Leadership
Destination Branding: You Only Control Part of It (Know The Parts You Don’t)
Tom Love (CEO, Love Communications) once said that a brand is ”the sum of all the touchpoints [it] has with the outside world.”
Considering the importance of working for brand consistency in all the ways your audience may come in contact with your brand, Adam Stoker summarized it well in his book Touchpoints when he said,
”By controlling all the touchpoints that a destination has the ability to control, the non-controllable touchpoints are more easily predicted and even managed.”
The first thing anyone responsible for a destination’s brand strategy needs to recognize is that a destination brand is unlike other brands in that you don’t control most of your touchpoints.
- Crime rate
- Weather
- Success of local sports team
- Reputation of most-prominent local
- New restaurant that opens or closes
- Bad breakup with an ex that lives in your destination making Billie Eilish sing ”you made me hate this city!”
But, it’s ok that you don’t control every touchpoint. No brand controls all of theirs, but destinations have a particularly challenging time trying to be effective enough with the touchpoints they do control to influence and/or make up for the ones they do not.
It all just re-emphasizes the importance of solid brand strategy; recognize what you can’t control and the effect it has on your brand so that the parts you CAN control are as strategic as possible.
Good luck to all!
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