Tag Archives: china

Chinese social media giant partners with Hamilton Island to promote Australia

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Tencent, China’s largest online community with more than 780 million active users has partnered with Hamilton Island to broadcast the Great Barrier Reef Island to the flourishing Chinese market.

It’s the first time the social network has shifted outside of China and the third largest internet company in the world after Google and Amazon. Tencent’s QQ.com is the ninth most visited website in the world so traction for Australian is immense.

Targeting China’s affluent travellers of the future, Hamilton Island’s first Chinese ambassador Chao Xian Yang will work with Hamilton Island playmakers to build a robust Tencent Weibo community and fan base for the trendy Whitsundays’ island.

Chinese supermodel Li Ya Hong, Hamilton Island ambassador Chao Xian Yang, Tencent Weibo executive Xia Yue and a competition winner will visit Hamilton Island in May to promote Hamilton Island on Tencent Weibo.

Branded the ‘Twitter of the East’, Sophie Baker, Hamilton Island’s senior communications manager, explains the strength of the social media superpower: “China probably has more social media users than Facebook has worldwide. With China’s social media market nearly at one billion users, mostly on mobile, we are honoured to be partnering with Tencent Weibo.”

Capitalising on the high-end travel market, it’s a huge win for Hamilton Island in a monetary sense as Tencent Weibo executive Ai Fang admits. “When it comes to luxury goods, unique and high-end experiences, Tencent Weibo’s hundreds of millions of users are highly engaged consumers with high spending power,” he says.

Using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and YouTube boomed back to the Tencent Weibo juggernaut, Hamilton Island’s social reach should increase dramatically.

 

 

News of growth fails to shake cautious consumer mindset

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Consumer confidence failed to repond to rate cuts, a rising dollar, growth in the share market and a drop in unemployment in January, to start the year virtually unchanged.

Westpac-Melbourne Institute’s joint ‘Index of Consumer Sentiment’ rose by just 0.6% in January, to reach 100.6, supporting assertions that cautious spending is the new normal behaviour for consumers.

While the result represents the third consecutive month of the Index falling at or above 100 — the neutral point which separates optimism from pessimism — Westpac’s chief economist, Bill Evans, calls the increase disappointingly small in light of good news for the economy.

The Australian dollar rose from US$1.046 to U$D1.053 between December and January survey periods, while the share market rose 4.1% and unemployment fell from 5.4% to 5.2%.

Rate cuts have also failed to impact significanlty on the the Index, which remains 2.7% below its November 2011 level, despite cuts totalling 150 basis points since that time.

Evans puts the failure of sentiment to respond down to a cautious mindset that prevails against news that once would have spurred optimism. “Respondents have become more guarded around their own finances, with assessments of family finances compared to a year ago falling by 8.6%; while the outlook for family finances over the next 12 months fell by 1.2%,” he explains.

“Since the Reserve Bank started cutting rates, respondents’ assessments of their finances have improved by a miniscule 1%.”

Signals around housing, which would normally be expected to respond strongly to such a series of rate cuts, remain mixed, Evans adds.

“Over the last 12 months sentiment towards ‘whether now is a good time to purchase a house’ has been boosted by 11% (quarterly average), and for the last four months that index has been near the highs of 2009 when house prices lifted by around 14% nationally,” he says.

Official data for new housing loans indicates that upgraders and investors are responding to the lower rates in a broadly comparable fashion to 2009, but first home buyers have been reluctant to return to the housing market, according to Westpac.

“This is certainly partly due to less generous government subsidies, but may also be impacted by weaker overall confidence around finances and job prospects,” says Evans.

The Reserve Bank Board next meets on February 5. Westpac has not changed its rate view since May last year and Evans expects “that there is a clear case for at least one more rate cut in this cycle” leading into the February/ March window.

 

 

Competitive productivity – a new perspective on effective output

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This article is co-authored by Iggy Pintado, founder and CEO of connectgen, author of Connection Generation and co-host of podcast The Social Business with Annalisa Holmes.

 

The shortcoming of the traditional understanding of productivity is that it overlooks the nature of competitiveness. The key question in a competitive market environment is to what degree any activity not only leads to productivity, but also its direct impact on competitiveness.

Traditional paradigm of productivity

Productivity is a hot topic in Western markets like Australia. Aging populations coupled with low fertility rates and growing social costs only allow one way to maintain current life style levels: an increase in productivity. Problematically, however, Western productivity levels are dropping, and the current understanding of productivity may result in falling behind dynamic East Asian markets.

The traditional understanding of productivity is that it is:

“A measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, system, etc., in converting inputs into useful outputs. Productivity is computed by dividing average output per period by the total costs incurred or resources (capital, energy, material, personnel) consumed in that period. Productivity is a critical determinant of cost efficiency.” (www.businessdictionary.com)

The drivers of productivity have been identified, for example in the UK, as investment, innovation, skills, enterprise and competition. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) foundation for productivity are the framework conditions (low and stable inflation, developed financial markets, low taxes), infrastructure investment, degree of competition in product markets (eg. strict product market regulation undermines productivity growth), and open markets (trade and investment). At the same time, the OECD has identified relatively liberal labour market regulation as a contributing factor to productivity since excessive job protection results in high costs for firms to restructure. Strong job protection may also lead to a reduction of incentives for employees to focus on performance. A key factor in the productivity discussion is the OECD-acknowledged importance of human capital accumulation. A well-designed tertiary education sector provides the business community with human resources contributing to business, sciences and technology, the latter since technical knowledge stimulates innovation.

