Sept 16, 2009 a conversational capital day for Toronto

I like the term "conversational capital." My friend Carmen Ciotola of Tourism Montreal first mentioned it to me when she introduced me to the book by Bertrand Cesvet (with Tony Babinski and Eric Alper. The book is called Conversational Capital, but with a subtitle that reads "How to Create Stuff people love to talk about." Thought the book clearly presents a framework to analyze something (or someone) from a conversational capital perspective, "create stuff people love to talk about" is easier said than done.

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Conversational Capital, according to the book refers to "a series of observations that can help generate and spread positive word-of-mouth." Examples in the book of brands/products/services that have generated enormous amounts of conversational capital are Cirque du Soleil, Apple, adidas, Red Bull, Schwartz's (smoked meat sandwich deli in Montreal). The book offers 8 attributes or engines of conversational capital, most of which must be present in your product, service, brand, artist or tourism attraction in order to create conversational capital. These engines are: Rituals, Initiation, Exclusive Product Offering, Over-delivery, Myths, Icons, Tribalism, Endorsement and Continuity. I won't go into detail about these engines here. Read the book in order to get the entire lesson. I am merely using Cesvet and friends' framework to talk about word-of-mouth (positive or negative) about a tourism destination and how difficult it is for destination tourism marketers to create word of mouth about their destinations, particularly cities.

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In my opinion, a city's tourism board per se cannot really create conversational capital for its destination (Let me interject here and mention that the book's website - ConversationalCapital.com - has a section on conversations where the book's readers can interact and debate about conversational capital - unfortunately every time I clicked on this section the browser freezes and I have to reboot it). A city's conversational capital (except perhaps for Las Vegas, Dubai, NYC and Paris) is created by what happens in the city. The city itself is nothing without its events, its people and its architecture (architecture is something that happens - e.g. the ROM's Crystal Gallery, Gehry's renovation of the AGO, the OCAD building). And this brings me to what happened yesterday, September 16, 2009 in Toronto.

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Three major events where happening at the same time last night in Toronto in and around the entertainment district. I drove into the downtown core to meet my wife because we had tickets to U2's 360 Tour concert at the Skydome (Rogers Centre for some, but for me it's always the Skydome). I heard on the radio what was going on downtown so I made a point to get downtown early. In addition to U2 performing, the Maple Leafs had their opening game at the ACC against the Boston Bruins and the Toronto International Film Festival had its ongoing shows and galas in the downtown core. Needless to say, the area was hopping. Front Street and side streets felt a little like New York City with people and cars everywhere. One could also feel the energy of hockey, music or film fans building with anticipation of their respective events. For tourism and tourism related businesses it was an outlier evening I'm sure. I saw line-ups at small coffee shops like Tim Horton, fast food places and restaurants along Front Street.

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These three events provide more visibility to Toronto than any ad campaign could (unless of course, Toronto places an ad during the Super Bowl). The challenge for Toronto tourism marketers is how to harness and encourage the conversation in order to increase the conversational capital. One Google search for "U2 Toronto 2009" comes back with 1.3 million hits and change. A Twitter search for "U2 Toronto" comes back with pages and pages of related tweets (you have to tolerate many spammers' tweets though - one problem Twitter is wrestling with). A Google news search for "U2 in Toronto" gave up about 62 results, many of major media outlets that covered the concert. Similarly if you search for "Maple Leafs" or "Bruins" you will get many hits. And the Toronto International Film Festival? Well I'll save you the time you could spend on searches about TIFF. TIFF is the single Canadian event (cultural or otherwise) that towers among any other in media coverage. Two years ago a study was mentioned in the Toronto Star revealed that TIFF is by far more covered by the media than Bay Street and it's light years ahead of any other Canadian event ( a Google search for "Toronto International Film Festival" results in over 26 million hits).

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When you look at the three events mentioned in terms of the engines converational capital all three have elements of all or most of the engines. A tourism marketer cannot create this. One of the tourism marketer's many obvjectives (but one at the top of my list) should be to look for those brands, events, personalities or businesses that create conversational capital about their destinations, support them and find ways to be a participant in the conversations and use them in the destination's marketing initiatives.

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Regards (by the way, Bertrand Cesvet will be the opening keynote speaker at next year's Canada-e-Connect conference in Montreal).

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Jaime Horwitz MBA

Seth Godin on Tribes: challenge, create culture, connect, commit

Very good food for thought from Seth Godin at TED. (Thanks D'Arcy McKittrick for pointing it out on Twitter @DArcyMcK).

