• by Harvey Chipkin , Columnist, April 18, 2016

It’s no surprise that sometimes you can do all the right things and then everything goes wrong. On the other hand, sometimes you do something whimsical and wild —and it falls beautifully in place.

That is very much true in marketing travel and examples of each of the above prove the point. In the first case, the State of Rhode Island hired design legend Milton Glaser (whose work includes the iconic I Love NY campaign) to create a new state logo and tagline. He came up with a pretty logo that evoked a sail (for the Ocean State) and the slogan: “Cooler and Warmer.” A full branding campaign was created, including a video.

Well, there didn’t seem to have been enough reaching out to the public for feedback so that the slogan was trashed widely on social media. The New York Times even ran a whole column of social media suggestions for what the slogan should be, e.g.: “Rhode Island. At least it’s not Delaware.”

And worse, a brief clip in the video actually showed Iceland and not Rhode Island.

There were consequences. The CMO for the tourism office resigned and the slogan is being discarded, although the logo will remain. The good news is that the ad agency and the creative folks gave back the money they had received for putting the campaign together.

Meanwhile, a tourism agency in another Nordic country, Sweden, launched a program called Swedish Number which offers the opportunity for anyone in the world to simply call a number via an app and be connected with one of thousands of volunteers to talk about whatever’s on their mind – the delights of Sweden not necessarily included (callers do have to pay the going rates.)

When you call you hear this: “Calling Sweden. You will soon be connected to a random Swede, somewhere in Sweden.”

According to the New York Times, Sweden is no stranger to relying on its people to tell its story. The country has a Twitter account, @Sweden, and it is staffed by a different resident each week, who is given full freedom to write posts about virtually whatever he or she likes on behalf of the nation of about 9.5 million people.

So there you go: spend many thousands of dollars and hire the best folks – and end up with a public relations mess on your hands. Or simply spend a little bit of money and put it in the hands of Average Joe’s and Joan’s (or the Swedish equivalent) and enjoy a bonanza of good will.

The lesson for marketers is that in a world where it’s so easy to get the opinions and views of your peers, top-down brilliance might not always be the way to go. 

By letting everyday Swedes communicate directly with foreigners, according to The Times, tourism officials hope to present a more authentic picture of the country than one conjured up by a marketing agency, said Magnus Ling, the secretary general and chief executive of the Swedish Tourist Association.

There’s probably never going to be a world when professionals and creative people give way to democratic marketing but it’s worth throwing that into the mix at a time when social media has proven that people love to hear what their peers have to say – and buy travel based on that.