What Happens in South Africa, Stays in South Africa: What the South African Tourism Industry Can Learn from Las Vegas About Marketing
I’m sure you’ve seen Las Vegas’ most recent TV campaign — there’s the guy who locks himself out of his hotel room, resulting in a wild journey through the casinos, restaurants and nightlife of the Strip, only to wind up right back in front of his hotel room door the next morning still without a key. Or the one with the guy being waited on and chauffeured around town, from the pool to the ice bar to the restaurant, only to switch roles with his “driver” for the night — okay, my turn. These commercials are effective because they transport you, the viewer, to a life you know you couldn’t, shouldn’t and wouldn’t live for a very long time, but one that you would definitely LOVE to assume for a few hours. You know that game we always play — if you could be anyone for the day, who would it be?
Las Vegas has reinvented itself and its image in a large part by answering that hypothetical question via its commercials. I mean c’mon, who wouldn’t want to be a rock star for the day?! The best part about these commercials: they show you that yes, you too can live that life, you can experience that feeling, you can be that rock star, even if only for one night, and here’s how — come to Vegas!
Vegas city officials do not advertise the gambling per se, or the partying, or the Cirque du Soleil shows, or any number of vices/attractions Vegas is known for. Instead, they advertise Las Vegas, the journey. It’s marketed as a destination, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live an oversized lifestyle you’ve always dreamed, one that you can never live for the rest of your life, but one that you can realistically and rather easily assume, if only for a few days, maybe even a few hours (or weeks) if you’re really ambitious.
And it’s proven to be an effective strategy. Vegas tourism statistics have consistently increased from 1990–2007, with only one decline resulting from the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. In 2009, Las Vegas reported 36.4 million visitors with a hotel occupancy rate 55% above the national average. The Las Vegas ad campaign “What Happens in Vegas” is known as “one of the most successful destination campaigns in history”. But I have even better proof, a real-life example of its efficacy. As we walked through the Johannesburg airport, an airport employee struck up a conversation with our party. Noticing that we were foreigners, he asked if we could spare some time to chat. This young man in his early twenties had never traveled outside of Johannesburg, let alone South Africa as a country, yet upon learning that we were visiting from the USA, one of the first questions he asked: “Is it true what they say, that what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas?!”
The most effective sales strategy is not to sell you on a tangible good — no one looks at a Nintendo Wii and thinks to themselves, I have to have that innovative piece of technology that has been expertly manufactured and highly engineered. No, we are sold on the intangible. We look at that small white box and replay the commercials of a family golfing against each other in the living room, a brother and sister having a virtual dance off in front of the TV, or two friends bumping into furniture as they try to hit a backhand stroke in their video tennis match. Nintendo is selling you an experience, a few hours’ diversion from life’s stresses.
In my opinion, South Africa (and to a larger extent, Africa in general) should take a cue from the Las Vegas playbook and appeal to the emotional pull of an African experience. Let’s face it — Vegas is Vegas. There’s only one Las Vegas in the world — it is the standard by which all other casinos judge themselves. There are quite a few popular casinos in South Africa, but every time we would ask the locals if they were worth visiting, their response was “Well, it’s not Las Vegas, but it will do”.
South Africa has that same uniqueness, that same ability to serve as THE definition of an experience. Safari in Africa is unmatched in the world. Where else can you be sitting in an open-air safari vehicle — no doors, no roof — ten feet from a full grown male lion who’s pacing back and forth near his buffalo kill as a growing pack of hyenas slowly encroaches?
Where else can you dine in a world-class restaurant and 30 minutes later be driving cautiously to avoid the baboons on the side of the road? Well in Cape Town, you can dine along the highly popular Long Street, hop in your car and drive to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, where the only things more distracting than the view of the Table Mountains are the signs on the side of the road informing you that baboons are dangerous and should not be fed (still funny to me!!).