Enjoy,

Jaime

Little bit of news. Brand Canada, BC, Whistler, AGO

Lots of good things happening lately for Canadian Tourism

1. - Congrats to the CTC. Some of the credit for this year's ranking on the Country Brand Index surely must go to the CTC's branding work. According to the new Country Brand Index 2008, Canada is # 2 in the world (those Aussies again!). Keep Exploring!

2.- Congrats to Tourism British Columbia for winning one of one of ten prestigious World Travel Market Global Awards at the World Tourism Market. The award goes to organizations or "companies who have made a remarkable contribution to their region’s travel and tourism industry."

3.- Congrats to Whistler on the upcoming opening of the Peak-to-Peak Gondola, surely the most impressive tourism attraction to open in Canada in the last 10 years.

4.- Congrats to Toronto and Ontario on the Grand Opening of the Frank Gehry redesigned Art Gallery of Ontario.

Bon voyage,
Jaime

I love Fashion and so do millions of Hispanics around the world

I am doubly busy this week because I am personally covering Toronto's L'Oreal Fashion Week for my Spanish language blog and www.blogdecanada.com and my social networking site, www.canadamigos.com. Fashion is very important to Latin Americans and Spaniards. Especially women, although men also like to indulge in a certain sartorial eloquence. Rare is the Latin or Spanish tourist who travels and does not purchase clothes (except of course those on a limited budget like the backpacker crowd, but even them will rather buy a new pair of jeans than pay for a hotel room). Part of Canadá en Español's mission is to educate my fellow Spanish speaking travelers about great things we have in Canada besides the obvious attractions like the Rockies and Niagara Falls. While we don't yet have truly global fashion brands, we do have great fashion talent in Canada and the Toronto and Montréal Fashion Weeks prove it.

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In the last two days I have seen fantastic Spring 2009 collections starting with Alfred Sung's White Collection, which opened this year's Fashion Week. Today I saw a great and sexy women's fashion collection by rising star Jason Meyers and a splendidly elegant swimwear collection from Aqua di Lara's Reyhan Sofraci.

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Cheers,

Jaime

Nuit Blanche in Toronto promises to be a refreshing experience.

Given all the bad news lately, I am looking forward to tonight's Nuit Blanche experience in Toronto. If you don't know what Nuit Blanche is, well, it's an all night celebration of Art, described by the organizers as "a free all-night contemporary art thing." Only a few cities in the world stage this event, Paris and Madrid being the biggest. But Toronto is right up there now. Last year's success convinced organizers (City of Toronto and sponsor ScotiaBank) that this type of event is not only great for us residents of Toronto, but also for visitors from all over the world. I am looking forward to visiting two of the three Art Zones tonight. I will be experiencing the exhibits and installations around Yorkville, Dundas Square and the Financial District.
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I hope to lose myself in new worlds provided by the imagination from some of the most creative artists from around the world. I hope to see, among others, Ricardo Ocaranza, the photographer from San Sebastian, Spain's exhibit Toronto Nocturnes I, 2008; Mexican artists' Nahum Flores, Erik Jerezano and Ilyana Martinez' Z'otz* Collective at Mexican Days of the Dead: Food for Thought; New Yorker Marisela La Grave's Business Class 2008; Japan's Fujiwara Takahashi 's Into the Blue, Daniel Olson's Fifteen Seconds; Michel de Broin's Overflow and Kelly Mark's Horroridor.

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Jaime

(images courtesy City of Toronto)

Wordle Clouds - neat Web Toy. Take a look.

The Canadian Tourism Blog Wordle. Just a neat Web toy that lets you create "clouds" of your blog or someone else's and visualize its content at some point in time. Waste of time? Research? Fun? You decide. Click on the cloud to see a large version. Cheers.

Jaime

Revisiting Tourism and Creativity.

Last year I wrote a post about Creativity in tourism as a marketing "secret" which I submitted for the first ever Tips from the T-List , travel industry bloggers book that was distributed at the first Canada-e-Connect eTourism strategy conference. As luck would have it, I was reminded of this topic by a woman who found me through Facebook and said her boss wanted to talk to me about the article. Furthermore, skimming over the myriad of blog post headlines I review every morning (I follow over 75 marketing and eTourism blogs), I came across one by the folks at TrendHunter (Jeremy Gutsche and Bianca Bartz) about the Top 30 Hip Hotels in 2008. It turns out that Hotel # 30 is the 21C Hotel, one of the hotels I spoke about on that article as a great example of creativity in tourism and the place where my new Facebook contact works. Given all these "coincidences," I decided to revisit this fascinating topic of creativity and tourism.

