a brand will double its opportunities to get the message across to target markets (Kitchen, 1993). For instance, an advertisement about the social responsibility of the Scottish government can certainly carry a message about the work being done in the country to preserve the environmental treasures. At the same time, a PR news release can also be an opportunity to show how the facilities in the outlying regions of Scotland are of a very high quality. Reducing Costs If Scotland wishes to invest separately in marketing and public relations, there is nothing which stops it from doing so. However, it would make more sense for the tourism brand managers to sit down with both the marketing and the PR people to come up with a singular plan which can be applied to both with some overlap (Moriarty, 1994). The cost of research, media development and message creation can also be lowered if the marketing department and the public relations department can share materials (Debreceny and Cochrane, 2004). While common wisdom might suggest that a unified marketing communications plan might cause brand managers to lose focus of what the exact message is supposed to be, Kitchen (1993) suggests that the focus becomes tighter because it is on the consumers rather than the image of the country or the benefits of the tourism services alone. With integrated marketing, Scotland can focus on the needs satisfaction of the consumer rather than simply highlight the features it offers. The marketing done by Apple Computers is only one example of such an approach while many others can be found simply by taking a closer look at how advertisements are presented to the audiences today. Additionally, by shifting the focus towards communicating an image of the brand to the customer rather than simple promotions of tourism service, Scotland tour operators can create a deeper relationship with those who patronise their services (Wood, 1997). International organisations like GE, BP, Starbucks, Dell, Microsoft, and Apple are loved or hated by people for many different reasons but none of these companies can afford their image to be tarnished in any way (Colvin, 2006). Even a rumour about a company mishandling its employees in China can have negative effects on the bottom line of the company. To keep such rumours from circulating and to get the Scottish message heard first in terms of tourism, communication between the consumers of the service and the producer is a necessary fact. While a tourist destination can be valued and appreciated by holiday analysts solely on the basis of its amenities and creature comforts, greater appreciation as well as profits can be had if the brand passes along the image of being socially responsible to its host communities (Natural Health, 2005). From the various advantages mentioned above, it is clear that a unified architecture for marketing and branding for Scotland as a tourist destination should be established and this should get a positive message across to the public. However, the process of doing this requires careful planning and management before it can be deemed a success (Pickton and Broderick, 2001). The Steps The process which helps a brand use integrated marketing communications is somewhat different from other marketing processes primarily because it is customer centred (Kitchen, 2005). Instead of things like product image or price differentiation, the focus of the process is on communications between the market (which may be made up of local or international) and the provider (Fill, 2002). Finally, it is a circular process which continually repeats itself as new data and information is made available to the country therefore once the process is started it simply grows and improves in terms of accessing markets, creating additional customers and offering more benefits to current tourists in Scotland who are current consumer of services (Duncan, 2002). Scotland can begin the process by establishing or reviewing its current tourist base. Normally, most countries have some sort of information collected about their regular tourists and understand their requirements better than one time visitors who may not even be sure about the services or destinations on offer (Duncan, 2002). If a database is not present, this is the first step which Scotland must take and the easiest way to collect information about tourist is to ask them for it using ways and means which are non-obtrusive and give some value to the tourist for sharing information with the country brand managers. While all customer relationships can be seen as being valuable to some extent for a company, some long standing and high volume relationships are always taken to be more valuable than others. With this information in hand, Scotland brand managers can also track the buying habits, usage patterns and purchase frequency of various individuals which can let the company create tiers for various tourist groups (Pickton and Broderick, 2001). It can certainly be assumed that heavy users are more likely to be closer to the company in terms of a relationship bond and since they form the primary base of the company’s market, they should be given a high level of attention wherever they may be located (Duncan, 2002). Since the target of integrated marketing is to ensure an increase in the customer base, a strategy must be developed using the customer data for adding to the base numbers of high users. Given that the strategy shows Scotland a generic path which can be followed to attract more tourists, tactics can then be produced from the strategy deduced with the database (Duncan, 2002). For example, if Scotland has a strategy to attract more students as tourists, it can employ tactics like on campus tourism advertisements, advertising in student magazines, or running TV spots in youth related shows. All of these steps would let the brand attract and get the message across to an ever widening market depending on how much the country is willing to spend on tourism advertisements. Of course all advertising and marketing comes with an associated cost which must be justified before it can be undertaken. A brand might have to blindly advertise across various channels before a target channel is deduced, but with the integrated marketing approach, the database created earlier would go a long way in showing the best advertising method to attract the exact market segment being sought by the brand. Again, it must be emphasised that Scotland should use all available channels for communicating with clients, but the analysis is still required to see which channels would be the most effective. Finally, Scotland brand managers would need to compile and evaluate the results of their integrated marketing campaign to evaluate what worked and what did not. These results are easy to compile based on the number of new tourists to the region and the costs of marketing but the analysis of these results is never easy. There can be hundreds of factors which influence tourism sales in various time periods and it is easy to jump to conclusions about why certain campaigns appear to be successful while others seem to be complete failures. To avoid such situations, the services of a good agency which can use focus groups, numerical analysis and other tools of evaluation would be very important in the process of results compilation. Once the results have been compiled the brand managers can then make the respective changes to their tactics, strategy and the marketing mix to further their purposes. If this looks like the process being started from the beginning, it is not true because now they are more prepared with information which has increased in validity and improved in accuracy about the coming tourists. Therefore, the next iteration of the same process will lead to further improvements and benefits for the positioning of Scotland as a tourism brand. Conclusions Considering the implications, benefits, processes and the need for establishing Scotland as a brand and as a destination for tourism in present times, marketing communications, it is clear that the process is a requirement for any brand which wishes to operate competitively in a global market. The field of marketing and tourism marketing itself has been around for many years and it has had its share of ups and downs but the overall acceptability of the ideas implied in terms of creating a brand and presenting a positive image of a tourist destination as a brand is a relatively new concept. For that, I agree with the ideas presented by Comelissen and Lock (2000) who strongly believe that integrated marketing communications as a method of brand management is quite useful and valid as a method for improving tourist revenues. 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