All in all productivity occurs at two levels. At the micro level, labour productivity is about the ratio of output produced per unit of labour used. At the macro level, however, multifactor productivity is about the ratio of output produced per combined input of labour and capital (buildings, equipment and machinery). What perhaps is not yet well understood is that the two levels are intertwined, and ultimately productivity is linked to competitiveness.

Paradigm shift to ‘competitive productivity’

In Western organisations, an increasing number of work hours are spent in time-consuming meetings, committee work and advisory boards which do not always result in productive outcomes. In marketing, for example, Apple may have a collaborative approach, but its speed to market and level of innovation has fallen behind its main competitor in East Asia, Samsung.

Competitive productivity is in essence both an attitude and a behaviour directed at beating the competition. Just as productivity itself, it is a factor score of both macro and micro-level determinants.

Competitive productivity

In order to showcase our new paradigm, we compare the Western to the East Asian approach to demonstrate the differences in competitive productivity:

  • Benchmarking: Competitive productivity benchmarks performance against industry leaders in order to aspire to the same, if not higher, market position (sales, profitability, product/service/experience quality, brand equity). Such benchmarking will result in the allocation of resources in line with the objective to be the best possible. For example, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S in 2011, which was faster than the previous iPhone 4, but its performance was behind Samsung’s new Galaxy line. Another example is Apple’s iPad that runs one application at a time, while Samsung’s Note 10.1 runs three. Competitive productivity for Apple means to benchmark with Samsung’s superior performance.
  • Culture: Competitive productivity is a culture that focuses on performance and competitiveness. A recent study (Baumann and Hamin 2011) has established an association between culture, competitiveness and performance. The antithesis is a nation’s culture that permits, if not supports, non-performance. When school leavers receive government support without any attempts to find a job, and when government websites provide comprehensive calculations of entitlements, then a culture of non-performance is nurtured. Such a culture makes it more attractive to search for free money rather than for work options, but no real value is created. Competitive productivity, in contrast as found in East Asian societies, is a culture with less-generous welfare systems, but instead nurtures performance orientation in society.
  • Education and development: Competitive productivity is about performance orientation instilled in the education system, and then ‘lived’ in firms and society. For example, the Korean approach to education has resulted in top-of-the-world results in international student competitions such as PISA, whereas Western countries (such as Australia, USA and some European countries) have fallen behind. Educational top achievers such as South Korea, China and Singapore with their Confucian approach to education understand the role of education to go beyond the transfer of knowledge and skills, but importantly to also pass on values such as discipline, respect and performance orientation. Their ‘no pain no gain’ spirit results in peak performance in education, and subsequently in business, entertainment, medicine, science and sports. Western education, in contrast, increasingly loses the focus on passing on values such as competitiveness, performance and aspiration. Perhaps one of the most important lessons in business education, the one on competitiveness, is now increasingly omitted at Western educational institutions in comparison to East Asia where competitiveness is nurtured.
  • Environment and infrastructure: Competitive productivity is about creating and upgrading a country’s (or firm’s) infrastructure. East Asian nations have world-class airports and transportation systems (eg. airports in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, all generating large transit volumes). In contrast, infrastructure projects in Western countries are often neglected, under-funded and progress at a slow rate. For example, Sydney airport is non-competitive in comparison to the modern and convenient East Asian transport magnets. Western countries often engage in bureaucratic processes that are time-consuming (but perceived as ‘productive’ in the traditional sense of the term), but generate very little competitive productivity. East Asian nations are more pragmatic with their ‘can do’ spirit. The non-tangible business environment in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore rewards performance with low tax rates, whereas Western societies have generated tax systems that flatten out society, discouraging peak performance.
  • Performance (outcomes): Competitive productivity generates high-quality products, services and experiences. High-tech products such as computers, smart phones and consumer electronics are predominantly made in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), whereas the West has largely lost its competitive edge. Siemens and Nokia were once market leaders in mobile phones, but German Siemens spun off their division to Taiwan, and Nokia is on the verge of brand equity bankruptcy. On the other hand, Samsung and LG, or Hyundai and Kia in the autombile market, are now market leaders in their categories. For physical products, competitive productivity is about speed to market (such as Samsung with fast product innovation) and product quality and design (such as with Hyundai now offering top design and quality, surpassing major competitors).
    Asian service brands such as Singapore Airlines or Asiana (in Korea) provide competitive productivity since they provide award-winning services drawing passengers to their brands, and subsequently expand their networks, order new planes and generate profits, while Western brands such as American Airlines or United are generally viewed as almost ‘no frills’ providers with old planes and mediocre service. US and Asian airlines may spend equal amounts of time to generate the same amount of travel, but what ultimately matters is a service orientation focused on retaining customers for repeat business rather than time spent on projects such as internal committee work that may not result in improved service quality. What really matters to the customer is the actual service experience and service quality that drive customer loyalty and repeat purchase and ultimately, brand advocacy that is in fact, competitive productivity.
  • Values: Competitive productivity is a ‘can do’ spirit and a positive service attitude. Confucian dynamism prevalent in East Asia nurtures values of hard work in education, workforce and society through a system of reward and punishment. At the same time the push in their society is for harmony. This is achieved through placing a high value on education and performance, reflected in government policies promoting educational achievement. In Chinese and Korean society, Confucianism has resulted in a society that puts teachers and professors at the top of the social hierarchy: performance, achievement and knowledge are valued and a key priority in society. In Korea, this has allowed the development of a knowledge society and an ‘educational powerhouse’. Teachers and professors are viewed and treated as an ‘investment’, whereas in Western societies respect for scholars is low, and is reflected in the low income for teachers and professors. Korea in contrast pays its teachers well, especially over the lifespan of a teacher’s career, and entry into high school teaching is very competitive.