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Creativity, of course, does not necessarily mean artistic flair or skill. Creativity is the capacity to see things in a different light to address challenges and solve problems or present your offerings in a different (differentiation) and original way. We see creativity these days in many restaurants, from the decor to the meals themselves. Restaurants like Didier in Toronto and Laurie Raphael in Quebec City are very creative eateries for example. Cities themselves are either creative cities or they're not. Just ask Richard Florida the now famous thinker and author, Professor of Business and Creativity; Director, Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. Creative cities attract not only more creative people but also more visitors. Cities' creativity is expressed of course by a robust arts community and striking architecture (that's obvious in cities like London, Paris and Madrid) but is also expressed in a creative labour force in several sectors like finance (London and New York), high-tech (Sillicon Valley) and science (Tokyo, Boston, Seattle, Amsterdam).
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Our map of global innovation clearly shows a world composed of innovative peaks and valleys. The leaders - the tallest spikes - are the metropolitan regions around Tokyo, Seoul, New York, and San Francisco. Boston, Seattle, Austin, Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, Osaka, Seoul, Taipei, and Sydney also stand out. Richard Florida "Who's Your City?" p 25

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What, if any, is the relationship between creative cities and tourism? Is there an opportunity for Canadian Tourism here? Should city destination marketing take Florida's creative cities' work into consideration? The answer to the first question will take some thought. Intuitively we can definitely conclude that there is a strong relationship between creative cities and tourism. Arrivals data would confirm that some of the most creative cities in the world are also the most visited. London, New York, Paris and San Francisco are indisputably some of the most poputlar destinations in the world. Closer to home in Canada Toronto and Vancouver draw a significant portion of all visitors to Canada. The other side of the coin is that the top creative cities are also top generators of travelers since these cities not only concentrate creative knowledge workers but they also concentrate wealth and populations. Destination marketers spend millions of dollars on marketing research that they use to create advertising campaigns. It would be very interesting to know if and how Mr. Florida's work could be applied to destination marketing. Maybe I'll ask him.

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Getting back to the beginning of this post I leave you with a video (remember the long tail of tourism?) Here again is the 21C Museum Hotel, enjoy:

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Bon voyage everybody,

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Jaime Horwitz

www.cactusrock.com

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Canadian Tourism in crisis. Critical times require extraordinary measures. My dream Campaign.

This past Monday I received TIAC's Media release entitled Canada's Tourism Sector on the Brink of Crisis. Among other things, the release mentioned that "Governments have traditionally neglected the industry, and have tended to regard tourism as a source of taxation dollars, burdening business with structural costs and compliance measures which impede its price competitiveness. For example: The continuing insistence on charging airport rents, airport security fees, excise tax on aviation fuel, NAVCAN fees, or the abrupt cancellation of the Visitor Rebate Program and its replacement with the onerous and burdensome Foreign Convention and Tour Incentive Program are illustrative of the problem...Canada’s travel deficit has ballooned to 10.3 billion in 2007 and the latest quarterly numbers for 2008 show a continued deterioration."

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Given the ongoing weakness of the American economy and, more importantly, high fuel prices that are affecting air travel demand, it is clear that we're in for a very challenging year for Canadian Tourism. This brings me to suggest a more agressive marketing approach for Canadian Tourism. This is not the time to cut back, on the contrary. This is the time to increase marketing efforts, particularly in the United States. Economic troubles notwithstanding, it is not like America is all of a sudden a poor country. It is still a $14 Trillion economy and with a population of over 300 million people there are surely many millions who will continue to travel and travel in style. But how can we persuade them to come to Canada if most people outside a few major markets in the US do not know anything about this country?

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Here's my pitch. A television and multimedia campaign in the United States beginning in the winter of 2009. My dream campaign is not timid and would cost several million dollars. The key success factor for the campaign is a television spot during SUPER BOWL XLIII (90,000,000 viewers more or less). This, of course would be the most expensive marketing campaign ever attempted by Canada. A 30 second slot during the Super Bowl will cost close to $3,000,000 USD next year and I propose to show the Ad 1 per quarter during the game. That media buy alone would cost about $12,000,000 (assuming of course that the network accepts the ad since Super Bowl slots are highly competitive). I haven't been involved with TV commercial production in a while, but I would guess that my spot idea would cost as much as $4,000,000 to produce (depending on negotiations with talent, a critical element). So far we've spent about $16,000,000. I would also suggest investing an additional $5,000,000 in multimedia marketing (online and print) following the Super Bowl including distribution in all social media in order to take advantage of the long tail of Internet communications. A new website would need to be launched in order to track results and very importantly offer research and booking capabilities. It would require the cooperation of all major DMO's and their constituents in Canada. I am sure that the industry as a whole has enough money to launch this kind of campaign. I am sure that the budgets of all major DMO's in the country (CTC, provinces and cities) combined could afford it.

