It was September, and I was in the town’s grocery store. After purchasing all too many products there, I was asked by a cashier if I wanted to collect stickers.

Really, stickers? Who needs them? I certainly wasn’t a type of sticker collector, but this was about to change.

I remember when I was a child, I was a sticker collector. My favourite ones were the puffy ones with animals and googly eyes. The thing is that during my times, I couldn’t do anything with them. I could leaf through the album, or if I was lucky, I could trade them with my friend.  Stickers were just pieces of paper.

Believe it or not, I have recently become a “born-again’ collector thanks to my seven years old twins and their whining and begging for these small visuals of tiny animals.

Now, whenever I go shopping, I will choose that diabolic grocery and often will throw some more groceries to my basket so that I could avail more stickers for my twins.

I will dutifully ask the cashier not to forget to give out my hard-earned stickers, so I won’t disappoint my kids who are eagerly waiting to stick these babies down until the page of their collector book is filled.

Interesting enough, my twins are no longer interested in lush toys from the toy shop. Instead, they are happily involved in a game of collecting so that they can gain relatively cheap stuffed mascot as a reward.

With all the above, I come to understand why I fell for it, and how smart marketing campaigns can be very useful tools for marketing.

Commitment is the key

You don’t need to a PhD in psychology to understand that psychology can be used in marketing. For many years now, successful marketers applied psychological principles of commitment in their marketing tactics.

“Once we have made a choice or a promise, we will face personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment”.

Sticker marketing was a perfect fit for the grocery marketing campaign. Once the marketers got my kids attention with colourful animals placed all over the entry door and inside the shop, I could no longer ignore this sticker collection at the cashiers.

We as parents are not in a ‘collecting stickers’ mood but once we make a promise to our kids that we will do it for them because they love it – it’s enough to change our resistance.

Smart marketers know that the best way to earn the loyalty of customers and prospects is to make them commit to something. It remains one of the most powerful marketing tactics used to influence our purchasing decisions and to leverage sales.

Once upon a time…TV, radio, newspapers and magazines dominated the world of mass marketing and mass produced products for mass markets.

And then the world has changed. The age of mass marketing has ended.

Internet has become the largest medium, but also the most focused one, because it gives the opportunity to millions of small voices to be heard.

Internet allows people with various interests and lifestyles to share their beliefs in the virtual communities.  And these communities, or if you prefer- TRIBES are united by a common denominator such as education, interests, political beliefs etc.

In today’s world, it’s important for marketers to figure out who your tribes are and what makes their members tick. It’s only when we really know who our customers are that we can start customizing the offerings for them.

Let’s consider Seth Godin’s words of wisdom in the context of a tribal marketing.

“Everyone is not your customer”- Your product should have its own customers, not everyone will like it or use it.

In the hospitality business, customers are different. Many individuals belong to different tribes depending upon their trip, the reason why they’re travelling and who they are travelling with. Some customers want extremely high level of personalization; others will think of it as an unnecessary experience. Some guests will want to have luxury services, while others will prefer close contact with nature.

While Tribal Marketing is not a new term, there are not many marketers doing it.  Finding a genuine brand’s followers is difficult and hard to achieve.

Identifying your brand’s tribe takes more than breaking down your brand’s target market through traditional demographic, behaviours and geographies. We need to re-evaluate our marketing strategy, and have a fresh look at how we categorize our customers.

It is time to think outside the box and dig deeper into psychographic categories. Our customers, target audience, or our Tribes, should be identified based on a shared group of activities, collective values and interests.

Amadeus Future Traveller Tribes 2030 suggests six new tribes of travelers that will travel in 2030- Obligation Meeters, Ethical Travellers, Cultural Purists, Simplicity Searchers, Reward Hunters, Social Capital Seekers.

As a marketer, we should look away from the product and get closer to our customers. When designing our marketing strategy, we must adopt more ‘psychographic’ approach and consider new sets of travellers united by similar outlooks on expectations.

When I think of my favourite brand, the first thing that comes to my mind is not a logo itself, but a certain feeling I have towards this brand.

Logos on their own actually say nothing. While they can be a symbolic representation of a brand and its narrative story built into an organization over time, they can’t tell your customers who you really are unless you build meaning into them.

Think about Rolls- Royce- for me it’s the promise of the status and respect. I don’t care that the two “R’s are enclosed in the rectangular shape, or that its design is inspired by classic Greek and Egyptian art.
What’s more important to me is the promise of an experience that the brand offers to its customers.

Starbucks is a promise about belonging to a community of people with a certain set of values about time, money, ethical sourcing, environment and empowerment.
I don’t admire Starbucks logo, but a brand behind it that stands up to my expectations keeps its promise and delivers it in every interaction.

In a crowded and distracted world, with so many skilful design experts or online $100 per logo designs, the process of creating the identity design has changed.

Every year the design experts are telling us what’s trending and what’s not in the logo design trends. They are setting new standards from straightforward minimalism, more generic to vector shapes instead of images, etc.). As it happens, I come to a simple conclusion.

It’s not so much about ideal pixels involved in creating a logo, but much more about the experience your customers have when they interact with your brand.

If a brand is a promise of an experience your customers have, then a logo acts as a reminder of the brand’s commitment to the customer.

This said, I believe that we still need logos, but they should not be the foundation of a brand.