 

The current business environment demands a direct link between productivity and the quest for competitive advantage. Marketers – and also politicians and educators – need to gain a working understanding of this new paradigm to position their organisations to retain if not increase their customers’ loyalty, retain and increase their brand value and ultimately remain relevant in their chosen markets.

 

Tourism Aus shifts gaze to Europe and NZ with $14.3m Emirates deal

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Tourism Australia (TA) has shifted its gaze to Europe and New Zealand, announcing a $14.3 million joint marketing agreement with Emirates.

With the focus having been heavily on China and other Asian markets since the relaunch of ‘There’s nothing like Australia, TA will partner with Emirates to renew its focus on some of Australia’s leading inbound visitor markets, namely the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and New Zealand.

The three-year deal will fund joint marketing initiatives on traditional and digital media platforms, as well as event and sponsorship activity, it was announced today.

Emirates, the world’s largest international carrier, has worked with TA on cooperative activity in the past and plans to up its investment in Australia with 14 new routes to be added to its roster of 70 flights to Australia per week by 2013.

TA’s managing director, Andrew McEvoy, says Emirates’ commitment to the Australian market has made it one of the country’s strongest marketing partners, since it started visiting the nation’s shores in 1996.

“Tourism Australia has worked with Emirates on local cooperative marketing activities across individual markets for some years now, and very successfully so, linking Australia’s visitor appeal with the airline’s extensive schedule and internationally recognised and well respected brand,” McEvoy says.

“Both parties have agreed there is now a need for a more strategic, longer-term agreement to more effectively market Australia to Emirates’ extensive global customer base, in particular throughout Europe where the airline is so well established.”

The deal is the largest investment Emirates has ever made with a global tourism body, according to senior vice president of public, international, industry and environmental affairs at the airline, Andrew Parker. “Emirates has carried more than 16 million passengers to and from Australia since 1996 and today we enable travellers from more than 30 European locations to travel to Australia via one stop in Dubai, offering passengers from all corners of the continent the chance to enjoy the many and varied attractions down under,” Parker says.

It’s understood the deal will not abate TA’s investment in Asia. McEvoy says the markets covered by the arrangement “align strongly with Tourism Australia’s ‘balanced portfolio’ approach”. The plans are another step in the board’s ‘Tourism 2020’ efforts aimed at doubling annual overnight visitor expenditure to up to $140 billion by the end of the decade.

The partnership follows the news of Emirates’ 10-year alliance with Qantas, which will see Qantas shift its hub for European flights from Singapore to Dubai and enter “an extensive commercial relationship” with its rival.

Walmart pulls back from emerging markets to catch breath

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US retail behemoth, Walmart, has scaled back its expansion into emerging markets to “catch its breath” after having rushed in too fast.

Senior executives at the retail firm have expressed a need to slow down in China, Brazil and Mexico to allow existing stores in these countries to focus on best practice execution, Warc reports.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Charles Holley, Walmart’s chief financial officer, argued the pace of growth in Brazil and China in particular had simply been too rapid. “Clearly we’d gotten ahead of ourselves,” he said.

“We still feel very positive about those two countries… It’s all about us right now,” he added. “[We want to] let them catch their breath.”

As such, the organisation reduced its estimates of the new store square footage it would require this year by around 30%, broadly equivalent to the space taken up by 120 of its supercentres in the US, according to Warc.

Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart International, expanded on the decision, revealing that the retailer’s eagerness to expand in China had led to less than optimal performance. Implementing its ‘Every day low prices’ (EDLP) strategy was more important than opening more branches in markets such as Brazil and Mexico, McMillon said.

“We decided to slow down our new store growth in Brazil to ensure we are building a solid foundation to grow comp sales and to have EDLP in place.

“In China, as with the rest of our markets, our customers want stores that are easy to shop, easy to get into and out of and are convenient for their lives.

“In the past, we may have been too flexible and accepted stores that were located on too many levels or had difficult configurations. We now will open fewer stores this year than our original plan with only about half the new store square footage than we had forecast.”

“Our goal is to achieve profitability and returns that are more balanced and to do that, we must improve operational and sales productivity in some of our emerging markets,” added Mike Duke, the firm’s CEO.

Lost in translation: Few multinationals rename well for Chinese market

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Less than one in four multinationals have rebranded well for their entry into the Chinese market, a study has found.

When entering China, a brand’s name should be changed so that the sound and the meaning of the name relate to the original, the research conducted by a group of academics argues. Only 22% of businesses entering the market adopted this full renaming approach to optimise the appeal of their brand.