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What kind of spot would I want to see? Here's a very rough draft of the spot (very rough - after all, I do have to get back to work).

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WHITE TITLES ON BLACK SCREEN.
Music starts – at first not recognizable – as spot continues it becomes clear it’s a rock/hip-hop rendition of O Canada).

TITLE
Where are you going?

INT. RECORDING STUDIO
Medium shot to Close up of Avril Lavigne

AVRIL LAVIGNE (TO CAMERA)
I’m going to Canada.

EXT. STUDIO BACK LOT.
Close up of Willam Shatner

WILLIAM SHATNER (TO CAMERA)
I’m going to Canada

INT. COULD BE AT A STUDIO OR IN A HOME OR RESTAURANT
Close up of Pamela Anderson

PAMELA ANDERSON (TO CAMERA)
I’m going to Canada.

Quick shots of Canadian destinations and Canadian festivals in all seasons. Lots of action, lots of colour. 5 seconds

EXT. MUSKOKA, ONTARIO
Medium shot of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Cut to: Close up of Ms. Hawn

GOLDIE HAWN (TO CAMERA)
Canada

Camera pulls back to Aerial shot of a luxurious cottage in Muskoka, Ontario. Cut to:

WHITE TITLES ON BLACK SCREEN

TITLE
Where are you going?

EXT. TORONTO. DOWNTOWN ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT
MAN’S BACK. Camera rolls in as man turns around.

MIKE MYERS (TO CAMERA)
Going to Canada, Baby

More Quick shots of Canadian destinations and Canadian festivals in all seasons. Lots of action, lots of colour, cutting back and forth from cities to nature and back.

EXT. MONTREAL OR QUEBEC CITY. DOWNTOWN OLD MONTREAL
CAMERA moves to reveal CELINE DION – pull back to establish Montreal or Quebec City.

CELINE DION (TO CAMERA)
I am going to Canada

EXT. MOVIE LOCATION IN LA.
Close up of Kiefer Sutherland

KIEFER SUTHERLAND (TO CAMERA)
I’m going to Canada


EXT. SOMEHWERE INN TREMBLANT, QUEBEC.
Med. Two shot up of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones

MICHAEL DOUGLAS (TO CAMERA)
Going to Canada

More Quick shots of Canadian destinations and Canadian festivals in all seasons. Lots of action, lots of colour, cutting back and forth from cities to nature and back. Music reaches crescendo. 5 seconds

EXT. VANCOUVER SOMEWHERE.
Shot of a mimic on Robson Street performing to the crowd. Camera gets in close as man turns and we realize id Jim Carey

JIM CAREY (TO CAMERA)
Goin’ to Canada. Somebody stop me!

CUT TO---

FULL SCREEN – CANADA.TRAVEL GRAPHICS.

TITLE
Canada. Keep Exploring

URL: GOINGTOCANADA.COM

THE END

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Cheers and good luck this summer,

Jaime

www.canadaenespanol.ca

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Cities 2.0 - My Toronto Holiday Campaign vs. This is New York City

I sometimes visit the official tourism websites for Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, Canada's three biggest urban destinations to see if there's anything new and notable, not necessarily to plan visits since I know the cities quite well by now. I love Tourism Toronto's My Toronto Holiday campaign - it's a great web animation piece that encourages the online visitor to explore different areas of the city- first online and then in person. Hope it generates the results it deserves. The official site needs work, in my opinion, or a total new approach to include some Web 2.0 capabilities and more creative pieces like "MyTorontoHoliday."

