Day 2: Marketing In The New Economy

Martin Hatchuel

Here’s my column from Indaba Daily News (Day 2 - May 10, 2009)

Indaba Daily News is full colour, glossy, A3-size publication produced (under huge stress and with impossible deadlines) by Martin van Niekerk, Ben Rootman and the team from Junxion Communications. It’s on the floor and ready for the delegates at South African Tourism’s annual trade show by 8:00 a.m. every day.

A special mailing of my column to This Tourism Week’s readers was sponsored by Innate Advertising.

Marketing In The New Economy

6,11,2010,396

So what are we doing here at the Indaba?  Gettin’ the tourists to Southern Africa? Same old thing, huh?

I’ll never forget Conrad Mayer, president of the Bavarian Hospitality and Restaurant Association, speaking at the Western Cape’s Access the Destination Workshop in 2007: “The World Cup in Munich changed Germany and it changed the Germans.

“Suddenly we realised that we DO have a sense of humour; that we CAN be hospitable.”

And you’ll agree that the 2010 World Cup has already changed South Africa - and that it’s changed South Africans fo’ sho’ (although we do have one thing that Germany didn’t have in the run-up to Munich: we already know we have a sense of humour).

But has it changed the way you and I think about marketing? Because it should have - especially in the new economy.

What’s up with the guys who are doing better now than ever before? They’ve hooked into the truth that everything changes. They’ve seen that 2010 has already cracked markets that might otherwise never have been available to us and they’re there, working on them.

This is not a rant against SA Tourism - more than two billion people play soccer, and if you look around here at the Indaba you’ll see that Tourism’s certainly talking soccer.

No - this is a question for us all. Have we tapped into soccer? Have we looked at what new opportunities it presents - because (and fo’ sho’ again), they’re not the opportunities we’re used to.

When he saw the recession coming, Harvard Business School professor John Quelch wrote ‘Marketing Your Way Through a Recession’ (Google it) - just eight things we need to do to keep ourselves  going. I liked the first three: 1 - Research the customer; 2 - Focus on family values. (”When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village.”); and 3 - Maintain marketing spending.

“When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned about football, it’s that the idea of the FIFA Family is more than just an idea: it’s a reality, and I wonder if you’ve tapped into it? Now and beyond 6,11,2010,396 (the 11th of June, 2010, which is 396 days away).

Martin Hatchuel publishes This Tourism Week