MUDDLED THINKING ABOUT BRANDING IN BALI

Why, oh why, do people responsible for boosting tourism sink so low in the intellectual ladder when it comes to branding? The latest case of Branding Cluelessness comes from the Island of the Gods, aka Bali is My Life aka The World’s Place of Harmonious Peace or it could be Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
Confused already? The three/four are taglines referring to Bali. It was and is also known popularly as the Island of the Gods. Then some idiot convinced the government to part with lots of money and came up with Bali is My Life. Now comes the totoally moronic The World’s Place of Harmonious Peace or maybe it is Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

This latest fit of idiocy is a result of suckers in the Bali government paying lots of dosh for so-called experts on branding to conduct “six months of intensive research” on how Bali is to rebranded to bring back the tourists and move forward with the development of theisland.

The results, reported in The Jakarta Post today (I’ve included the entire story in this post because the Post still hasn’t figured out how to properly store its html pages in its archives so they remain linkable from outside), has led the government to “unveil its new tourism brand for Bali”.

There is something totally wrong here. Unveil a new tourism brand? Like it is going to act as a talisman to bring back the tourists and pump up the economy by itself. Many people look at Malaysia’s Truly Asia tagline and think that it alone helps bring the tourists to Malaysia. It does not. What it does is to provide a handle for people to hold on to to understand the tourism promotion package that Malaysia offers, which is based on its diversity of races/culture.

This new Bali branding shindig is totally laughable. Rather than waste good money and six months of intensive research to give them nonsense such as this the government would have spent their money much wiser if they improved the infrastructure in Bali, clean up the streets, taught the shopkeepers how to be more creative and original in producing and marketing their goods instead. If they have done all this then the can go ahead to launch a campaign in which the brand logo, tagline and attrubutes would go toward supporting this new direction.

The brand, in other words, is the means to an end but not an end itself. Go figure.

Taken from http://theunspunblog.com/2007/06/21/muddled-thinking-about-branding-in-bali/ A webblog owned by Ong Hock Chuan, Former journalist, present PR hack, diver, disaster-prone mountain biker, amateur photographer, blogger.