But as much as I liked "MyTorontoHoliday" I have to say that I liked the new "This is New York City" video from NYCVISIT.com better. Granted the former is more of a call to action (including contest) campaign while the latter is more of a branding campaign, but both are examples of creative used to sell a destination. The NYC video is a fantastic example of how to inject a sense of FUN into a destination's message. And before you say - "well, but that's New York" - I must say that Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and certainly Niagara Falls can inject more Fun into their marketing (MyTorontoHoliday is a great start). This is where consumer generated content has limitations. Sometimes you do need some great creative supported by strong production values (i.e. Budget) in order to pull off something this good (I'm so jealous). Check it out - This is New York City:

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Jaime

Toronto en Español

About the Mexican term "Chilango" (see previous post)

I received an email about my use of the term "chilango" in my post September: USA down 7.9%, Mexico up 16.9%, Spain up 28%. Outdoor Ice Skating in Mexico City Those of you who do a lot of business in Mexico probably know the term very well. The concern is that the word chilango may have a derogatory connotation. Therefore, I want to clarify: the term Chilango comes from the Nahuatl “Ixachilan” meaning “immensity” - referring to the immensity of the continent – used first by the indigenous people who founded Mexico City area (Aztecs, Mexicas). Overtime, the term was used to refer to people not born in Mexico city who moved there and eventually it became the term to refer to people who were born in Mexico City or who live there. The negative connotation depends on who is using the term and how it is used. Usually (but not always) people who live in one of the Mexican states (i.e. not Mexico City) may use the term negatively (sort of the way Canadians refer to Torontonians sometimes) as in those $^#* chilangos. Today, Chilango in many circles is a proud term – as in “yo soy Chilango or I (heart) Chilangos.” In fact, one of Mexico’s most popular publications is called Chilango Magazine. I suppose I should have made it clear that I am a Chilango myself, having been born in Mexico City. In 2001, the word Chilango was included in the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy (although, with not a great definition).

Jaime

a Chilango Canadian (CaChilango or ChilangoCan?)

Cactus Rock New Media Ltd. (Cactus Rock is the loose translation into English of the Nahuatl word for Mexico City)

www.demexicoacanada.travel

September: USA down 7.9%, Mexico up 16.9%, Spain up 28%. Outdoor Ice Skating in Mexico City

The numbers from Statcan's International Travel: Advance Information (why do they call it advance if it's in the past?) are out. The US decline continues - down 7.9 from September 2006. Mexico and Spain both significantly up (Olé). Mexico crossed the 200,000 visitors' mark in September. Recall that last year's total number was 213,000 and we still have three months of numbers to see (December by the way is looking good according to my sources in Mexico). Spain, while in absolute numbers is still no where near Mexico, has already surpassed its 2006 numbers (56,830) with 57,912 visitors from Jan to Sept.

Big news out of Mexico City. Get this. The municipal government has decided to give Chilangos (Mexico City residents) a gift for Christmas. They are setting up, what they are calling the largest man made outdoor skating rink in the world right in the historic heart of the city, the Zócalo. The rink will have capacity for 1,200 people. How's that for innovation. Maybe Toronto can install a covered man-made beach in Dundas Square next winter. Kidding aside, this is a great opportunity for Canada (e.g. Quebec City, Ottawa, Montréal) to get some exposure in the market without a big investment. Maybe Mexico's CTC is already doing something, I don't know, but perhaps a DMO can sponsor free skate rental or find a way to set up a booth to give away free hot chocolate. Or fly in a few skaters to give demonstrations and/or lessons. Many ideas come to mind. The point is to "insert" Canada into the buzz that this rink will create all over Mexico (Steve Wright where are you?). (I will try to get a picture of the rink asap - it opens December 1st. Mayor Ebrard will be one of the first to skate on it)

Saludos,

Jaime

www.canadaenespanol.ca

www.demexicoacanada.travel

Make me a Blidget. Widget my Blog.

Do you have a blog? Would you like to have more exposure?

How about blidgeting your blog? Blidget you say? Yup.

Make your blog into a widget that can be inserted in other blogs or websites (and turned into a Facebook app as well).

I recently came across a blidget from Canada Immigration (Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration) of all places and that led me to investigate how one could create such a thing. I ended up on Widgetbox.com and after reading about it decided to blidget my blogs (this one and http://www.blogdecanada.com/) You can see my widgetbox on the top left corner of this blog. If you clic on it you can get the widget and insert it on you website or blog thereby helping me reach more people.

If you want to make your own widget just visit Widgetbox.com and follow the instructions to blidgetize your blog. Furthermore, if you use Facebook, you can also turn the widget into a Facebook App and invite your friends to add it to their Facebook profile. The process is quite simple - you just follow the instructions and Voilá you will have widgetized, blidgetized, cooletized (and maybe even monetized) your blog.

cheers,

Jaime Horwitz