Tourism stakeholders toss around ideas
Branding expert Jacqueline Alexis Thng from Singapore facilitates a branding exercise for Cebu. (CDN PHOTO/ JUNJIE MENDOZA)
If Cebu were a person, what would the gender be – male or female? Is Cebu old or young?”
Branding expert Jacqueline Alexis Thng from Singapore posed these questions yesterday to guide local tourism stakeholders in another attempt to define a brand for Cebu.
She said a strong brand should be unique and bring in tourists and money. It should also be consistently managed, from the icon to the colors, as people remember images better than words.
The branding exercise was organized by the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Mega Cebu board at the Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center in Cebu City.
“Will Cebu have an icon? What will that be and how will that help Cebu’s branding? We should be able to define that,” sand Thng, who works with an international brand consulting group Prophet.
An icon for Cebu will have to “evolve organically” so that the people will recognize it and associate it with Cebu, she added.
Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale, head of the Provincial Tourism Council, said stakeholders need to identify Cebu’s edge in all aspects.
“Outside of Manila, Cebu is the leading destination. We need an integrated brand for the entire island. It is not an easy task because the tourism industry is competitive,” Magpale told workshop participants.
READ: Cebu is a woman, a ‘siloy’ and summer
The workshop was the latest initiative to come up with a brand that would embody Cebu’s attributes.
Branding exercises were held in past few years but results didn’t take root for one reason or another.
Among past suggestions was to market Cebu as the jump-off point to other islands. Another was to make Cebu the hub and nearby destinations in the Visayas the spokes of a wheel.
Investment promotions experts, on the other hand, are already selling Cebu as a cosmopolitan city that is less than an hour from the mountains or the beach, or as a highly urbanized area where people can mix business with rest and recreation.
Ma. Teresa B. Chan, president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), yesterday said she hoped the workshop participants “could come up with the best brand for Cebu.” Inputs will be reported in a tourism summit in June during Cebu Business Month.
Members of the chamber, Cebu Association of Tour Organizers, Network of Independent Travel Agencies in the Philippines and Mega Cebu secretariat participated in the workshop. They were joined by Cebu City Tourism Council chairperson Tetta Baad.
Thng told the group to gather all insights, consider what they want to achieve in the future and set economic targets.
“Branding for Cebu’s tourism is not only about making you look good but also has to have economic measures to it like a certain number of tourists to attract. It’s not just to create a catchy brand but also to bring in money. That’s how we usually measure the success of a brand,” she said.
She cited her home country, Singapore, as among the countries with a successful brand. Singapore attracts at least 10 million tourists a year.
“Singapore is a smaller country compared to the Philippines. But the Philippines only gets 4 million foreign tourists. How did we do it? Well, it did not happen overnight. It took over 30 years to create what Singapore has become now,” she said.
She said it had to do with perception.
“When you think of Singapore, you think it is very clean and peaceful. But this is actually perception. We also have places in Singapore that are dirty but we have successfully created a perception of being clean. That’s because we make sure that the places where tourists go are clean and safe,” she added.
Thng said the late Lee Kuan Yew, who governed Singapore for more than three decades, envisioned a First World country in a Third World region.
“It was really bold and what they did was that they made sure the infrastructure was there. There was investment and they punish people when they misbehave. Eventually this led to a successful brand for Singapore,” she said.
Before launching the brand, Thng said the Cebuanos should be made aware of it first. They should embrace and beome the ambassadors of the brand.
She stressed the need to be unique.
“I have seen ‘I Love Cebu’ here and I say you should tear it down. It’s not original because there’s ‘I Love NY’ already a successful brand for New York,” she said,
Thng also thumbed down Mandaue City’s “I Mandaue” because it’s similar to “I Amsterdam.”
Cebu, in recent years, has come to be associated with the “I heart Cebu” T-shirts of Islands Souvenirs.
The popular design has been further tweaked to accompany personalized messages, where names replace “I” and “Cebu.”
Jonathan Jay P. Aldeguer, chief executive officer of Islands Group, said his company never claimed the design was a brand for Cebu or pushed it that way.
“Personally, I never saw it as a Cebu brand. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a Cebu brand. It’s just an expression of how we all feel about Cebu. That’s probably why it took off,” he said in a telephone interview.
Aldeguer was part of a core group led by the Cebu Chamber’s tourism committee that held several brainstorming sessions on how to promote Cebu some years back.
“There have been quite a few initiatives in the past. But these never gained traction. They fizzled out,” he said.
He said he hoped this latest initiative would progress. As a tourism industry stakeholder, he said he would be interested to find out the results of the workshop. /With Marites Villamor-Ilano and Pearl Therese S. Aton