10 steps Tourism Australia’s CMO has taken to remain adaptable in the face of uncertainty
- 21 April, 2021 07:09
Scenario planning, in-depth consumer and brand research, improving structures and processes and strategic collaboration are some of the ways Tourism Australia’s CMO is working to ensure her team remains adaptable in the face of ongoing challenges in domestic and international tourism.
There aren’t many of us who would not agree travel and tourism have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020. As Tourism Australia marketing chief, Susan Coghill, puts it, “2020 was about crisis management and pivoting without panic”.
Now, with international travel into Australia remaining an impossibility for some time to come, Coghill has taken stock of what has worked and hasn’t worked over the past year and is investing in significant insight and data programs in order to cope with the realities of the ever-changing environment.
Here, Coghill reflects on the year in review, her wins and learnings and how they’re informing short and long-term thinking. She also shares how she’s tackling domestic and international tourism in-market activity in 2021.
Step 1: Re-evaluating the domestic tourist
Even before COVID-19 struck, Tourism Australia and various state bodies were dealing with the fallout of the devastating Australian bushfires on domestic and international tourism. As realisation sank in that the coronavirus was going to become much bigger than any of us realised or hoped, Tourism Australia took a few conscious steps. The first was to double down on the domestic tourist and split the team into domestic and international teams.
“We knew we were going to be in domestic tourism, would need to continue to drive demand and shift audience perceptions around domestic travel,” Coghill tells CMO. “In the domestic market, people travel very different than when they’re overseas. It’s true of any country – when you’re overseas you tend to do the extra experience, stay the extra day or two, have the nice dinners, and spend the 30 euros on the photo with the gladiator at the Colosseum. When you’re in your own country, you tend to flop and drop.
“Over the last six months and in 2021, we are striving to take that a step further, looking at how we get Australian consumers to spend more, go further, do more and experience more.”
The focus locally has been on convincing Australians they need to travel like they do when they’re overseas. Over the second half of 2020 and into 2021, the domestic team has been tasked with driving the ‘Holiday here this year’ campaign, aimed at rallying Australians to get out there and spend.
Step 2: Understand current consumer perceptions
As it’s worked to build domestic tourism, Tourism Australia shifted thinking from knowing it needed people to spend more money to better understanding consumer sentiment, how Australians travel, and their current mindsets.
“We did see people’s concerns shift around travel to being worried about the virus, to worry about getting stuck behind a state border. That insight showed it’s not about travelling like you always did, it’s getting consumers to travel differently,” Coghill says.
“We have looked at what key barriers continue to exist around travel. We understood at the value end, there were a set of Australians who need to better understand how they can have an affordable holiday in Australia. There is a perception – not entirely unfounded – that holidays here are quite expensive. It was therefore about showing them cost-effective ways of going out and having a great time and see the best backyard in the world.”
In the middle of the pool are travellers who, as a result of the crisis, have been renovating their homes or buying the car they always wanted. The emphasis here is on showing them that having that Australian holidays is more worthwhile, worthy and contributes to the country’s prosperity.
“At the upper end you have Australians who just go no, I’d never invest $20,000 in a holiday in Australia. So how do we show them you can have a world-class holiday here in Australia? People around the world fly to Australia to do just that, so it was about removing that snobbery around what you can do here,” Coghill says.
Step 3: Tell the right story
At the same time, Tourism Australia has been working to keep Australia top of mind and heart for travellers around the world who can’t visit. The name of the game is not just ensuring the international consumer still thinks about Australia, but the global tourism trade does as well.
“It was down to us to be the lone voice out there still promoting Australia,” Coghill comments.
To do this, the emphasis has been on telling the right story, particularly around Australia’s nature and wildlife following the bushfires. “We made sure we were promoting the stories of our natural beauty, wildlife and how they are bouncing back,” Coghill says. “We also have things around sustainability and the conscious traveller, as well as taking advantage of shared cultural moments.”
A recent case was investing in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy cricket series with India given the sport is a shared passion between both countries. Media interviews with Brett Lee as part of the program of activity resulted in 17 news articles including a cover issue and generated EAV of more than $4 million.
Another key storytelling mechanism was the ambitious livestreaming program, ‘Live from Aus’, which ran during lockdown and showcased 32 diverse ‘virtual holidays’ over a weekend. The livestream engaged 35 million people across 40 countries, generated 226 million social impressions and 1765 pieces of media coverage.
