Cebu brand unveiled today; greater efforts needed to ensure Cebu lives up to brand
After a six-month period of consultations and workshops among tourism stakeholders, Cebu will be launching its brand today.
Tetta Baad
Cebu City Tourism Commission (CCTC) chairperson Tetta Baad said the core group behind Cebu’s brand had gone back and forth numerous times on the brand name and logo of Cebu before unanimously agreeing on one that they believe fully captures the essence of Cebu.
“I would like to emphasize that this has been a collaborative project and a team effort,” Baad said.
Among the organizations that played key roles in creating the brand are the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), Mega Cebu, GMR-Megawide Airport Corp., Cebu Association of Tour Operators, and the CCTC.
Stakeholders will have even greater roles to play after the unveiling of the brand, scheduled for 6 p.m. today at the Ayala Center Cebu.
Baad said they will have to make sure that the destinations and products offered by Cebu will continue to hold true to the brand, and more importantly, hold true to what Cebu really is.
Failure to do so will make Cebu fall short of people’s expectations, causing them to react negatively and bring about the death of the brand, she said.
The first priority would be to create marketing collateral, such as t-shirts, stickers and billboards, she said. These will be rolled out in malls and in the community soon after the launch.
Electronic copies of the logo will be sent to various malls in Cebu, for them to make copies of their own for distribution to their tenants.
“It will take even more effort not just from us and the stakeholders but the people as well from here,” Baad said.
The search for Cebu’s brand began with a workshop with internationally acclaimed branding expert Jacqueline Alexis Thng in May.
After the first workshop, local marketing and branding exports took over, analyzing the suggestions and also researching about Cebu’s strengths in terms of tourism and marketability.
Midstream, professional marketing group Publicis was called in for consultation and a brief workshop.
“Branding is not just a catchy phrase or a set of attracting renderings. It takes more than that,” Baad said.
“It’s a promise. It has to be authentic, not manufactured or forced but something that has been extracted naturally. It has to be something palpable in everything and everyone,” she added.
Baad said it’s important to have only one significant message in terms of logo and branding, be able to “own” one particular word in brand positioning, and identify a fully authentic brand to the destination.
“What kept coming back was the mention of Cebu’s people — how they make you feel at home, their warmth, and friendliness. It is this innate character of Cebuanos that makes Cebu a special place,” Baad said.
Also taken into consideration were the awards and recognitions received by the island in the past few years, the most recent of which were Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards for Top 5 Islands in Asia in 2013, and Top 20 Islands in the World this year. Cebu ranked 3rd and 19th in the readers’ choice surveys, respectively.