Hotel Room in Melbourne - Free of Charge!

Yes, you heard right.

You can stay for free at the
Lost & Found Hotel Room in the heart of Melbourne. That's what I call aggressive promotion and I like it!

According to PSFK "Tourism Victoria-run e-newsletter Lost and Found recently added a hotel room to their venture, offering lucky subscribers the chance to experience Melbourne’s cultural offerings free of charge. Decked out in products exclusively made in Victoria, the furnishings, gourmet offerings, music, fashions and bath products all “tell a story about Melbourne as a city of creative people producing interesting things.”

Mumbai Traffic Awareness

Image via adoholik. Click to enlarge.

This is an example of an effective outdoor campaign. I know because I have driven to work on these very roads. Yes, the laws of billboard ads (short copy) does not work here 'coz as every Mumbaite will tell you, hell you can read a magazine cover to cover and maybe even a paperback given the long hours you spend stuck in traffic.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Banana Juice. Designed by: Naoto Fukasawa, Japan. Image via adoholik

 Pop-up Popcorn. Designed by: Packlab, Finland. Image via adoholik














How many times have I reached out and bought something just because it looked good on the outside? If you ask me, of all the P's in marketing, packaging rules when it comes to an impulse buy. Yeah, yeah...don't judge a book by its cover...but haven't we all been guilty of it at one time or another?

Branding a Seaport

On a recent trip to Portsmouth, I was stumped. I couldn't think of a fitting slogan for the city. It's a New England harbortown, favored by tourists and rather rich in history, art and culture.

Cities are branded by professionals with the help of logos and taglines which are then plastered on buses and brochures. Logos are a different ball game altogether, they need to be much more than visually attractive. They have to tell a story. Like the hidden arrow in Fed Ex. If you look closely, you’ll see an arrow that’s formed by the letters E and x. This arrow symbolizes speed and precision, two major selling points of the company.

What about cities then? On the heels of the FIFA World Cup 2010, Johannesburg in South Africa is being touted as the "golden city" and trying to rope in some serious business for its tourism industry.

New York City or "The Big Apple" is "The City that Never Sleeps", Las Vegas is "Sin City", Chicago is the "Windy City", Hershey is "The Sweetest Place on Earth" while "Cleveland Rocks!"

On a recent drive to Philadelphia, "The City of Brotherly Love", we saw this cute sign-off logo (shown on the right) on billboards and web portals.

Well, branding a city is not cheap on the pocket. According to a 2007 issue of Next American City, "Last year Baltimore paid San Francisco-based Landor Associates $500,000 to come up with “Get In On It”."

Plus it may take months to finalize. Everybody from politicians to tourism boards will have a say in it. You also have to consider the fact that people are usually very sensitive when it comes to their hometown. Get the brand message wrong and you ruffle a lot of feathers.

Here's the  history of city-branding as mentioned in the Next American City,
"Railroad companies may have been the earliest city marketers. As author Geoffrey Ward points out in his book Selling Places, Nebraska was sold to the public in 1881 as “a new brass key” that would “unlock vaults of wealth for the farmer and the stock raiser,” according to a railroad advertisement. The settling of the West by rail also led to cities competing to be the major hub of the heartland, a battle Chicago eventually won. These early efforts contained elements of the trend to follow: sell a place and its potential with a slick marketing image."

People are drawn to brands, as is evident by the record number of visitors in Las Vegas following their "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" campaign.

Some city slogans are official while some just caught on. Few of the unofficial ones have a negative spin on them but more often than not, the tone is upbeat and it's a device to improve tourism.

Coming back to the task at hand, Portsmouth needs a brand identity. Voted as one of America's prettiest towns by Forbes.com, there's a sketch of a ship on the harbor trail markers in Market Square. Well, that just says "seaport" to me. What about the rest of it? What defines the city? Dennis Robinson, history writer and editor of seacoastNH is trying to get the branding perfected and he was the one who set me thinking on cities and their brands.

I don't think it's easy to define the city and everything it stands for in one line but this pretty much sums it up for me Portsmouth: Wish You Were Here

It may not be the best slogan ever but it captures the essence of the place and that to me is the first step of branding.

Movies That Inspire Travel

Tourism boards advertise via various media, nowadays they even include social networking sites. But sometimes a movie can promote a place like nothing can.

10 movies which made me want to pack my bags:

1. A Good Year - Directed by Ridley Scott, this adaptation of Peter Mayle's best-selling novel is the story of a London-based trader Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) who goes to Provence in the south of France to check out the vineyard estate that he has suddenly inherited from his uncle. Need I say more?