Companies moving across borders often take not only ineffective names into the new market, but sometimes stick with inappropriate or damaging ones. Distributors in Chile asked Mazda to rename its Laputa minivan because ‘puta’ means ‘prostitute’ in Spanish, according to Harvard Business Review. Clairol also fell foul of language when launching its Mist Stick curling iron in Germany only to learn that in German ‘mist’ is slang for ‘manure’.

A collaborative effort by Marc Fetscherin and Ilan Alon from Rollins College, Romie Littrell from the Auckland University of Technology and Allan Chan from Hong Kong Baptist University, the study assessed the strategies of 100 large foreign firms that had entered the Chinese markets.

“Ideally the Chinese name would have both phonetic and semantic associations,” they said. “Though the hardest to pull off, this two way match gives a global product in China the best chance of success”.

Nike was one brand among the 22% to adopt the approach, renaming to ‘Nai Ke’, characters that mean ‘Endurance Conquer’. Coca-Cola is also represented as ‘Ke Kou Ke Le’, or ‘Can be tasty, Can be happy’.

One in four (24%), adopted a ‘meaning adaption’ approach, using a name that had a good semantic fit but did not sound anything like the original. General Motors and General Electric have both employed this approach, giving them an image and identity that doesn’t vary with the dialect.

Most (43%) implemented a ‘sound adoption’ approach by taking a name phonetically similar but semantically unrelated to the original. Sony refers to itself as ‘Suo Ni’, which in Chinese equates to ‘exploring nun or priest’, while Audi is known as ‘Ao Di’, or ‘profound enlighten’.

“This can work for brands that rely on advertising or word of mouth, and it highlights global identity,” the study argued. “But names lacking any real meaning are hard to process”.

A further 11% of companies made no change, instead electing to adopt a name with no resemblance or the original sound or meaning. For instance, Pizza Hut is written in characters that make the sound ‘Bi Sheng He’ and mean ‘guarantee win guests’, while Heineken is known as ‘Xi Li’, or ‘happy power’.

Lost in translation: Few multinationals rename well for Chinese market

Challenges of Chinese banking: the complexity of Chinese loyalty

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Image credit: Iain Brew.

About the authors: Dr Chris Baumann is a senior lecturer in business at Macquarie University in Sydney and a visiting professor at Seoul National University. His research is on customer loyalty, competitiveness and East Asia (China and Korea). Dr Hamin is a lecturer in business at Macquarie University. Dr Rosalie L Tung is a chaired professor of international business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

 

Chinese consumers are an important target market for banks, both in China itself and also overseas. A recent academic study tested for levels of business assigned to banks by Chinese bank customers. The investigation of Chinese banking behaviour found that ethnic Chinese have overall adapted their customer loyalty to local environments in Australia and Canada.

However, overseas Chinese’s savings held with their main bank are substantially higher than for local Caucasians. Based on the study’s survey of 645 Caucasians and Chinese in Australia, Canada and China, overseas Chinese on average assign 88% of their assets to their main bank compared to Caucasians who only allocate roughly 73% to their main bank. In contrast, the Chinese in China invest 70% of their savings with their main bank.

High loyalty levels of the ethnic Chinese for savings products require retention strategies by banks to sustain customer satisfaction with resulting customer loyalty of the ethnic Chinese. Marketing campaigns should offer products and services customised for the ethnic Chinese given that this lucrative segment is increasingly targeted by both local Western banks but also financial institutions from Asia and China itself.

The joint Australian/Canadian study also investigated borrowing behaviour and found that the Chinese have much lower loyalty levels than the Caucasians. When financial need arises, the Chinese draw on their own savings: with savings between 30-40% of their annual income, the Chinese have one of the highest savings rates in the world.

The ethnic Chinese are an attractive segment with enormous potential for growth, but their low loyalty levels for borrowing products require more aggressive marketing campaigns. Overseas Chinese are entrepreneurial and engage in real estate investments, making them profitable segments for new and increased loans and lines of credit. The challenge for banks is that this segment is highly competitive and shops around for the best deal, putting pressure on Western and Asian banks alike.

Western banks need to better understand Chinese consumers where the lowest loyalty levels were found in China itself. The Chinese in China only borrow 19% from their bank since Western and local banks are in direct competition to microfinance pools hui (the Chinese term for ‘club’). Huis are the cornerstone of China’s relationship-based informal Rotating Credit Associations where family and friends self-manage their finances. Therefore, banking products and services in China need to be positioned and promoted more competitively in order to deviate borrowing business from family and friends to the formal banking industry.

Details of the two studies referred to can be found here and here.

Read next: Dr Baumann’s previous article for Marketing magazine ‘Connecting with the new Chinese consumer’.

 

Q&A with Nick Baker – the strategy behind ‘There’s nothing like Australia’

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On launch day of phase two for ‘There’s nothing like Australia’, Marketing sat down to talk with executive general manager of marketing at Tourism Australia, Nick Baker, about the strategy behind the campaign.

Marketing: The new campaign marks the second phase of ‘There’s nothing like Australia’. Why have you chosen to stick with the same theme from the last campaign?

Nick Baker: When we first launched ‘There’s nothing like Australia’, it was creating a platform, if you like, and it was creating a rational argument why you believe there is nothing like Australia, our strategy for the future. Having said that, the next job was to prove it, so this is our proving, this is taking some of the most amazing experiences in really incredible places and bringing them to life, and set them against something in a very emotional way, because that’s what really sells.

