With the advent of relatively inexpensive airfare, we’re fast becoming a world of tourists.
In days gone by, international travel was limited to the older, more affluent person. Today that’s all changed. There was a time when the flight attendants were young and the travelers old. Now the travelers are young and the flight attendants are old.
One of the many North Atlantic carriers jockeying for these international travelers is an airline called Sabena Belgian World Airlines. But all competitors don’t compete on an equal basis. TWA and Pan Am, for example, have for some time had a long list of gateway cities in both the United States and Europe.
But Sabena flies nonstop from North America to only one city in Europe: Brussels. Unless there was a hijacker aboard, every Sabena plane was going to land in Belgium.
While Sabena captured the lion’s share of the traffic to Belgium, they were on a very meager diet. Not too many people were flying to this little country. Only one out of 50 North Atlantic passengers fly to Belgium.
On the country ladder in the prospective traveler’s mind, Belgium was on one of the bottom rungs. If it was on the ladder at all.
One look at the situation and it was easy to tell what was wrong with Sabena’s advertising. Sabena was using classic airline strategy. Sell the food and the service.
“Do I have to be a bon vivant to fly Sabena?” said a typical ad. But all the terrific food in the world won’t induce you to fly an airline that isn’t going where you want to go.
Sabena’s most productive strategy was obviously not to position the airline but to position the country. In other words, do what KLM had done for Amsterdam.
Sabena had to make Belgium a place where a traveler would want to spend some time. Not a place you traveled through to get to somewhere else.
Furthermore, there’s a moral here that shines through loud and clear. Whether you’re selling colas, companies, or countries. Out of mind, out of business.
Most Americans knew very little about Belgium. They thought Waterloo was a suburb of Paris and the most important product of Belgium was waffles. Many didn’t even know where the country was.
“If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium,” was the title of a popular motion picture.
But how do you find a position for a country? Well, if you think about it, the most successful countries all have strong mental images.
Say “England” and people think of pageantry, Big Ben, and the Tower of London.
Say “Italy” and they think of the Coliseum and St. Peter’s and works of art.
Say “Amsterdam” and it’s tulips, Rembrandt, and those wonderful canals.
Say “France” and it’s food and the Eiffel Tower and the dazzling Riviera.
Your mind sees cities and countries as mental picture postcards. In your mind, New York is probably a skyline of tall buildings. San Francisco is cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge. Cleveland is a gray place with a lot of industrial smokestacks.
Obviously, London, Paris, and Rome are all top-of-the-ladder destinations that are most popular with first-time travelers to Europe. Sabena had little chance to get these travelers.
But in the United States there is a large segment of seasoned travelers looking to visit the next tier of destinations. Countries like Greece with its ruins. Switzerland with its mountains.
Once the objective became clear, finding a position wasn’t that difficult.
Belgium is a beautiful country with many of the things that appeal to the seasoned European traveler. Like interesting cities, historical palaces, museums, and art galleries.
Oddly enough, many Belgian people don’t have a high opinion of their own country as a tourist attraction. That attitude is perhaps epitomized by a sign that used to be at the Brussels airport. Among other things it said, “Welcome to Belga country. Weather: mild, but rains 220 days a year, on average.”
As the result, Belgium’s favorite tourist strategy was to promote the central location of Brussels as a “gateway” city and the ease of getting somewhere else. Like London, Paris, and Rome. (If you want to visit New York, fly to Philadelphia because it’s close by.)
There’s an important lesson here. The perceptions of people living in a place are often different from those visiting it.
Many New Yorkers fail to see New York as a tourist attraction. They remember the garbage strikes and forget the Statue of Liberty. Yet New York attracts 16 million visitors a year who all want to see those “big buildings.”
But while “beautiful” was a good position, it wasn’t really enough as a tourist promotion theme. To position a country as a destination, you need attractions that will keep the traveler around for at least a few days.
Nobody considers Monaco much of a destination because its number one attraction, Monte Carlo, can be seen in an evening.
Obviously, size is an important factor. Big countries have lots of attractions. Small countries are at a disadvantage. (If the Grand Canyon ran through Belgium, you wouldn’t have much land left to look at.)
We found the answer to the overall positioning problem in one of those Michelin Guides. You may not know that Michelin rates cities as well as restaurants.
Michelin’s Benelux edition lists six three-star “worth a special journey” cities. Five were in Belgium: Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, and Tournai.
But what was really surprising was the fact that the big tourist attraction to the North, Holland, had only one three-star city, Amsterdam.
The ad that resulted was headlined, “In beautiful Belgium, there are five Amsterdams.” The illustration was comprised of five beautiful four-color pictures of Belgium’s three-star cities.
This advertisement generated an enormous number of inquiries about a country many travelers had seen only through the train window as they traveled from Amsterdam to Paris.
One of the inquiries came in the form of a call from the minister of tourism in Holland to his counterpart in Belgium. Needless to say, there was one irate Dutchman who wanted that advertisement killed, along with the people who created it.
The “three-star city” strategy had three important things going for it.
First, it related Belgium to a destination that was already in the mind of the traveler, Amsterdam. In any positioning program, if you can start with a strongly held perception, you’ll be that much ahead in your efforts to establish your own position.
Second, the Michelin Guide, another entity already in the mind of the traveler, gave the concept credibility.
Finally, the “five cities to visit” made Belgium a bona fide destination.
Eventually the “three-star cities of beautiful Belgium” concept was moved into television. The response was substantial.
A television commercial with its ability to communicate in sight and sound can drive pictures of a country into the mind much more quickly than a print advertisement.
There’s also a danger of misusing the medium of television. This happens when your visuals are similar to visuals being used by other countries.
Think about those islands in the Caribbean you’ve seen advertised. Can you keep those palm trees and beaches separate in your mind? Do you conjure up the same mental postcard when someone says Nassau, the Virgin Islands, or Barbados? If there’s no difference, the mind will simply dump all those visuals in a slot marked “Islands in the Caribbean” and tune out.
The same thing can happen with those quaint European villages. Or the smiling residents waving mugs of beer at you. We solved the problem by using the Michelin “stars” as if they were church bells which rang out as they were superimposed on the Belgium city scenes.
Now you might be wondering why, after all this, you haven’t seen much about Belgium and its three-star cities.
A number of events kept this program from getting off the ground. All of which holds a lesson for anyone embarked on a positioning program.
New management not committed to the program arrived on the scene, and when headquarters in Brussels wanted to change the strategy, they quickly acquiesced.
The lesson here is that a successful positioning program requires a major long-term commitment by the people in charge. Whether it’s the head of a corporation, a church, an airline, or a country.
In a constantly changing political environment, this is difficult to accomplish.