Promises, Promises

Manage your Ps and Qs (8)

The ever constant and largest outlay of expenses for communities-as-destinations has always been, always will be, for marketing, sales and branding.  The need to attract visitors (acquisition) and keep them returning (retention) requires the making of promises – promises that are designed to establish and maintain relationships. But what happens if promises aren’t kept?  Trust withers. Relationships fracture. The money spent on advertising is wasted.

The proponents of the need to spend on advertising have always struggled to prove that the money is well spent.  After all, as any DMO executive will tell you, those who control the purse strings (usually governments) can always justify cutting ad budgets.  Indeed, research has shown that the link between advertising (intended to establish awareness for communities-as-destinations) and positive financial outcomes can be tenuous.  One of the reasons Destinations International launched their ‘Community Shared Value’ initiative to protect and justify their performance-enhancing spending on branding and advertising..

Now, the key to building and strengthening any brand has always been a clear and specific promise that can be demonstrably fulfilled.  But can this hold and be effective for destination or place brands that are composed of multiple types of offerings, a wealth and a highly fragmented set of enterprises, mainly SMEs, who are instrumental in developing and continuously adjusting the evolving role of activities and experiences without oversight from DMOs.

Maybe everything depends on the type of promise that is made, including the extent to which the promises made are explicit or implicit.  Virtually all promises made by destinations implicitly speak to the emotional benefits and joy that visitors will derive from their getaways.  Promises that include references to functional benefits – frequently related to the quality of what’s on offer.

Then there are the typical value-for-money promises, often made in reference to pre-packaged tours.  Becoming ever more popular are the promises made to a destination’s sustainability initiatives (to initiate or tie into existential conversations) and to make good on their overall responsibilities for creating positive social and business short and long-term impacts.  And, not unheard of, are the ‘making amends’ (rectification) promises following a recovery from disasters of sorts.

Whatever the promise, the overwhelming task is to make the promise enticing, memorable, valuable, and deliverable.  Of course, all individual businesses attempt to make their own promises, but it helps when they complement and are integrated with the destination brand promise, and  utilize the language of human experience not the language of business.

The degree to which these promises are kept is not always obvious or known, but needs to be tracked and ascertained, whether from visitors, employees or citizens themselves, crucial when promises are broken, and trust erodes. After all, people, organizations and destinations are their brand.  Their promises, and everything they do or don’t do, create indelible and everlasting impressions.

Put another way, a brand promise represents a destination or organization’s strategy that’s provides a common objective for everyone and every department in an organization to meet.  As a strategy, promises define who we serve…how a destination or organization upholds its purpose and principles…how promises as strategies will create value for everyone - visitors, employees, and a destination’s citizens - in what otherwise could be considered a joyless economy.

As you can imagine, if destinations fail to keep their promises to the people and organizations that constitute their communities – particularly the promise that tourism will generate Community Shared Value – tourism is likely to be viewed in unfavorable ways. And, if this is the case, chief marketing officers (CMOs) could destroy their credibility, if not their jobs. 

Fail in these regards and would you expect visitors to feel welcomed, served with grace, generosity and gratitude?  Would a destination’s visitor-serving organizations be viewed as institutions that serve the community and all its stakeholders?  Imagine what would transpire when a destination's marketing budget comes up for renewal.

Keeping promises needn’t be hard, but they shouldn’t be made, unless they can be kept.  The act of creating a promise demands not just a full understanding of who a destination is making a promise to, but awareness of the possibility of pitfalls that can derail any promise and the opportunity to regain trust.

Once done, it’s then a matter of determining what constitutes memorability and value to each constituent audience, including a matter of making specific and memorable promises; issuing the promises a public way throughout the community and destination; fulfilling those promises and ensuring that the resources, necessary to live up to the commitment, are available over the long haul.  

While use of a customized version of this Promise Wheel might be a useful tool in this regard, all may be for naught unless high-performing organizational cultures are aligned with strategies that energize people and are tactically translated into more appropriate job descriptions that allow employees to deliver on promises by being be more hospitably people-centered.

By so doing leaders and managers are more likely to be demonstrating excellence in leadership that will accelerate their ability to demonstrate pride and passion for place – the topic that will be discussed in the following article.