This is the first time that a major tourism campaign has been launched overseas. Why was the decision made to do that?

It actually seems very rational when you think about it, the fact that most of the money that we’re spending on this, 90% of the money we’re spending on the campaign will be used overseas, and the biggest market that we’re going to be using for this year is going to be China. So therefore we wanted to launch it in China, although we’re launching in the UK and the US as well at the same time.

Why was China chosen? The opportunities in the East are well documented, but just how big is the opportunity in China for Australian tourism?

China experienced over 20% growth last year, so it’s the biggest growing of all of our markets. It’s becoming our biggest market by expenditure, and has certainly got the biggest growth trajectory for the next five or six years. When you take all those things into consideration, it’s a very logical market for us to do that in. We still spend a lot of our time marketing obviously in Europe and the US because they’re primary markets for us, but this is our chance to give China a red hot go. There is a lot of competitive activity in China now, everyone is competing for it. The number of direct flights are rising dramatically, so access is so much easier for people to get here. So when you combine access, spend, growth, actual and projected, it’s logical. And we really wanted to give it a really good go over there to show it, and we know that the Chinese consumer is very well disposed towards Australia; they think it’s a great place to come. It’s an antidote for a lot of the things over there, if you look at the comparison between living in Shanghai and living here. Just the stunning visuals work for them. We also found that when we launched the first iteration of ‘nothing like Australia’, I think it was about 91% of people who saw the ad went and did something about it… went and actually looked further into an Australian holiday, which is massive. So it showed us that we were hitting the market, and the market we were hitting were really interested and compelled by our story, if you like. The other element I probably should mention that I didn’t mention is Facebook, and social. You may have seen that we just hit three million, of which almost one million are from Australia and two million are from around the world. We’re great believers – our job at Tourism Australia is effectively to be storytellers, and as with all things storytellers, it’s often best to have other people tell your stories rather than yourselves. We have these fans out there that are great advocates for the country. They’re telling our story for us. We are launching today, in a couple of hours, our campaign on Facebook, and then we’ll back it up with a 24 hour roadblock tonight on Facebook, so Australians that are on Facebook will be served up our full ad tonight, our full three-minute version. We use those to push out the whole network effect that Facebook brings. There is a great sense of social advocacy that surrounds it because the underlying principle is that the world travels to experience difference, so therefore be different, differentiate yourself and know kind of what it is you’re going after. And the second is word of mouth is the most crucial part of any kind of marketing. Through Facebook and through Weibo Sina, and RenRen and others we’re a part of, we can amplify that message and create stories told by other people about this country.

One thing I noticed in the campaign is that there seemed to be a few luxury hooks in there; there were a couple of private boat cruises, there was one scene in a high rise that was full glass with a fantastic view, and there was a black tie function. Is that something that’s been chosen specifically for targeting the Chinese market?

Not specifically to target the Chinese market.

Is it important to the Chinese market though?

It is. But it’s not specifically for China. We’re doing that for the whole world. And the reason why we’re doing that is the world is in a constant state of change; we’ve got the occupying movements, the Arab Springs, the global meltdown, and why we’ve done that is we’ve been very much more targeted. The last year we spent a lot more time targeting who is coming to Australia and who are our target audience, and obviously they’re an affluent group because of the costs of coming down here; the currency and everything else coming to Australia is not a cheap holiday. What we’re doing is the same principle, I guess, that any fashion brand does or automotive brand, we’re pitching our best first to create a halo for the rest of the country. And in China, they go after a lot of luxury brands; there’s a great sense of status and symbolism that’s attached to it. So not just for them, but for everybody, we unashamedly pitched some of the upscale product that we’ve got in Australia. But what differentiates Australia from most of the other places – and we’re doing that; South Africa and New Zealand have been doing that with their lodges for a long time. What differentiates that is that nearly all the experiences that we’ve got in there that push upscale, can be done whether you’re spending $1000 a night or $20 a night. You mentioned the El Questro, whatever that title was. You can spend $1000 there, or you can go to the Emma Gorge camp site next to it and spend $20 a night, and I’ve done that. But you can still have all the experiences that are out there. So the great thing about Australia is that it offers these unique experiences, but at the same time, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on a beer bucket budget or a champagne budget.

In terms of fostering dispersal, where you’re trying to ensure that there is a share of the result from the campaign across all the different destinations, how does this campaign approach that?

What this campaign does is it moves away from just the normal icons, if you like. This is not just about the reef, the rock and the Opera House, and what we do is we show a greater diversity and a greater depth to the country than I think has ever been shown before. Going into places like the Kimberleys, going down into Tasmania, going into Kangaroo Island, these are dispersed areas, if you like, but these are the things that really differentiate Australia against the rest of the world. And when you see those images, they couldn’t be anywhere else in the world; they really strongly show why there is nothing like Australia. It’s part of showing the depth of the country, part of getting greater dispersal and part of just showing what is best in this country.

One of the criticisms that international national campaigns have had in the past is that they relied on the old stereotypes of both the Australian ocka, but also the icons. Has there has been a purposeful move away from that this time?

