Brand narratives, idea platforms and content ecosystems.

AlUla - Place Brand Strategy

Challenge

AlUla is a key tourism destination for Saudi Arabia as part of the Vision 2030 plan to make KSA “the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds, an investment powerhouse and a hub connecting three continents.”

This includes diversifying the economy bringing tourism to the fore.

The aim for AlUla is to attract affluent tourists and premium hospitality/tourism brands to the region. To achieve that, the theme of ‘innovation’ needed to be far more integrated into internal and external storytelling and values. But was, as yet, almost entirely absent.

My approach

Create a storytelling tool kit that could be used to educate, inspire and connect internal teams as well as provide a creative platform for external-facing creative comms.

To do this, I used a mix of historical research, stakeholder interviews (designed and conducted by me) across government, management, agency and partner institutions in hospitality, events, archaeology and museology.

From that I created the comms JTBD, the underpinning narrative and the creative guidelines for all teams to use.

St Helena Tourism - Place Brand Strategy

Challenge

Help transform the perception of St Helena, the best kept secret of the Atlantic, into a destination for adventure tourists.

My approach

After consulting with the St Helena tourist board, I created a brief aimed at establishing a new library of assets that the tourist board could use in their own marcomms but that were also attractive to their PR agency and media partners.

The style, tone and subject of the new asset set would be critical so I worked carefully with a trusted photographer (Jethro Kiernan) who not only deeply understands adventure traveller’s motivations but whose style of landscape shooting is naturally inflected with drama and emotion.

I knew also that Jethro’s eye for colour combinations would help show the St Helena range of landscapes in a new light, and that his body of work shooting industrial environments and remote outposts would bring an additional grit and steeliness to the island’s visual identity as we evolved it.

Together we built a library of stills and clips that has been picked up and used across their marketing. The process of creating this material was a way to evolve the place brand identity by co-creating the assets with the local community and help them feel like co-owners of the identity being projected to the world.

Taiwan Tourism - Place Brand Strategy

Challenge

Help drive consideration of Taiwan as a new destination for adventure tourism businesses and attract direct tourists themselves.

My approach

I developed a multi-stranded programme bringing a few creators in the adventure space to document their adventure-filled journeys around the country, diarising through their own social channels.

I also commissioned a film crew and a more high profile influencer to capture a set of still and moving image assets for the tourist board and media partners. We focused on specific adventure activities where our data showed a growing appetite in the target markets (both in terms of adventure tour operators and customers).

We wanted to show attitude, character and different landscapes to help change the perception of Taiwan as being unadventurous and tepid. Finally, we also collaborated with a couple of adventure apparel brands (Arc’teryx and Garmin) that we knew would add credibility to the shots but would also help with additional distribution to target audiences.

Citalia - Social Strategy

Challenge

Citalia, one of the brands in the Travelopia group, lacked clear direction and effectiveness in their organic social media activities with little engagement or growth.

My approach

An audit and evaluation of Citalia’s own channels, the work of competitors and the strategic recommendations from the platforms themselves.

This included data analysis from social listening tools like Talkwaker and Sprinklr as well as the native analytics from the platforms themselves. It also included customer and internal stakeholder interviews.

I articulated and mapped out what the core customer journey was and identified the needs at each stage and how content could provide value at each stage.

Then I created the central, differentiating editorial proposition which still laddered up to Citalia’s brand strategy but would serve as a richer territory for the internal and agency teams to plan and create content.

BASE - Investment Campaign

Challenge

I conceived, wrote and designed this deck and business plan.

We needed an investor deck that could be used both for crowdfunding purposes and, with some additions, also for angel investors.

Investor decks need to pithily capture the market opportunity, how your business solves the particular associated problem, and then show convincing evidence of traction with a clear growth plan toward exit.

Gillette x Hypebeast - Activation Strategy

Challenge

Produce three rich strategic territories that the creative teams can use to activate the partnership between Gillette and Hypebeast in key media and retail environments.