Brand 101: What Are Customers Really Buying?
Working across industries is interesting.
Recently an associate of mine, a respected tourism marketing consultant, expressed her frustration by asking me: Am I selling the destination or the brand?
The most junior person in a fastmoving consumer goods marketing department, say Unilever, would know the answer because she understands that consumers buy benefits, not products.
But every question has context, and the tourism industry is highly competitive and very complex. Competitive because there’s a world of choice, complex because the value chain is so complicated, with many stakeholders.
So, once I had got over my surprise at being asked what to me was so basic a question from so accomplished a marketer, I answered as follows:
When someone books accommodation at a safari lodge on the banks of the Zambezi they are not buying a room, but birdsong instead of traffic in the morning, the cry of a fish eagle instead of the siren of an emergency vehicle.
And I appreciate her question because it reminded me to remember the basis on which we build brands.
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