Yes, what there has been is there has been a definite approach to show the best of Australia, wherever it exists. So unashamedly, we’re still going to put the Opera House in because you’d be crazy not to; it’s an icon of this country. It is part of what makes this country unique, and in fact, as soon as you see it on the screen, it’s shorthand for Australia, and we all need, as marketers, to have that cut through. But at the same time, we’re showing some other incredible parts of this country that people don’t know about. And I think that one of the things is not just parts of the country but also experiences that you can have in the country, because really it’s about experiences, which is why everything in there is about an experience, not just here is a beautiful landscape, here is another beautiful landscape, here is another beautiful landscape; it’s about experiences. So we’re trying to get the people to see it, I guess, to imagine themselves, as it were, in that experience. And that is a different approach than we’ve taken before. But the remit was prove the line, prove why there’s nothing like Australia. That’s the challenge that I set myself, and that’s what hopefully we’ve done.

When you were targeting the different markets, are there nuanced versions of the TVC or slightly different things that you do?

Yeah, very good question. And that’s one of the key things because everyone says how can you make one campaign that’s going to fit everybody in the world? Well, the key inside this is that this has been built modularly, so I can take out segments that are more about cities, I can take beaches, I can take out segments that are just about a state, if a state wants to partner it. We have been extraordinarily careful in making sure that this could be broken down into different parts and reassembled either for a market, a customer type or for a partner, so they could build it. And that’s the great thing about the song and the way that we’ve built it; it’s lots of little stories, so you can take individual stories to make it.

This version that’s being launched today – is that the one that will be launched in the four locations that you’ve mentioned?

Yes, it will be. It is the same, as it exists now. Once you start getting down to the cut down versions, the 30 seconds and 15 seconds and 20 seconds, those kind of ones, that’s when it’s more likely to be broken up. So we’ll be partnering – last time we partnered with I think about 180 partners, when we launched this campaign two years ago, which we believe is a mark for success. And lots of times, they will take, for instance, 20 seconds of this footage, add their own 10 seconds for their airline on the end of it. That’s when we’ll do a lot more of the cut down versions of it. But an interesting point is when you do all the research around the world, and we do in-depth research and analysis on our customers, pretty much 80% of the things that inspire people, differentiate the countries, motivate people to make a booking, are the same regardless of the world over. People come here for our nature, they come here for the adventure, and they come here for this great freshness and lifestyle that Australia has. That’s right up there. It’s the other things that differentiate it further down, for instance, the German market really loves big sweeping landscapes and more drama, the Chinese market will like some more city and shopping experiences, those kinds of things. So that’s why we built it so that it can be tailored. But the majority of what we show unites everybody.

And given that there is a large focus on China, are there any cultural sensitivities that you’ve taken into account for that market in particular?

There is cultural sensitivities taken for all markets. Obviously Asia has some of those, Muslim countries have some of those. It’s everything from clothing through to alcohol, those kinds of things, always have to be taken into consideration when you’re doing this. The choice of talent, the experiences you portray people doing. You have to be very careful in a global campaign, and that doesn’t matter whether it’s China or whether it’s Arab states or whether it’s even America or the UK. There are certain things that you’ve got to do to bring the campaign to life, and it means that you have to be careful of all those nuances. So we work very closely with OMD on identifying these.

Can you give some examples of some of those that were selected for the Chinese market?

Again, some of those things are everything from showing bikinis, which a lot of Muslim and Asian markets just wouldn’t allow. The question of drinking alcohol is often a big one for certain markets. Those two are probably two classic examples, if you like. But also the China market, I guess, one other one that’s specific for them is, for them, it’s much better if they see activity. The Germans might like a big picture of sweeping open desert landscape, but for a lot of the Chinese market, they’ll go and say, “Crikey, that’s a bit daunting. How do I do it, all that open space?” Which is quite natural when you consider that they’re so highly urbanised. That’s why putting people in and having those experiences in them, which is what we wanted to do anyway, fits.

So there is a bit of comfort factor there for the Chinese market?

Yes, for the Chinese market – to be quite honest, for a lot of markets, because there’s not many markets – most people like to see people doing things, and certainly we want to show how it can be done, yes.

Are there any partners for this campaign?

A large partner domestically is going to be with Qantas, and we’re going to be partnering with loads – we’ve got a partnership with China Sun up in China, but there will be loads of partners all over the world that we’re doing this with.

Will Qantas be participating on an international level?

Yes, they will be participating in lots of different markets, but they are actually at launch today. And the reason why I’m saying that is that our launch in some of our other markets around the world takes place at different times.

How important is the TVC or video ad these days in the scheme of the campaign?

The TVC or the film, whatever you want to call it, is still vital, not because it plays out on TV necessarily, but because of the role that it plays out across all of your platforms and all of the mediums that you use, because that will probably be seen more online than it will be seen on the television, but it will be seen in the cinema, it will be seen in integrated outdoor and it will be seen digitally. But ultimately, there is always a manifestation of a brand that comes to life; there is always a spark of creativity, a spark of something that has to show the brand, and that’s the job this still has, which is still just as important as it ever was, and it just plays out differently now than it used to do. What is just as important is you can’t just sit there and go, “Here’s our TVC, that’s it. Fine, we’ll walk away now.” It’s how you bring that to life because the TVC, if you just show a TVC, you’ll get excited by it; there’s a long way of getting excited to actually buying and, these days, the proliferation of people trying to get in to stop you from doing what you hope it’s going to be, to do a lot of other things, is greater and greater. The media proliferation, fragmentation, all that stuff that we know about. So what we’re trying to use is social and digital to keep people on that story. And the great thing we know about with tablets is once you get somebody to actually interact with your brand, you leap frog ads on awareness, and on a connection front, because you really started a tangible conversation. Getting fans to interact with your brands is the most important thing today, whether it be on Facebook and liking it, or whether it be on a tablet and downloading it, or whether it be on aus.com or a mobile site. It’s all part of this multimedia storytelling, and the best way of storytelling is to have it two-way.

