Pomp, prestige, personality and performance...the precursor or pretermit of public policy

Mind your Ps and Qs (30)

In my article Push, Pull and Pause for Patronage and Participation I noted that certain marketing activities serve to puff up the pomp, circumstance, or “ado” about anything. The objective goes beyond the need to persuade, but to exalt, to make a fuss or glamorize, and give prestige to place thereby making individual organizations and communities-as-destinations stand out, be or seem special and beyond ordinary.

The celebratory notion of pomp that glamorizes formal and informal occasions may be exciting and noteworthy. On one hand it offers a rationale for travel but, on the other, it serves to massage or remold a destination’s identity (a form of brand manufactured authenticity) while continuing willy-nilly to spur tourism’s development, skewing toward what visitors hopefully will perceive as luxurious, fashionable or premium.

Countries engage in pomp to mark all sorts of special occasions, especially to channel the notion of (outdated or misplaced) patriotism. Ceremonial formalities and certain public displays of pomp are also employed to communicate exaggerated versions of substance and style of all sorts of attractions and activities that entice volumes of visitors and anchor tourism as a vital super-cluster.

Of course, all communities-as-destinations desire to be perceived and portrayed in the most picturesque and positive of ways. Every trick in the book is used to appeal, attract, show off, and beautify a sense of place, even in a digital sense. But when building brands, care must be taken as pomp and pageantry have to be tempered. Boosterism may represent the essence of sales and marketing, but when communities-as-destinations seek attention by boasting or puffery, their swagger or braggart can be a put-off and be perceived in disparaging ways especially when promises are botched and exalted visitor experiences bungled.

Conveying authenticity and a sense of place are far more important when attempting to reveal how, and ensuring that, visitors will derive value. But, it’s the search and application of elegance - the symbiosis of excellence and magnificence - conceived through stakeholder capitalism, higher ambition leadership, regenerative businesses, circular economies, and the pursuit of simplicity that may just be the saving grace.

“A fundamental challenge for leaders today is to reset and refocus their organizations to move with hope and confidence into an uncertain future. Elegance is a framework that facilitates that journey. With elegance, one can embrace beauty and fluidity while eschewing waste and complication. As you examine assumptions and surface innovative alternatives, ask yourself, “Is this the most elegant option?” Go in search of elegance and you may just find an age-old goal: excellence.”

As a by design process, it helps when elegance is guided through meaningful pursuit of purpose, carefully conceived principles and placemaking as reflected in the virtuous quality/value loop. Done well, as in Tilburg in the Netherlands, communities-as-destinations are far more likely to ensure that all visitors and stakeholders will be grateful recipients of shared value.

How, then, should DMOs and visitor-serving enterprises proceed to be “elegant” and “authentic” through their demand creation and capture activities? The marketing of “quiet luxury” provides some ideas, but may be difficult to realize because the existing image and identity of many communities-as-destinations may not be that great or, as the case might be, predetermined by certain personality traits, as revealed in the United States or these cities?

While some of these traits can be important differentiators, the psychology behind developing place brand loyalty suggests that adverse identities can be altered or manipulated in the short-term in order to improve performance – profitability, visitor arrivals, expenditures, tax revenues, capacity utilization, and ongoing investments in tourism`s overall development.

It`s a tempting undertaking to pump-up pomp, but it cannot be a substitute for the more refined and longitudinal pursuit of elegance that will generate a significant amount of social media attention…recognition that the power of ordinary, mainstream and mass culture should never be ignored as its tensions and compressions are often what generate attention.

Yet, politicians, economic development specialists and developers will do whatever it takes to mass-produce sentimentality (rather than emotional authenticity) and spruce up a community`s image and identity. Unfortunately premature branding and marketing can be the death knell and needs to be prevented at all costs. If only more could be done to ensure that their projects, developments, and revitalizations manifest “elegance” and fit snugly into the “quality/value loop”. If not, few communities-as-destinations can expect to thrive the doom/gloom loop.

