Consumer Insights
The most important insight about your audience is how to connect with them in a meaningful way. This begins before they even start planning their trip or experience. It is about how you reach, inspire, engage and connect with them along the customer journey.
In today’s world, the customer journey is no longer linear. Sure, it’s still follows the premise of dream, plan, book, visit and share. However, the way to connect and build awareness and interest in your experience or destination follows multiple pathways. The critical point is understanding the basics; know who your target market is, how to reach them and provide them with content that not only resonates with them but that is shareable.
There are so many channels for marketing and communication that its increasingly more difficult to be recognised. This means you need to be remarkable. Yet, in a throwback to yester-year, word of mouth is still the most fundamentally important marketing tool. Word of mouth is based on recommendations, which only happen if people have a quality experience when they visit or if they have pride in the destination or local experience offering. Local communities can be engaged to help spread the word while loyal and repeat customers influence the decisions of their peer group.
The Concept of Imagined Reality
We said earlier that telling our story in a remarkable way is the single most important priority to focus on. Having developed some strategic guidelines around how we would recommend the initiative is presented, the competitive positioning and the kind of language we would like to use, the next critical area is developing a strategy to create remarkable content. Again, the key word is remarkable. There is no shortage of content in the world. Unfortunately, most of it is ordinary and that’s why most of it is ignored.
We believe that remarkable content must tell a story. And that story, to borrow a concept from Dr Yuval Harrari, an Israeli historian, must create an Imagined Reality for the listener or the viewer.
We live in a world of dual reality. On the one hand there is the physical reality of rivers, trees and kangaroos, or perhaps more relevant to this project, mountains, fossils and gems. On the other hand, there is Imagined Reality.
Aboriginal dreaming stories are an example of Imagined Reality. So is the Canowindra SILOS project. The common ingredient is that both have the ability to capture the imagination.
The content we create must also capture the imagination of our audience. If it doesn’t achieve this, we will have failed.
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We’ve provided some examples of what good content looks like when its created for a specific target audience with a clear purpose. See our section on Creating Remarkable Content.
The Creative Concepts developed for this project help to bring to life the opportunity for capturing the imagination of our audience.
Environmental sustainability and social responsibility
The value of the environment and environmental sustainability is highly prevalent, especially right now in Country and Outback NSW, which is confronting the pressures of a significant drought. This is impacting on the viability and vibrancy of local communities across the region.
These realities are matched by a clear and growing desire of travellers to seek out destinations and experiences that adopt environmentally and socially responsible practices. It is no-longer a so-called niche market; it is far more pervasive and influential on decisions about where to visit and what to do. It appeals to broader audiences across demographic groups, albeit in different ways.
There is an opportunity for Country and Outback NSW to adopt the Wonder of Gondwana concept and leverage the desire of travellers to support local communities (for example, the Buy from the Bush campaign) and their preference for more environmentally-sustainable experiences (for example, lessening the impact of the drought through minimising water use).