“Our brand metrics have bounced back and up in some ways, and we are seeing strength in consideration for Australia – our scores around nature and wildlife are going up, as well as around being a safe place to visit, which is more important than ever,” Coghill notes. “We are seeing value for money as a ranking and key driver dropping off a bit, which we think is down to the fact people know they need a really great holiday and they’re willing to pay for a place that’s safe, wonderful and enjoyable.”
Step 4: Hold your brand ground
Making sure Australia doesn’t lose ground is key for Coghill in 2021. “We are coming off a relatively high base but we don’t want to lose ground to markets reopening before us,” she continues.
“We also don’t want to lose traction with the trade overseas – we need them to continue to support Australia and be big advocates for us once the borders do open.”
To help, TA runs the online Aussie Specialist training program for agents globally to ensure they know the ins and outs of Australian experiences. Typically, between 30,000 to 35,000 agents train each year. Over the past year, this rose to over 80,000.
“Yes, it does reflect the fact agents have more time on their hands than ever, but that’s still more than double the number of agents wanting to learn about Australia and sell us as a destination at the end of this crisis,” Coghill says.
Step 5: Make it relatable
Given the uncertainties of 2020, Tourism Australia looked to find relatable talent that could help tell the story and who exuded likeability, positivity and relatability. It settled on celebrities, Hamish and Zoe, and planned to send the pair on a roadtrip to showcase different parts of Australia and how consumers can travel differently.
Then state borders closed. “We had to work with our agency to quickly adapt the script to go how do we tell the story of great holidays around Australian when we can only film them in their home,” Coghill says.
“We pivoted to the idea of them having banter back and forth on their screens. That was a last-minute creative solution that solved the challenge of showing destinations and experiences. But it also reflected what so many Australians were feeling in the moment.
“I do think we’ll look back on that TVC and feel it’s so 2020.”
It’s this example of creative sympathetic to the current context that’s a key learning out of last year for Coghill. “We are so known for beautifully polished campaigns we develop over a couple of years. In actual fact, when called upon to develop something that was powerful, resonated with consumers, drove behaviour change, we were able to do it pretty quickly,” she says.
From working to initial build confidence in planning and booking a holiday, the focus at Christmas shifted to encouraging Australians to gift experiences. This resulted in the ‘Holiday Gifting’ campaign.
“The smart media strategy behind that saw us intercepting people when they were going into Myer for example through digital screens outside the stores,” Coghill says. “On Boxing Day we switched messaging to quickly to holiday in Australia, have the holiday of a lifetime in Australia.”
Up next: Susan Coghill's next 5 steps on marketing strategy in the face of uncertainity in 2021
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Step 6: Give partners permission to think differently
With the Northern Beaches outbreak knocking consumer confidence once more, Tourism Australian turned to its media partners for inspiration on the ‘Travel takeover week’, which commented in the first week of February. Working with media agency, UM, 25 media outlets were put into four peer groups to come up with creative encouraging consumers to think about domestic travel in a new way.
“We didn’t have any more creative assets than we had previously produced, so we said to these partners: If we turn the reins over to you guys and give you some creative licence, what can you do?” Coghill says.
“They came back a week later, each with their own creative iteration of holiday here this year messaging, in their own styles and format. We then had a week of unmissable travel messaging across the country to get people to start thinking again.”
Consumer research showed these efforts helped change consumer sentiment around domestic travel and increased intention to travel (0-6 months) by 5 percentage points.
Step 7: Embrace innovative technology
Meanwhile on the international front, Tourism Australia partnered with video company, Infinity Squared and creative communications agency, Connecting Plots, on an innovative top-of-funnel campaign. Debuting in September, the 'Australia in 8D launched in Australia first then rolled out globally from October with organic and paid media. It has now run in US and Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, China and Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India.
The campaign tapped into the agency’s existing content library and partnerships with the Australian film community and applied 8D audio technology to create an ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) experience.
Coghill says the came from the cultural insight around the growing AMSR trend and using ambisonic devices to create themed content based on the beautiful colours of the country. Each colour represented an emotion and mood, such as blue for joy, black for inspiration and red for escape.
