{"id":3709,"date":"2009-08-25T01:25:44","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T23:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=3709"},"modified":"2009-08-25T01:26:35","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T23:26:35","slug":"cape-town-marketing-where-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/cape-town-marketing-where-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Cape Town marketing: where is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>With just over\u00a0nine months to go before the 2010 World Cup, the marketing for Cape Town and the Western Cape appears to have become close to invisible.<\/p>\n

About a year ago Cape Town Tourism was given the mandate by its members to accept the City of Cape Town’s directive to manage the marketing of Cape Town, a job previously done by Cape Town Routes Unlimited.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A Marketing Strategy was to have been prepared by Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, the bubbly Cape Town Tourism CEO, and she spent many hours obtaining input from members of the tourism industry to develop such a strategy, and a positioning for Cape Town.\u00a0\u00a0 She was a prolific writer and sent out numerous media releases.\u00a0\u00a0 The last release sent out by Cape Town Tourism, however, \u00a0was over a month ago, on 21 July.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cape Town Tourism has added a 2010 World Cup page to its website, and it is printing two issues of its Visitor’s Guide, instead of the\u00a0usual one\u00a0issue per year.\u00a0 This appears to be the sum total of its current marketing activity.<\/p>\n

At the time of her many brainstorming sessions, Du Toit-Helmbold favoured a positioning for Cape Town as the centre for innovation, design and creativity, but this has not been translated into a pay-off line, and it is not\u00a0visible in the design of Cape Town Tourism’s website\u00a0and letterhead.\u00a0\u00a0 The signature at the bottom of Du Toit-Helmbold’s e-mails has the pay-off line for Cape Town: “Living Cape Town.\u00a0 Loving Cape Town”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The website does not carry this pay-off line at all, but justifies\u00a0the official Cape Town website www.capetown.travel<\/a> as follows:” your trusted, impartial guide to Cape Town”.\u00a0 The company started Twittering actively about three months ago,\u00a0but now is invisible on Twitter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cape Town Routes Unlimited is even quieter, and only sends out a weekly Events newsletter to the industry, and irregular CEO newsletters with far too many photographs, mainly of its CEO Calvyn Gilfillan.\u00a0\u00a0 An industry newsletter which helped inform tourism players has silently disappeared.<\/p>\n

The CEO’s of Cape Town Tourism and of Cape Town Routes Unlimited last month met with the new Tourism heads in the City of Cape Town and Western Cape, Felicity Purchase and Alan Winde, respectively.\u00a0 Could Du Toit-Helmbold have been silenced since attending this meeting?\u00a0\u00a0 The dates appear to coincide.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, media reports earlier this year indicated that Cape Town Tourism had been awarded the marketing of Cape Town for another year, instead of referring to a three-year contract having been signed.\u00a0\u00a0 It intimated that the City had to seek tenders for the marketing, and could not\u00a0just hand this over to Cape Town Tourism, as had been made public a year ago.\u00a0\u00a0 No information about a tender process, and the winner thereof, has been made public.<\/p>\n

The meeting between Cape Town Tourism and Cape Town Routes Unlimited would have covered the prevention of duplication in the two marketing bodies’ marketing activities, and collaboration, where possible.\u00a0 No further communication has been received in this regard from either body since the meeting last month.<\/p>\n

Guy Lundy, CEO of Accelerate Cape Town, an organisation that connects with businesspersons to attract and stimulate economic growth for Cape Town, has criticised the marketing that is being done for Cape Town, reports the Cape Argus<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 He too complains that too little marketing is being done, and that which is being done, is wrong, he says.\u00a0\u00a0 “Branding Cape Town as Africa’s party city for the World Cup should never have happened”, he said.\u00a0\u00a0 “The World Cup is that one opportunity we have to showcase the city to the world.\u00a0 We don’t want to market ourselves like another Ibiza.”\u00a0\u00a0 Lundy says that Cape Town has changed its\u00a0pay-off line\u00a0from “Africa’s party capital” to “ready to welcome the world”, a line which was used in a few ads run in the local Cape Town newspapers, without much credibility, given that all the major Cape Town roads, its airport,\u00a0the\u00a0Cape Town station, and the rapid bus transport system are not yet ready for the 2010 World Cup!<\/p>\n

Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With just over\u00a0nine months to go before the 2010 World Cup, the marketing for Cape Town and the Western Cape appears to have become close to invisible. About a year ago Cape Town Tourism was given the mandate by its members to accept the City of Cape Town’s directive to manage the marketing of Cape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,22,21,11],"tags":[1916,769,1317,602,32366,108,85,257,32396,1354,920,340,347,1919,1587,1917,32387,32373,32368],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t