So next time you’re designing your brand, your logo should be the last thing you’ll do. Focus on delivering great customer experience, not a fancy logo design, so that after you remove your logo from your product, website your customers will still know it’s you.

We make choices everyday about what we do and how we live.

It’s possible that you decided to live abroad because you want to work in the international environment, live a convenient lifestyle or save money.

No one has the right to judge you for your decisions, though sometimes we’re our worse judges. We’re beating ourselves up for our mistakes, not taking that “great” opportunity, not saving enough for rainy days, not choosing the right country to settle down.

We all made tons of mistakes.

I really believe that taking responsibility for your own faults, but not dwelling on them it’s the way to go.

No matter what life throws at you, the most important thing is to believe in yourself, try to find at least one positive outcome, it’s enough to move forward.

Learn a new thing, meet a new person, help someone in need ( do anything just one positive act is enough).

Life is cruel in many ways, but rewarding at the same time.
Learn from your own my mistakes, reflect on them, and move forward.

Who doesn’t like to hear a good hero story?

Most good stories follow a similar pattern. There is a golden castle, a king and a beast, there is a hero who slays the dragon and almost dies, but eventually, he finds the mentor and returns to the castle etc.

We are all drawn to good stories because we can somehow relate to it.

But what do stories have to do with marketing? How can we use storytelling in the hospitality business?

Imagine you are a newly hired marketer, you’ve been handed a project of growing the business for the hotel restaurant. It’s not exactly a golden castle, and you are not going to fight the dragons. So how does a brand story fit into traditional storytelling framework?

Well, let’s start with a simple framework you can use to tell stories: theme, hero, villain, beginning, middle and end.

Theme- Think about your what’s the story about, what does your brand do? Is it fine dining, café, or contemporary casual? What makes your restaurant different from the others? What are your restaurant’s USP? You will need all this to build a strong concept.

Hero- Who will be your hero? Is this your brand? Or maybe your restaurant customers will consider themselves taking on the leading role?

Villain- What problems are your customers having that your brand solves?

The beginning –This is when your audience first meets your brand. A good story begins with a hook- a villain makes the appearance stirring the emotions with: “I won’t accept this experience! Your customer becomes aware of the hero- your brand.

The middle- Your customer enters the restaurant and is inspired by buzzing vibe, décor etc. But The villain escalates the negative feelings with “The waiter is unpleasant; I feel rushed to order! The customer decides to take an order, not sure what to expect next. He wonders: “Could this restaurant be the place that respects people?

The end – The restaurants- the hero, is aware of the villain feelings. It defeats the villain by creating the WOW factor.
The customer leaves the restaurant happy, inspired by the culture where respect for customer matters.

Remember, a brand story is not about traditional advertising. No one is interested in your products and service listings. It’s much deeper than that.

It’s about the most important thing of all, your CUSTOMER. It is how you can serve him and solve his problems.

So before you begin with your structure, think about the person who is going to read it. Create a PERSONA.

Your ultimate goal as a Marketer is to relate your story to your customer, and to build a happy and lasting bond with the audience.

Just reflecting on what Seth Godin has said about social media these days: “We are not the customers of Social Media networks; we are their products- they are selling us to someone else”.

I remember early 2006 the birth of Facebook, then Twitter and the launch of Instagram in 2010. Like many others I happily jumped the wagon to share my content, to the point I could not image a world without it. Catering to my online audience in a happy-go-lucky demeanor, I could never see the dark side of it.

Woke up one morning and as I was having my coffee I realized I felt bad about not having as many followers as my friend. I was tempted to push a boost button. On reflection I can now see it was a mistake, and it took me some time to understand that my job is not to make Facebook or Instagram happy.

The old trope of “If it bleeds, it leads” applies to mechanism that Social Media platforms built to sell us, no matter if it’s pushes us to feel anxious, angry or not enough. We are being lured to boost our audience, to have more followers, to pay for adds with the promise it will make us feel better.

But does it really matter how many followers we have, or have many people liked our posts?

Seth Godin says: Embrace the idea of smallest viable audience that sustains you, get comfortable with it and create a meaningful content that helps to change the person for better!

I find it so inspiring!

This is a story about a chairman of a fast growing hotel group and a girl who after 14 years of working abroad came back to her homeland in a search of a great job opportunity.

At the time our story starts, a girl is convinced that her marketing ideas are remarkable and her enthusiasm, and creativity will be a good fit for the companies looking for a marketing executive.

Little does she know what is there for her to learn during the process.

And so the story goes, she meets a chairman, they talk about marketing strategy for his company. She has high hopes and all falls into place until she mentions a broken link to the company’s newsletter.

A broken link to the newsletter disrupts perfectly running dialogue.

A girl tries to convince the chairman why he needs an e-mail newsletter and why resolving an issue of a broken link may lead to many good things for his company.

The big guy is not interested! He tells a girl that his hotels ARE SWAMPED with guests now so he doesn’t need any new customers via silly newsletter.

There is no happy ending to this story, she feels trapped because he doesn’t care.

My thoughts on that:

As a marketer, I believe that nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

Do you think that we can educate an employer to keep him from doing something stupid or ignorant?

Can we afford to lose the chance for a new client just because we CURRENTLY have a high occupancy in the hotel?