“It was a piece of wonderful, top-of-funnel, dreaming content to keep the world interested and engaged in Australia. Also it showcased our nature – we had come off the terrible year of bushfires, so it was a chance to showcase our country,” Coghill says. “We couldn’t go out and shoot, so we needed to use existing assets. That meant we had to be clever about pulling together existing content in a way that’s different than anyone else was doing, to drive cut-through and engagement.”
The 1 to 2-minute-long pieces of content chalked up more than 200 million views globally, including 74 million complete views, and a 173 per cent increase in site traffic. In China, the campaign won a content marketing award from popular travel site, MaFengWo. The content was also used at trade events and proved important in keeping both trade and consumers engaged. Across geographies, black was the most popular colour in Germany and Hong Kong; red was most popular in Italy and India; magenta was most popular in NZ, China and UK; and white was most popular in France.
The success of the ASMR campaign will see it form part of a brief to come up with the next iteration of international activity, Coghill says.
“These initiatives from the past year, such as the ASMR campaign, show there are different ways to tell our story that are not only engaging, but tell a different kind of stories,” she says. “It shows sometimes creativity or the things most powerful can be sneaker projects that come from the side.”
Read more: ASMR: Flash in the marketing pan, or something more?
Step 8: Anticipate the potential challenges
Pivoting aside, Coghill says her team has entered 2021 with better skills in anticipating and planning around potential challenges.
“We do much greater scenario planning around campaigns, our media and the actual production itself so we’re ready to go,” she says. “A good example of this is our New Zealand campaign. We started planning that back when there were rumours about the travel bubble last October. But we continued to work on it, refine and improve it as we went. Once we got the go-ahead on borders reopening, a couple of minor tweaks so us in market in New Zealand within 48 hours.”
Yet Coghill is the first to agree things continue to be tough for local and international teams as uncertainty around travel continues.
“What we do know is that the leadtime on longhaul travel, particularly to places like Australia, and on awareness through to booking can be quite long. We need to keep feeding the brand and watering the tree so when borders to open, we can pull the low-hanging fruit and get as many people in as we can,” she says.
“We are lucky in my team and my extended agency partner teams in that they all have such passion for tourism and the industry. It feels like a personal stake in helping the industry recover. If I’m honest about last year, I think we got through that with a lot of passion, goodwill and respect between my team and agency teams, and a lot of adrenaline.”
Step 9: Build structure to find adaptability
One year on, Coghill says she’s having to step back and do a lot more work on structure and approach.
“We may have created a domestic team, but we haven’t worked at this pace, with this scrutiny and the number of stakeholders in a really long time. We’re now looking at if we have the right operations, processes and systems, what are the right hand-offs, how do we remove duplication, and so on. We’re investing a lot more in that right now which we didn’t have time for last year when we ran at the problem,” she says.
“We are also trying to be better at how we stagger projects with agency partners, and how we share the load across our agency village so we don’t burn out.”
Behind the scenes, Coghill is working on the strategy for Australia’s grand reopening and brand 3.0.
“It will be very much grounded in there’s nothing like Australia, which is a platform we built 12 years ago and invested $1b+ into that brand. It’ll be imbuing that with more meaning and relevance in a post-COVID world,” Coghill says.
Step 10: Build data insight for the future
And as Tourism Australia gears up for whatever comes next, Coghill says understanding and responding what consumers know and love about Australia while representing the breadth of modern Australian experiences is the balancing act. To help, the agency is investing in consumer research to better understand current perceptions.
“We are doing some brand codes research as well to understand those long-held beliefs and symbols around Australia to understand how we can also stretch them. We wouldn’t do these things in a typical year; they are big bodies of research,” she says.
Other data-led priorities include work around the funnel for every market, understanding what has driven conversion historically and how this has varied between big campaign launches internationally, plus understanding Australia’s closest and biggest competitors.
Gauging success across the funnel is also in the spotlight this year. Coghill says Tourism Australia is great at upper funnel awareness and pointing the world towards Australia.
“We have also been very good at working with partners at the bottom of the funnel on conversion, such as with our airline or distribution partners. But we have been less consistent in the mid-funnel, helping the world understand and know Australia a bit better,” Coghill says.
In response, the team has been building relevant content on Australia.com, created a roadtrip hub, refreshed city content and is spending more money in distributing content domestically and internationally.
“That is an area we are going to focus on with our state partners, to make sure we are creating platforms for them so they can tell a richer, deeper story about Australia so people in-market can plan their trips a bit better,” Coghill adds.
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