I was most interested to read Going Places managing director Peter Shanks’ comments in this column (Travel Weekly February 10) about Thomson’s televisionadvertising campaign.
It brought home to me the fact that, when it comes to television advertising, everyone is an expert and has a view.
This is not surprising since TV is the most intrusive and powerful advertising medium, and we are all consumers of its message every time we switch on.
Whether you love or hate it, early indications are that the campaign is going down extremely well with consumers.
Whenever anyone tries anything new on the marketing front that doesn’t involve promoting low prices to the exclusion of everything else, it is bound to prompt a reaction from some quarters saying it won’t work.
At Thomson, we believe we have a key role to play in convincing consumers that choosing their dream holiday should involve more than just trying to find the cheapest price. We do offer very good holidays and they are worth paying a little more for..
That’s not to say that the core Thomson Holiday is not competitively priced – it is and will continue to be so. But, TV advertising is one part of Thomson’s wider marketing strategy which includes a number of strands, such as incentivising our more supportive retailers, building relationships with customers through joint direct marketing and creating new added-value holidays.
We have already found that customers are willing to pay more for holidays where they recognise they are getting tangible added-value benefits.
I am the first to acknowledge that our strategy is a long-term one, since consumer attitudes take time to shift.
For too long the industry has focused almost exclusively on price, with the end result being that the product has gradually become a commodity.
Our new advertising strategy is specifically designed to confront this problem head-on, and seeks to impress upon consumers the importance of quality, reliability and trust as key reasons for making a purchase.
We believe our strategy is a brave one in a marketplace which over the years has done much to devalue its core product, and we too have played our part in creating this perception. It is vital that we begin to change this view. At Thomson, we believe we offer something that has real and lasting value for consumers – surely this has to be worth more than just the “price of a curry!”