2. Brokeback Mountain - Based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize winner E. Annie Proulx, this movie is about the intense relationship between Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger). But I will always remember the movie for its stunning cinematography. The film was filmed in Alberta, Canada and not Wyoming as the story suggests. I had a hard time not booking a flight to Alberta after the movie ended.


3. The Holiday - Writer-director Nancy Meyers shows glimpses of Los Angeles and London as the protagonists Amanda (Cameron Diaz) and Iris (Kate Winslet) swap homes, each unique to the characters they are playing. Always made me want to go for a rental instead of a hotel.

4. A Perfect Getaway - Hawaii never looked more enticing, not even on it's most expensive advertising campaign. Throw in Milla Jovovich, an edge-of-the-cliff hike, the blue-green ocean and a pair of shady characters - you have a winner. And yes, she does kick some serious ass but less than usual.


5. The Bridges of Madison County - The beauty of the American midwest, a National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid played by Clint Eastwood and Meryl Street as the not-so-happy Iowa housewife Francesca Johnson come together to present a moving story filmed against a powerful backdrop.

6. Into the Wild - These verses right at the beginning of the movie summed it up for me

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
- Lord Byron


7. Under the Tuscan Sun - If this movie does not make you book a flight to Italy, nothing much will. Newly-divorced American writer Frances (Diane Lane) quits her job and goes to Tuscany where she buys a house on a sudden impulse. What follows is a picture postcard tour of romancing Italy.

8. Up in the Air - One of my favorite movies, this one simply inspires you to keep moving. That's it. George Clooney and Vera Farmiga make a perfect pair - traveling for work never looked this sexy.


9. Nights in Rodanthe - The film's underlying sense of tragedy is overcome by the beauty of coastal North Carolina. Based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, Diane Lane and Richard Gere are as much as a treat for the eyes as the soothing landscape. The scene with the wild horses is something which reminds me of Assateague Island. 

10. Autumn in New York - Another tear-jerker starring Mr Gere, this movie has steam coming out from the street vents. Yes, very New York. Travel tip - Autumn is when North-eastern America is all ablaze with colors. A must-see for anyone who visits.

The movies are in no particular order and of course, there maybe many more that I have missed. Going by my list, one thing is for sure, you always don't have to go to Europe or some exotic island for that perfect holiday. As my trips have taught me, North America is much more than New York and San Francisco...and it's all out there waiting to be explored.

Show Me the Money

Recently I read this great post on Knowledge@Wharton. They ran an interview of Jagmohan Raju and John Zhang, the authors of 'Smart Pricing'. As the book suggests, pricing when done right can contribute to the success of a product like nothing can! Competition-based Pricing and Cost-Plus Pricing are the popular concepts used by FMCGs but there are many more strategies in the marketplace, both online and offline. This led me to think about content-pricing on the web. What is the best way?

Since most web-content is free, websites have to develop new and innovative ways to make money. Hulu.com, the second most viewed video site (Youtube being no.1) is struggling to make money. Few months back, Adage claimed "Hulu is a towering success, just not financially". Its network backers are not happy with all the free episodes being streamed. Although Hulu does have an innovative ad concept where they interact with the viewer. Right at the beginning of the program, viewers are given the option of choosing the ad they would like to see. Good tactics but still not good enough to make profit.

Google doesn't charge the user, it charges the advertiser. Same with webmails, twitter and social networking tools. Twitter figured out its revenue model just a week back.

The New York Times is free online. Why would you "buy" it from a news stand? The Times is not charging us for reading its online content. Instead, its charging the advertisers. You know, the annoying rollovers that pop up just when you are about to read something.

This is another challenge for free web-content providers. How to make money without spoiling the user-experience? The ads got to be unobtrusive but at the same time you want the target audience to see and click on the ad-link. Only then can the website make money. More clicks = more money. That's how most affiliate programs work on the net.

Some of the very premium or very niche news websites tease the reader. The Wall Street Journal for example. You go to their home page, you see some previews, you click on an article you want to read and then they hit you with the following - "To continue reading, subscribe now". You have to subscribe for full-site access.

It's easy for location-based social networks like foursquare and gowalla. They can easily latch on to the local businesses and keep their service free for users. Geo-targeting is an effective marketing tool when it comes to services like hotels, restaurants, concerts, games etc.

Content and concepts may differ but the goal remains unchanged. Making money. Twitter did it best. They played it slow. Only after they had established a dedicated user-base (close to a billion!), they began revamping their revenue model.

Slow and steady - that's the way to go!