As we know, gentrification can change the personality and identity of cities, but it need not be so. It would also help if greater credence were given to such notions as “ the creative city”, the pomp and circumstance of nature`s harmony, the protection and preservation of the world`s heritage and historic urban landscapes, the necessity of having a higher degree of sensitivity to the nature/culture nexus and the impacts from climate change, all while avoiding the desire to become over-loved destinations,

The dynamics of demand-driven tourism are constantly being disturbed by change and turmoil. Whether related to climate, use of fossil fuels, mobility, seasonality, sustainability, socio-economic conditions, market failure, retailing, downtowns, demographics, psychographics, locality, needs, expectations, popularity, trends, and so on…industry associations, governments, NGOS, and DMOs are having to become far more vigilant and prepared for dystopian futures. For example, we all witnessed what happened during and post-COVID when the pomp, circumstance and performance of politics was on vivid display and led to a flurry of public policy initiatives. And recently we have been witnessing the USA issuing travel bans from 12 countries, with what cascading effects, I wonder?

Just as poignant, are the many who point to the pomp, prestige, personality and performance of tourism as being the harbinger that has led to a proliferation of policies - thoroughly reviewed in the the why, how, and what of public policy implications of tourism and hospitality designed either to encourage tourism or to circumvent its deleterious down sides…malefactors resulting in what has been called a moral maze. Policies being proposed in many countries that are now being said to require a whole-of-government approach, with avenues for future consideration necessitating a progressive approach to innovation and risk taking

While it`s important to identify the distinctions between policies, guidelines, procedures, and standards, let it be said that many business-people prefer higher degrees of “freedom” in the way they operate their business. By prioritizing the generation of demand over its limitation, most will favor to limit or pretermit policies…leading the American Marketing Association to appeal for an improvement in understanding the relationship between marketing and public policy, and for the industry to appreciate how important it can be to invest in an ounce of prevention as well as have a policy on policies - how policies should be made and implemented). A process that will question whether policies will address the issues and concerns at hand, lead to unintended consequences or be short-circuited, best exemplified in new world of artificial intelligence and outlined by the OECD.

In this regard it helps to appreciate why certain certain policies don’t work or could fail, suggesting the need for a public policy setting agenda based on power, perception, potency and proximity that is context-specific and individualized, while taking into account how the interaction or weaving together of public policies will affect the desired outcomes within the private, public and plural realms.

The thrive-ability of tourism clusters, of course, is dependent on the degree to which they can influence the policy process, especially in ways that will help influence the direction of innovation in authentic and elegant ways…ways that are complementary to mission-orientations, local, regional and sectoral interests, market and demand requirements.

All of which bring us back to marketing…now as a tool focused on improving the well-being of people – the residents and citizens of communities, visitors to communities, the people and organizations involved in tourism – with the well-being of our planet foremost in our minds. Marketing reconfigured as social marketing that follows the rules of communications as a force multiplier in proselytizing, for example, on behalf of destination stewardship.

Proselytize and promote, protect and enhance…

· The value of tourism’s aesthetic human/natural/architectural/cultural/historic/ commercial resource base that ultimately determines whether, or not, our communities-as-destinations will flourish and astonish.

· Our emotional, sensual, attachment to and appreciation for sense of place that draws admiration from everyone.

· The investments we as individuals and organizations make in improving the viability and livability of our communities and countries.

· The contributions we collectively make to promulgate the importance and essence of empathy including the “wellth” of our cultures - marketers as chief culture officers offering what is mindful.

Social marketing, expressed through POMP (a pragmatic omni-present progressivism) to exalt and dignify all that is noble, tasteful and elegant about our communities-as-destinations – their natural, cultural, and built environments, industries, festivals and events, retail establishments and the entire hospitality sector, and even more deliberatively to highlight and promote the performativity of tourism through our community’s forget-me-not, socially innovative programs.