Green Travel Not a Huge Concern for Asian Travelers

The third Asia Pacific Retail Travel Benchmarking Survey has revealed that travelers in Asia Pacific are less concerned about green tourism than they are about getting value-for-money.

This is a major marketing and environmental concern, since three of the largest outbound travel markets in the world are found in Asia: China, India and Japan.

While sustainability and carbon footprint reduction are headline news and concerns in the USA, Europe and Australia, it appears that these issues have yet to take hold in the Asia Pacifc region, at least with the region’s travelers.

Customers of travel agents in Australia topped this Travelport survey, with 31 percent of agencies reporting that customers were “very concerned” about sustainable tourism. Unfortunately for Mother Earth, this figure was more than double the Asia Pacific average!

In Singapore, both business and leisure travelers were the least concerned about reducing their carbon footprint according to the survey. A whopping 53% of travel agents in the Lion City said their customers were “not concerned at all’ about sustainable tourism, which is very surprising given the neat, clean and green environmental image that Singapore projects to the world.

For Singaporeans and Taiwanese business travelers, pursuit of profits outweighs environmental concerns, as business travelers from these two markets expressed the least interest in paying for sustainable travel, indicating that financial considerations were a priority for them.

“The lack of promotion to raise awareness of green travel may have contributed to these findings,” notes Brad Holman, president and managing director of Travelport GDS Asia Pacific, who adds “only 10 percent of travel agents proactively promote eco-friendly tourism on a regular basis.”

In my opinion, the results of this survey highlight a huge opportunity for travel agents in each market to develop eco-friendly travel programs that will appeal to those who put environmental concerns ahead of their own purses, pocket books, and corporate bottom lines.

Sponsored by Travelport, the 3rd Asia Pacific Retail Travel Benchmarking Survey was conducted with over 240 retail travel agents in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

What do you think? How can travel agents in Asia better promote sustainable tourism? Share your thoughts or comments.

The Marketing of Presidential Candidates

You’d think that with the tens of millions of dollars they have in hand to spend on their campaigns that American presidential candidates would be better marketers. Or at least have better marketing results.

But alas they seem to have fallen to the same disease of short-term sales (i.e. votes) and quarterly results (i.e. the next set of primary elections) as many corporate CEOs. This is why even when they win they often lose for their support is not deeply engrained and there is no voter (customer) loyalty post election.

This is also because none of the current crop of candidates has shown any ability to strongly position themselves (i.e. brand themselves). There’s not a solid brand amongst them. These candidates have no branding power (unlike JFK”, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan). As one astute observer wrote to me last week, the current crop of candidates can be described (branded in my words) as:

a) a mean-spirited woman

b) a slick-talking,” Oprah-backed inexperienced quasi-Muslim

c) an old man from Arizona with a trophy wife

d) a womanizing 9-11 opportunist from New York

And those are just the leading candidates!

Change seems to be a major topic in this election. Perhaps the true change that is needed is the way the few remaining candidates need to start employing strong branding and marketing strategies to create some brand power and customer loyalty building with the American voters.

Otherwise,someone in November is going to win the election and lose the electorate (ala the current incumbent in the White House).

Super Bowl Ads

One of the most anticipated advertising events each year is the showing of new television commercials during the American Super Bowl football championship game.

The game which was played this past Sunday night, attracted an audience of approximately 97.5 million people in American, and countless millions more across the world. A tight contest,this was the most watched Super Bowl in history.

Thirty-second TV commercials during the game reportedly cost as much as US$3 million per spot.

Anheuser-Busch aired the best-liked Super Bowl ad for a record 10th-consecutive year, according to results of the Super Bowl Ad Meter real-time consumer focus group testing. Unlike many previous winners, the Anheuser-Busch ad did not rely on humor. Instead, it featured a Dalmatian who becomes personal trainer to a dejected draft horse eager to make the team pulling the famous Budweiser beer wagon.

The other Top 10 ads:

FedEx (FedEx beats giant carrier pigeons)

Bridgestone (critters scream with squirrel missed by car)

Doritos (gian rat goes for guy’s bag of chips)

Bud Light (fire-breather heats up romantic dinner)

Bud Light (men sneak beer into wine-and-cheese party)

Coca-Cola (cartoon-character parade balloons go after Coke Classic)

Diet Pepsi Max (star-studded cast stops dozing)

Planters (scent of nuts makes homely woman alluring)

Tide to Go (shirt stain is louder than a job candidate) tied with SoBe Life Water (Lizards dance with model Naomi Campbell)

You can watch all the Super Bowl ads as often as you like courtesy of Advertising Age at http://adage.com/superbowl08/article?article_id=124815.

