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Monday, August 29, 2011

Domestic Tourism - How E-Marketing Changed The Playing Field

Looking back 5 to 10 years ago, if you wish to launch an all out marketing campaign making brand awareness as your main objective, most likely you'd spend most of your marketing budget in advertising - specifically TV. Radio and Print would come second and probably a portion of your budget would go to events marketing and sales promotions.

But as the economy faces financial instability, more and more company are diverting their funds to low-cost mediums hoping that the return would be exponential. As of today, we can see companies battling in the online hemisphere and whether you like it or not, the battle is turning into a war.

Consumer communications today no longer relies on the traditional mediums - it evolves as the market evolves.

A very good example would be the campaign of the Department of Tourism (DOT) highlighting the different parts of the Philippines, getting the support of local artists to boost its popularity. I wouldn't have imagined that one day, a government sector would use the internet to spread awareness.

The campaign has been planned thoroughly. It's a remake of the song "Biyahe Tayo" sang before by 25 local artists and now, more than 50 artists volunteered for this cause. And what's great about this campaign is that they're coming out with three versions. All in all, I have to say it was done really nice. I'm not gonna go into detail about the content of the video since this post would primarily focus on how e-marketing is shaping the marketing communication field.

Looking at how it was executed,  I have to say that these are the three things I like about the execution:

  1. It was uploaded in youtube with the right tags and description
  2. There's a link in the description going to the official facebook fanpage
  3. Engagement rate is around 2.2% per post 
Okay, let's talk about the top three things I DON'T like about it's execution:
  1. Fanpage is not utilized properly. Welcome tab is not even the main landing page.
  2. The video on the DOT website does not link to youtube, instead it's a pop-up player and shows that the video is hosted in their site. (if it was on youtube, the popularity of the video would have gone up and rank first in the search engines for certain keywords and phrases)
  3. I can't find any other links out there that points to the video.
Here's the video: 

Then about a day ago, there's this group (which is associated with ABS-CBN) called Choose Philippines and they also launched a viral video campaign targeting domestic travelers. It's the same concept but the difference is that it's only sang by one person (plus a rapper) and just focused on the things a traveler can do in the Philippines.

Content wise, I love it. It made me look closer to the video since most of the sceneries are really captivating and interesting. PLUS the song is really catchy! =D

Anyway, just to compare - here are the top three things I LIKE about the execution:
  1. Content is perfect for a viral video Ad. Length is tolerable and most likely people would watch it till the end. 
  2. within one day, 3,046 views -> this is just wow for a local execution and considering people embed this on facebook which takes a lot more clicks to gain one view. 
  3. They have a website to support the campaign (although incomplete) and a fanpage to target the facebook market. 
The top three things I DON'T like about the execution:
  1. No LINK in the description of the youtube video towards their website or fanpage... (the page rank authority of youtube is being wasted here!)
  2. Title is just NOT relevant with the campaign (SEO Wise!)
  3.  Needs more presence in the social media community to increase views!
Here's the video:

Overall, the execution is not that bad. It needs improvement though. Hopefully, these type of campaigns are seen across the web and hopefully encourage domestic (and foreign) tourism and therefore help increase our GDP/GNP and GNI (economics... boo! hehe) in terms of people spending their money within the Philippines instead of going abroad. 

It would also be nice to know if the DOT and Choose Philippines would report the impact of these campaigns and how it contributed to the growth rate of our tourism industry. 





3 comments:

  1. The market evolves with the developing advertising medium preferred by consumers.

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  2. i agree... we are in the pro-sumers era and it is imperative to change together with the market in order to stay competitive.

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  3. later idea of spending more on presentation i think is preferable. Small things that they left i don't think will impact majorly to them because they have catchy video which is above all

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