Emerging technology may have appeared to remove the need to invest in brand values, but this one factor still remains high on the customer’s shopping list
Are you all sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin. Once upon a time there were four Ps in marketing: promotion, product, price and place.
Operators divided marketing budgets equally between brand building and retailerrelationships.
Now if every travel industry marketing guru is to be believed there are four Ds. Distribution, distributionÉ Yes, you get the picture.
We have all given up trying to be Heinz and we are all desperately trying to be Tesco. In other words, every operator is acting like a retailer.
The Internet and digital television along with retailer relationships have replaced any need to invest in brand values. There is some logic behind this argument.
Any analysis of spend over the past 12 months indicates that retailer advertising, or operator support of retailer activity, constitutes 80% of industry marketing spend across all channels.
It is also true to say that there is little point in driving customers through a shop door to ask for a brand for which they will be driven away from the counter just as quickly.
It is far more effective to buy a retailer’s affection than turn his or her customer’s head with clever and creative marketing.
But this is without question a short-term view. The dominant and more imaginative industry brands have either never moved from or will very shortly return to investing in brand values.
From superior service to heightened customer loyalty, or even our old friend price differential, all of these must remain within the tour operator’s marketing war chest.
Let’s face it – all of these remain high on the potential customer shopping list.
Ultimately it is that shopping list that must remain the principle driving factor behindthe allocation of marketing budgets.
Soon there will be no retailers left to “buy” and a closed door to an integrated operator will probably remain a closed door.
New and emerging technology may yet prove to be of limited interest to the vast majority of themarketplace.
If we wander away from the industy’s core marketing strengths of representing the single most aspirational purchase on our customers’ annual shopping list in an imaginative and value enhancing way, we are simply not doing ourselves justice.
Certainly at Airtours we believe we have got more to shout about than being ú20 more expensive than our competitors – particularly when we are not.