Marketing Wisdom 2008 now available from MarketingSherpa

The sixth annual edition of the eclectic and interesting Marketing Wisdom report from MarketingSherpa is now available as a free PDF download at http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30298. 

The report features dozens of real-life test campaign lessons and tips, and has been collated from 101 stories and submissions submitted by MarketingSherpa’s readers. The topics cover just about every aspect of marketing – advertising, B2B, B2C, customer service, direct mail, email, lead generation, search – and such hot topics as landing page and website design, mobile marketing and Web 2.0.

I have all six of these annual reports and refer to them frequently. And while you are at their site, I also highly recommend signing up for the free MarketingSherpa weekly newsletter. It’s one of the best in the business.

L.L. Bean Tops Retailer Customer Service List

L.L. Bean has jumped to the #1 position in customer satisfaction in the USA, according to the third annual National Retail Federation Foundation/American Express Customer Service Survey.

Ranked third last year, L.L. Bean shot past both Amazon and Nordstrom to take the top position. The company was judged the best across all retail formats and is the only “old school” retailer ranked in the top five this year. The other top five included Internet retailing giants Zappos.com in second, followed by Amazon.com in third, Overstock.com in fourth and Newegg.com in fifth.

The survey was conducted amongst 8,877 consumers in September and asked “which retailer delivers the best customer service?”

“Good customer service starts and ends with how the customer feels about their experience with a retailer,” states NRF Foundation Vice President Kathy Mance. “Retailers are especially challenged because of the multiple touch points that exist between the customer and their brand, but these companies have shown that great customer service does exist.”

I would suggest that rising customer expectations is another challenge for retailers, since four of the top ten from last year’s survey (Boscov’s, Kohl’s, REI and Macy’s) have fallen off this year’s list entirely. As we have often written, customers have too many choices to put up with failed or falling service.

One of my favorite quotes is that “life is too short to drink bad wine.” I would also suggest that “life is too short/precious/busy to put up with poor service.”

Add to Onlywire

The NBA Launches In China

It is not often that I get to write about two of my most passionate interests at the same time, but an announcement yesterday has given me an opportunity to write about both basketball and marketing in the same article.

Four Chinese companies and global sports broadcaster ESPN (owned by the Walt Disney Company) are investing US$253 million for an 11% stake in the newly formed Chinese subsidiary of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

This is huge.

Not only in terms of the dollar value, which values NBA China at about US$2.3 billion for a subsidiary company with little or no current revenues. But also in terms of what this means for the global sporting world, sponsorship opportunities, and marketing in general.

It is also huge for the NBA brand, one of the best sporting brands globally and one that has yet to suffer from the drugs scandal and player misbehavior taints of several other major professional sports.

NBA China has the right to create teams in China and will own all broadcasting rights and merchandising rights. It reportedly will also have the right to retain partial ownership in the teams created in China.

The NBA has never been secret about its long-held desire to turn this North American professional league into a global franchise. But previous to this announcement its efforts have been limited to a handful of exhibition matches played in Europe, Asia and Latin America, plus the obligatory global broadcasting of regular season games through ESPN and of its annual All-Star weekend classic and its year-end playoff series.

Interestingly, the league currently has about three dozen international players performing on its 30 teams, making it one of the most “internationalized

The 2007 Brand Marketers Report: Interbrand’s Annual Survey on Brands and Branding

The 2007 Brand Marketers Report from Interbrand is available as a free PDF download from BrandChannel.com at http://www.brandchannel.com/papers.asp.

This 17-page report is based on a survey of brand leaders and decision makers conducted online in the fourth quarter of 2006. The participant group comprises 299 senior level brand owners, all directly involved in the management decisions across a span of industries and geographies, with equal representation from B2B and B2C businesses. As BrandChannel states, “this survey of global brand owners further validates the influence brands have on the customers’ decision process, and yet shows that most marketers feel stifled in delivering on the full impact of their brand’s value.”

I found the report to be a good read and concur with the opening paragraph of the report’s Executive Summary:

“The state of brand management at the beginning of 2007 can best be described as healthy but not living up to its full potential. It is clear that branding remains an integral, yet evolving, practice and profession.”

To read some of my own articles on branding, or excerpts from my book Corporate Image Management: A Marketing Discipline for the 21st Century, go to http://www.howard-marketing.com/resources.php?mid=6&id=61.