Last week I keynoted the Social Media Tourism Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was a fabulous event and one of the recurring themes covered was the importance of giving up control of marketing to your destination’s fans and advocates.  Obviously I was thrilled with this, but at the same time I realize that this can […]

First, consider your typical brand advocate.  This person is going out of their way to sing your praises to other customers.  They view themselves as owners of your brand, so they are acting in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.  Here’s four examples of how your brand advocates are saving you money: […]

I’m not a huge fan of crowd-sourcing marketing content or campaigns.  The reason is because typically such campaigns attract an audience that has little or no loyalty to the brand, but instead wants to win a prize. But I love the campaign that the Philippines conducted last year to drive interest in tourism.  The pacific […]

This week I am headed to Louisiana to present Think Like a Rock Star to New Orleans’ AMA chapter.  One of the things I’ll talk about with that group is one of the key takeaways I had from researching and writing the book. In doing research for the book, I wanted to learn how it […]

Over the last couple of years there’s been a pattern of brands running campaigns designed to ‘show our fans how much we love them’.  Typically this involves the brand surprising the fan with some sort of free gift, the fan(s) is thrilled, and this is all filmed and turned into a commercial, then promoted in […]