We wait, almost, with abated breath to see what the Ministry Of Tourism’s new ad agency Fallon Worldwide, will come up with to sell The Bahamas as a first class tourist destination. Our near sense of anxiety comes from the fact that, not since the days of Ferelli and Tronkone – when the slogan, “IT IS BETTER IN THE Bahamas” became, not only popular, but famous – have there been any really new or stimulating ideas put into our advertising… With all due respect to the “It Just keeps Getting Better” tag line.
Back in the late 1960’s – late ’70’s, brochures, banners and posters ruled supreme as marketing and merchandising tools of the trade and two young artists, making their way in advertising; Richard Ferrelli (creative writer) and Reggie Trunkone (graphic illustrator), did an extremely fine job of creating collaterals, which gave The Bahamas a face-lift and grooming, so outstanding, it made the travel industry – traveler and travel agent alike – take a second and a third look at us. In some cases, the look turned to sheer lust.
That was the period of the late 60s ﾖ early 70s, when emphasis were placed heavily on what was different about the product. In the case of The Bahamas, the creative people at McKann-Erickson worked around the things which made us, not only different, but also what made a curious traveler see us as quaint.
We often have a good chuckle, on the memory of being called in to a planning meeting, one day, while working as a traffic coordinator at Sales Communication Inc. (SCI), a McKann component, and being asked to tell all I knew about the “Pot Cake”. “Pot Cake? I responded… But that’s a dog!
“Yes, we know it’s a dog, but more importantly, Dave, it’s a Bahamian dog and we’re thinking about doing a piece (brochure) on them,” said Richie.
We learned later that Richard Ferrelli, on one of his trips to Nassau had encountered and made friends with a couple of potcakes, just outside the Dirty Dicks nightclub, but later on his way to his hotel, the then Sheraton British Colonial, had a separate encounter with what one of the potcakes may have eaten for lunch.
Not a very nice experience, even for a fella on a business, but it got the creative director and his team thinking of how to soften the impact of such an experience a honeymoon couple or a retired couple visiting Nassau, might have and created and produced a little brochure, deigned and written to leave a visitor coming into contact with a Potcake, a sense of endearment rather than endangerment. A feeling of friendship, rather than fear.
Some 50,000 copies of the brochure were printed and left at travel agencies, which gave them out as part of a client’s ticket/itinerary packet. A portion of the 50,000 copies was also given out at Bahamas Tourist Offices (BTO).
Who knows if the little brochure and the information it contained therein had anything to do with the fact that there was a period ﾖ not very long after the pocket piece had been handed out, when lots of visitors to Nassau were seen socialising with stray dogs, all along Bay Street and on our beaches. Some even wanted to take them home!
But we really told the story to make the point of how; at one time, how deeply the product was looked at, in the planning and strategising, for the selling job.
Sometimes referred to as “God’s Little Acre”, The Bahamas have many characteristics indigenous to the land and it’s people, which should be made integral to any presentation we make to the world, but which we have so allowed to deteriorate, unless Fallon comes up with an extraordinary new approach to marketing, an approach taken from past and present economic and social prospective, we may end up with a lot of exposure in the travel market but I wouldn’t place any serious bets on too many tourist, spending money.
Two experiences we’ve had in recent weeks suggest that our product (not so much the physical plant, as indeed, some of its components) needs a major overhaul.
We were astonished, while attending a conference at a popular, modernised Nassau property, to see an unsightly plastic bottle of water on the head table, where a glass pitcher should have been. More recently, we were attending a $50.dollar-a-plate function in the ballroom of a Cable Beach property; and where there used to be starched white shirts and shell coats, there were [not so white, short sleeve] shirts opened at the neck, exposing a not-so-clean T-Shirt; where there used to be neatly pressed black trousers, into which shirts were properly tucked, there were black jeans, rolled-up and dragging at the heels, and shirts not tucked into them; where there used to be well shined black leather shoes, there were difficult-to-clean sneakers or some type of synthetic footwear.
Even more importantly… Perhaps more devastating was the poor manners displayed. Referring to guests as “You guys”, where there should have been, Sir or madam.
Old fashioned you say? That may very well be the case, but it’s the kind of thing that can be branded and sold at a premium. It’s the kind of thing, which Hill & Knowlton and Sir Stafford Sands used to put us on the map of tourist destinations and took us from a three-month to a 12 month-tourist season. It was also, at the heart of their slogan: “FOREIGN AND NEARBY”.
Simple things? Yes, but simplicity is known to sell extremely well … Particularly in a market, made up of a wide cross-section of persons with a wide variety of needs.
Need, in many cases is the mother of want and advertising is the tool used to for connecting the need/want factor in a persons life with a product or service which will, at least promise to supply that need, and or want.
Perhaps the most sought after need or want of the leisure traveler is to have a unique experience, a temporary change of lifestyle that is not drastically, but pleasantly different from what he is used to and for most North Americans, The Bahamas has always had that special appeal and a just a few days stay in our country has been inexpensive and relatively easy to undertake. However, over the past 10 or 15 years, we’ve been turning our product into something that is unnatural and visitor here often find a poor imitation of what the came here to get away from.
The question now then is, how do we turn this around and find our way back to our niche… Where do we go from her?
Hopefully, Fallon Worldwide has a strong public relations shop, as most agencies do, nowadays, because for our ads to be effective, they must be very strong. Unobtrusive but strong; using some forums and media forms which, over the last decade or two, have become unconventional, in tourism marketing.
Making The Bahamas attractive to the leisure traveler, first-timers and repeaters alike, will require telling the whole story, so that a new appeal is created, but just as important, to provide more options and alternatives to a wider cross sections of lifestyles. To our way of thinking, nobody will be able to so uniquely and authentically like the people of the Bahamas.
David A. Clarke is a practicing media consultant based in Nassau, and a regular contributer to The Nassau Guardian
