The Monaco Tourist Authority, despite relatively high levels of demand, is seeking to change the way in which buyers perceive the Principality. It has launched a new travel trade marketing campaign targeting European organisers.
The campaign was launched at IMEX Frankfurt in June and is designed to shift perceptions within Monaco’s key markets, making it a ‘top of mind’ conference destination while not compromising its core identity as a world class resort.
Repositioning isn’t easy and it nearly always relies on the use of clever copywriting, rather than photography, to plant new ideas in the minds of prospective customers.
For instance, a few years back, Glasgow’s reputation as a major international conference destination was built upon the ‘Scotland with Style’ campaign which replaced the city’s reputation for bad housing, poor health and industrial decline with a completely new idea that was so good it helped transform the way people thought about Scotland itself.
‘Scotland with Style’ was designed to attract shoppers and leisure visitors as well as conference delegates to Glasgow and it provided the foundation for the marketing of the whole city. Glasgow occupied territory that could not be copied by its great rival, Edinburgh, whose eventual response was the one-dimensional, and somehow not very exciting, ‘Scotland’s Elegant Capital’.
Monaco is one of the most attractive destinations in the world and it has an identity that is strong enough to need neither explanation nor clever slogans. With no income tax, no unemployment and the most expensive real estate in the world, Monaco is, well, Monaco.
But, this is also why Monaco is not such an obvious choice as a conference destination, especially within the very strong NTIC (Les NotionsTechnologies de l’information et de la Communication) sector.
Sandrine Camia, Director of the Monaco Tourist Board, says: “Finance, health and engineering represent 50 per cent of our MICE business and they are also the pillars of Monaco’s industrial base. But, we do not think that our expertise in these sectors and our convention infrastructure and assets are as well known in Europe as they should be.”
This is why the new campaign does not contain a single glamorous image of Monaco. Instead, it shows images of professional convention delegates, suited, booted and ready for work, thus enabling potential delegates to ‘see themselves’ and perhaps think that this promotion, and Monaco, is for them and about them.
These adverts use ‘long copy’ text to reach out to the target sectors, saying that in Monaco: ‘Surgeons don’t operate on blackjack tables’, ‘Technology doesn’t only drive formula one cars’, ‘Bankers don’t gamble in casinos’ and ‘Green isn’t only at play in the golf club’.
Mentioning gambling, golf and F1 racing at all is a little dangerous, but Monaco has decided to address these impressions head on.
The new adverts contain nothing else about Monaco’s casinos, hotels, palaces, shops and yachts. Instead, they talk about its huge financial services infrastructure, its eco-certified Grimaldi Congress Centre and many other reasons why it should be considered as a serious conference destination.
It would have been so much easier for the Monaco Tourist Board to rely on the use of glamorous images and that is why this campaign, which asks us to reconsider our assumptions, deserves to succeed.
Philip Cooke is Director of the Gloucester-based (UK) Destination Marketing Group.
This was first published in issue 72 of CMW. Any comments? Email cmw@mashmedia.net