User-generated content is something that I think you used in the last phase of the campaign, and something that you use ongoing in social media. Does it form any of the key parts of this campaign?

It’s not included in the TVC, although references to all the places that excite people – and we got great learnings from the 60,000 stories that we had last time – shaped some of our direction. User-generated stuff will form because it will come through what we’re doing on Facebook. In other words, in Facebook, four weeks ago, we started seeding the idea of some of the things that were best of, and people just like telling their stories. So absolutely user generated through social media forms a big plank because the reason why we’re going out to all these Facebook people and we’re using Facebook at the centre of this is to get people talking about our brand, and that’s at the hub.

How is user-generated content received when it makes up the main part of the campaign?

When we launched ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ the first time and we got 30,000 people to tell us their stories of why there is nothing like Australia. It was really well received; it gave us a great footprint and it gave us a great tick to saying everyone believed in the strategy and everyone could easily show if it was truthful; in other words, nobody said that we went and represented the country untruthfully. It was very truthful. We then went out a second time last year and we asked again for ‘Nothing like’ and we got 40,000 people commented in 12 days. So the desire for people to tell stories about this country and tell stories about their holiday experiences, is absolutely alive and kicking, and we find that very powerful. Because you look at some of those stories, and if you ask any place, and you want to know how people think about a place, just log onto our There’s nothing like Australia, go onto that map, type in a location and you can see exactly what people think of that place, it’s real life. And now we’ve embedded that with TripAdvisor, with Facebook content. It really becomes a platform that people can interact with and get as much user-defined content as possible, if that’s the way that they went. So we are linking up all of these elements at the moment.

This campaign seems to tick a lot of boxes. Some of the criticisms that I’ve seen in the past, whether using the stereotypes or not showing anything new about Australia, whether it’s been more tailored towards Western audiences or Eastern audiences, it seems to cover off a lot of different angles this time.

Two years ago, it’s been a very interesting journey. When we had ‘Where the Bloody Hell Are You?’ stuff, it was like a punctuation mark for us, it was a stop. We used the Baz Luhrmann one to use that to tag on to Australia, the movie, quite naturally; it was something that had a big ball of energy that we sat behind, whilst we worked out what the next iteration was, what the future was. When you have something with that amount of power and voice out there, not necessarily all positive, to break away from it, it takes a bit of time to get the right thing. So we launched, ‘There’s nothing like’ two years ago as a start for that side of this journey, and this year was really about the incorporated knowledge that we gained over the last three or four years about what to do, what not to do, where the world is going, about working with our partners, all those learnings, and really trying to be on top in digital and social environments, because that’s where we really put a thrust, and we are against other countries in the world above them, to do something right this time. So it’s given us those learnings to do it.

And your greatest critics are always going to be at home, aren’t they?

Yes, which is why it’s very audacious to launch this campaign domestically, which we haven’t done before, but I really feel and hopefully you saw there, there was stuff that people in Australia don’t know about, that is quite emotionally inspiring, and certainly the research we did prior to launch of this showed that when people saw that, there was a sense of pride in their country and believability about their country. And also, a lot of people, when they came out of it, said, “I need to find out more about my own country.” So the research really gave us some fairly strong indications that we were on target.

 

$250M ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ relaunch pitches premium product

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The next phase of Tourism Australia’s (TA) global tourism campaign, There’s nothing like Australia, has launched, pitching Australia’s premium tourism experiences to the world.

The campaign moves away from the icons, although still features the Opera House and Uluru, and “unashamedly pitches some of the upscale product” offered in Australia, according to TA’s executive general manager, marketing, Nick Baker.

Premium experiences have been chosen as the focus of the campaign in the hope it will create a “halo effect” for Australian tourism more broadly. Launching the new broadcast, print and online material in Shanghai, managing director of TA, Andrew McEvoy, said leading with the best is a strong and proven marketing principle, but added that Australia’s less premium offerings would not be overlooked by the campaign.

“By leading with Australia’s best the campaign will create a positive halo effect for Australian tourism more broadly, particularly through the digital elements which will allow us to go deeper and showcase a broader range of experiences to cater for all travellers and different budgets,” McEvoy says.

“This new campaign creative – particularly the locations and how they have been shot – clearly demonstrate Australia’s distinctive and high quality tourism products and experiences that are amongst the world’s finest.”

It’s hoped that adopting a ‘world’s best in Australia’ approach will appeal to traditional western audiences but also help target Asia, where the focus of the campaign has turned.

TA will spend approximately AU$180 million over the next three years rolling out the evolving campaign in its key international markets and in Australia. It expects to achieve a total investment of AU$250 million by securing up to AU$70 million in additional funding from industry partners to support joint marketing activities. The campaign will start in China, the UK and USA and also run in Australia, with A$5 million being spent on a domestic marketing push to encourage more Australians to holiday in their own ‘backyard’.