I remember years ago seeing those tiny travel ads you find in the back of some magazines (you know the ones next to the ads for sex toy and muscle enhancers), and there was a picture of two people in a small riverboat. Next to the boat, standing on land was a herd of wild elephants grazing as though the boat was invisible. I recall seeing that picture and thinking to myself, I wish I could be in that boat with an elephant looking down on me, and if I were lucky, a family of hippos would be swimming by. And you know what — while at the Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe/Zambia border, we opted for a day trip to the Chobe National Park in Botswana (thanks Everlyn at Dulenj Tours!). As we cruised the Chobe River, my dream of experiencing the rush of pulling up alongside an elephant family in a riverboat was fulfilled way more than once, and to top it off, there were plenty of hippos in the surrounding area!
The best experiences engage and engulf all five of your senses. Think about it — some restaurants may have great food, others may have a cool vibe, some may play live music, but the best, your favorite, caters to your sense of smell, taste, touch, sight and sound. You can smell the food cooking in the kitchen, you can taste your favorite dish, you can hear the chatter of people and live music, you can touch the linens and the silverware, and you can see the food, the crowd, the band. A restaurant with good food but no atmosphere is a place to go when you’re hungry. A dive bar where everyone knows your name, you go to for a drink. A restaurant with tons of atmosphere but just so-so food might as well be a club or a sports bar. But your favorite restaurant, the place you go to for special occasions, it encapsulates each and every one of those. And that’s why you go there to celebrate — it reminds you of other good memories, of happy times.
And nowhere assaults (in a good way) each of your senses quite like Africa. The smell of Africa — the native wildlife in the bush of Madikwe, the sea salt from the beaches of Camps Bay, the restaurants along the V&A waterfront in Cape Town. The sound of Africa — guessing which animal is making that howl at night, the grunt of a male lion as he lies next to the truck, the various dialects of the native South Africans. The feel of Africa — the red dirt on your clothes after an early morning game drive to a watering hole, the soft fur of a young male white lion, the spray from the riverboat as you cruise the Zambezi River at sunset. The taste of Africa — Amarula in your morning coffee, Ostrich biltong (similar to our beef jerky), Mampoer (South African moonshine), Springbok sausage at breakfast. And the sight of Africa — ahhhh, the sights! The sight of the first lion you’ve ever seen outside the confines of a zoo, the sight of an adult female rhino protecting her calf, more elephants than you can count surrounding the carcass of a recently-deceased elephant as though it were a funeral, a baby baboon clutching to its mother, a full-grown hippo opening its wide mouth as its sharp teeth protrude as it yawns…
These are the senses of South Africa, yet the country could do better job of positioning itself in that light to the public. When people think of “Africa”, they still think poor infrastructure, high crime and HIV, unstable governments, wild animals roaming the city streets. Although South Africa is still considered a developing country and so those issues do exist to some extent, its challenges are no more threatening than America’s own warts (crime, racism, poverty, disease, etc.) The country especially needs to capitalize right now on the positive experiences American tourists are bringing back with them post-World Cup.
Sundowners in the bush — there is nothing like watching the African sun sink into a wide-open plain with a Klipdrift and Coke in hand. Night game drives — there is nothing like watching, hearing and smelling a pack of hyenas feeding on a buffalo kill 20 feet from your vehicle in the dark of the night. Or driving your VERY compact rental car through a game reserve and seeing massive bull elephants and giraffes on the side of the road. Or walking through the grounds of your hotel while being cautious not to disturb the warthogs or the family of baboons who also roam the hotel grounds. Or to sit by a waterhole and watch a two-month old baby elephant play in the water with his elephant family, only to scamper once a group of Cape buffalo approach the area.
Just like Vegas, South Africa is an experience, a chance to live a different life just like the one you’ve seen on TV or in the magazine. South Africa can do so much more to market itself, its treasures, its uniqueness as one of the only places in the world where you can do these things, live this life, be this person, even if only for a few days. Like Vegas, it too can create a feeling, it can be a memory that you look forward to even while you’re still experiencing it. South Africa could benefit by following in Las Vegas’ footsteps by conveying the sense that these things that happen in South Africa, can only happen in South Africa.
Editor’s note: this article was originally posted in 2010 on the official company blog for Jippidy.com.
