I CAPE TOWN ♥A Virtual Fan Park

Mariette du Toit-HelmboldCEO, Cape Town Tourism26 October 2010

MY CAPE TOWN MUSIC VIDEO

MACRO TRENDS

GLOBAL URBANISATION

QUALITY OF LIFE AND PLACE AUTHENTICITY

RESPONSIBLE LIVING

EASIER, FASTER, BETTER

CONSUMER (“ME”)

AFFINITY ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE

TECHNOLOGY AND WEB

Cities have become commodities, indistinguishable from one another and offering little or no added value.

How do we stand out from the crowd?

 

“It is those cities with the confidence to define themselves in the minds of their markets (and I would include its own citizens) that stand out from the rest. It is not size that makes them successful, but their determination to influencing perceptions by positioning themselves in the market.”

– The Communication Group

 

WHAT GIVES CHALLENGER BRANDS THE EDGE?

•Authenticity

•Locals first – living the brand

•Emotional pull

•Storytelling (Word of Mouse)

• Positive perception, unique identities, authentic experiences and a powerful story is the armoury of a successful city brand.

• In today’s market…the story is the unique selling point, not the product.

THE STORY IS CHANGING

Remember the holiday album?

Which became the holiday slide show?

Which became...

The web is the most effective platform for challenger brands like Cape Town to tell our story.

OUR WORLD CUP GOAL

• Build Brand Cape Town

• Get citizens to live and share Brand Cape Town

•Deliver the ultimate visitor experience of Cape Town

• Convert non-traditional visitors into fans and ambassadors for Cape Town

•Ensure the long-term growth of tourism to the city

LIVE IT! LOVE IT! LOUDER!

OUR STRATEGY

An integrated approach based on three key ideas –

• The Customer Journey - the traveller as marketer

• Great Cities to Live in are Great to Visit

• Citizens are the Best Brand Ambassadors

OUR GAME PLAN The CUSTOMER JOURNEY was the foundation of our 2010 World Cup Strategy.

WORLD CUP PROGRAMMES

CAPE TOWN’S EMARKETING STRATEGY

• Launched a new Cape Town website (January 2009)

• Promoted URL everywhere

• Launched dedicated 2010 World Cup website (June 2009)

• Launched Mobi-site (May 2010)

• Activated Social Media Networks

AIRPORT WELCOME BILLBOARD

OFFICIAL VISITORS’ GUIDE

DEDICATED 2010 WEBSITE

FACEBOOK: A VIRTUAL FAN PARK

A Facebook Fan Page, I ♥ Cape Town, was launched on 11 June 2010 (one year to kickoff) and quickly became a growing and active Cape Town brand ambassador community of –

• Proud citizens

• Homesick expats • Previous visitors yearning for a return trip to the Mother City

• First time visitors asking advice and tips from other fans

PUTTING FANS IN THE PICTURE

Key to our World Cup strategy was to encourage World Cup fans to join our I ♥ Cape Town Facebook Fan Page, thus capturing these fans into a valuable “cultivation pool” for future destination marketing campaigns and research.

•Beenthere.TV photo kiosks at key Fan Hubs

•25 000 pictures taken

HARNESSING MEMORY

20 000 NEW FANS DURING WC

WE OUR FANS♥

Keeping the memory alive....

•Cape Town Tourism will now be able to keep in touch with World Cup visitors and inform them of destination marketing campaigns via this effective social networking community.

•The Facebook Fan Page is one of our most powerful social networking platforms and is a significant legacy of the World Cup.

Cape Town’s World Cup Story

OUR FANS US ♥

Cape Town’s World Cup StoryVINCENT’S AMSTERDAM OFFICE

OUR FACEBOOK SUCCESS FACTORS

•All about Cape Town

•Use the emotional pull of Cape Town

•Organic Growth

•Invest time

•Appoint a champion

•Don’t spam and be the spam police

ABOUT THE FANS

•Demographics – 60% female, 40% male. 60%+ South Africans and 40% from our key source markets (US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands)

•Add photos/wall posts on their own – excellent user generated content by true brand ambassadors of Cape Town.

•Facebook Mobile – able to connect with a large mobile audience.

•‘Homesick’ for Cape Town

OPTIMISING THE FACEBOOK PLATFORM

1. Integration with the website to drive conversion

• Fan box• Links• Competitions

We integrate Facebook with our website using a 360° strategy. The most success has come from adding the Fan Box widget onto high traffic pages, writing blog posts about the fan page/fans, running competitions to get fans involved and to interact with the website.

2. Activating our fans as brand ambassadors through campaigns

• Ask them questions and involve them in campaigns to create relevant and authentic destination content.

e.g. World Tourism Month Penguin post

3. Activating our fans as brand ambassadors through competitions

We use the LIKE button as our competition voting mechanism

e.g. Winter Photo Competition

4. We promote big events that appeal to a mass audience

One of the key things to keep in mind when engaging with fans is that we are speaking to a massive audience that is spread across the world and made up of various ages, races, genders and social classes.

We stick to messages that are more likely to attract the interest of the majority of the fans. E.g. 2010 World Cup information on Fan Parks, Games, Transport and News

5. We provide a platform to take live events online with BeenThere.TV

Post World Cup, we use the BeenThere.TV units at events such as the Loerie Advertising Awards. Each image is branded for each specific event or attraction and has proven to be a hugely popular feature with 1000’s of photos being taken and shared at each location.

6. We remind them why Cape Town is one of the greatest cities in the world

We regularly publish photos, updates and videos showing why everyone loves Cape Town.

The responses we get are phenomenal and Cape Town is clearly a city that evokes an equally strong emotional connection in locals, expats and visitors.

4. We segmented our fans and created a “My Cape Town” platform.

Aimed at “in-destination” visitors and citizens.

We kept the link between the two fan pages.

Big is not better – quality over quantity.

MY CAPE TOWN

MY CAPE TOWN

-----Original Message-----From: Luc Holzach [mailto:luc.holzach@gmx.ch]Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:03 PMTo: InfoSubject: t-shirts Hey there, I just saw your awesome "My CapeTown" t-shirts on facebook. Would there be any possibility to buy and ship four of them to Switzerland? This would surely ease my homesickness here ;-) Especially now as the winter is slowly creeping in :-( Thank you for some feedback. Cheers, Luc--Sicherer, schneller und einfacher. Die aktuellen Internet-Browser - jetzt kostenlos herunterladen! http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/chbrowser

 

CAPE TOWN BAND MUSIC VIDEO