In addition to a new broadcast ad and print executions the campaign boasts a strong digital and social media focus, including a new, interactive tablet app and hub on www.australia.com, to take customers further into the stories played out in the ad and provide more information on the locations.

While the campaign features many iconic attractions, including the Bungle Bungles in The Kimberley, Sydney’s harbour, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef, much of the ad is dedicated to footage of landscapes rather than landmarks.

“This campaign is not just about the reef, the rock and Opera House,” Baker told Marketing. “We show a greater diversity and greater depth to the country than has ever been shown before, going into places like The Kimberley, Tasmania, Kangaroo Island… these are dispersed areas.”

The Shanghai launch marks the first time a major global tourism has been launched overseas with China chosen as Australia’s fastest growing and most valuable overseas tourism market. “The primary purpose of this and indeed all our global marketing is to drive international visitation and China now represents both our fastest growing and most valuable international inbound tourism market,” McEvoy adds. China is expected to deliver around 900,000 annual visitors worth up to A$9 billion a year for Australia by decade’s end.

Tourism Aus claims $61m budget windfall

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Tourism Australia has been handed an unexpected $61 million marketing boost to target Asian tourists.

The ‘Asian Marketing Fund’, set aside in last week’s Federal Budget in recognition of the growth expected to come from Asia’s emerging middle class, follows the announced relaunch of ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ in China, as the national tourism body sets its sights increasingly on the East.

The boost will be given out over four years: $8.5 million in the first year (2012-2013), followed by $14 million the following year, then $17.5 million, and $21 million in the 2017 financial year.

Commenting on the boost, Tourism Australia chairman Geoff Dixon says, “Tourism Australia continues to approach its international marketing activity with a balanced portfolio approach, where traditional markets such as the United Kingdom and USA remain important, but nobody can deny that the opportunities that lie before us are in this Asian Century.

“With this new dedicated fund, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to further drive both existing campaign activity and new marketing efforts across our fastest growing and most valuable inbound visitor markets.”

While a decision is yet to be made on how to money will be spent, TA is expected to use it with its current agencies DDB and OMD.

 

‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign takes aim at China

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The national tourism body’s ‘There’s Nothing Like Australia’ campaign will be reinvented for a fresh international release across 27 countries and 17 languages, with China its first target.

The revamped campaign material, which will include a new broadcast ad, will be first shown in China in early June instead of at a traditional home soil launch, indicating just how valued the Chinese market is.

With current overnight spend from China up 15% to $3.8 billion per year, managing director of Tourism Australia, Andrew McEvoy, says China was the “logical place” to launch the new campaign.

“Tourism Australia is focused on marketing Australia’s unique tourism attributes where the greatest tourism growth opportunities exist and China is a big part of that growth,” McEvoy says. “We are confident that the evolution of the campaign will continue to hit the mark in China and encourage strong visitation and spending.”

The campaign relaunch comes as Tourism Australia looks to double overnight visitor expenditure from $70 billion to $140 billion by 2020, $9 billion of which is expected to come from the Chinese market.

McEvoy adds that the domestic market and traditional overseas markets of the UK, US and New Zealand would not be ignored in the campaign refresh. However, McEvoy hinted at a reduced spend in these markets, conceding the latest push in China was part of realignment of resources towards the biggest potential growth markets.

Australians will also be able to see the new ad on TV, cinema and online at the same time the material is unveiled in the campaigns Shanghai PR launch.

 

 

Apple’s new Mac operating system aggressively pursues Chinese market

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Apple has signalled a desire to encourage the exploding number of Chinese Mac users by including some significant China-specific features in its upcoming desktop operating system dubbed ‘Mountain Lion’, news of which broke late last week with an official announcement on Thursday (US time).

Along with a number of features that will continue to narrow the gap between Apple’s desktop/laptop operating system (OS X) and that for its mobile devices (iOS) comes system-wide, built-in support for popular Chinese email services QQ, 163 and 126, social networks Sina weibo, Youku and Tudou, and search engine Baidu, the country’s top-ranking website and fifth globally.

Apple’s Mountain Lion preview page lists 11 highlights of the upcoming operating system, the last of which is ‘All new features for China’. From Thursday’s release:

“Mountain Lion also has features specifically designed to support Chinese users, including significant enhancements to the Chinese input method and the option to select Baidu search in Safari. Mountain Lion makes it easy to set up Contacts, Mail and Calendar with top email service providers QQ, 126 and 163. Chinese users can also upload video via Share Sheets directly to leading video websites Youku and Tudou, and system-wide support for Sina weibo makes microblogging easy.”

Apple CEO, Tim Cook, says that even with the success of the company’s mobile devices outshining that of the Mac in terms of sales, it is still ‘incredibly important’, especially in markets such as China, where Mac sales doubled last year: ”They love the iPhone and so they then search out and look for the Mac,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal, in an apparent acknowledgement of what analysts have dubbed the ‘halo effect’, where the popularity of the iPhone, iPad and iPod attracts new users to Apple’s desktop PCs.

On a related note, the announcement of Mountain Lion came as a surprise to many in the tech press as Apple, usually the subject of countless rumours around upcoming product launches (type ‘iPad 3′ into any web search), managed to keep this announcement quiet up until its official release on Thursday.