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How to Use Tribal Marketing

By: andrÃ© Vrydagh Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Three steps support the tribal marketing language and help to offer affinitive sense
branding personifies your Destination
Internet has become the tribal medium
emotion comes from tribal sharing

The tribal tourist wants emotional experiences ; he looks for adventures and likes surprises. To seduce this new breed of tourist, the marketing must present affinity experiences where the customer's desire dominates the price story.

Branding personifies your Destination :
Branding adds that bit of soul that strengthens personality. As the central expression of the project, the umbrella brand becomes the heart of the destination strategy.

You can't build a long-lasting brand without first affirming its vision, mission and values. This "brand platform" is the essential foundation; it serves as the central point of reference and the tribal sub-offers personify the originality of the affinitive sense.

The brand platform must then be completed with a comprehensive brand-operational guide that codifies written, visual and graphic elements for the marketing.
The objective of this code is to give strength and consistency to the image, in line with the identity of the destination. Unlike graphic guidelines which can be difficult to implement by the various players involved, a brand code works like a list of trends - open and adaptable in function of the context in which it is used. This code helps to establish a style across all communication elements including key words, expressions, visuals and people.

Internet has become the tribal medium :
Tourism promotion has traditionally been organised around lodging and activities. An approach with affinity thematics tends to diversify by segmenting as much as possible the centres of interest and target groups into sharing communities, thus developing many more motivational concepts of experiences per tribe. In the same way, marketing partnerships diversify sales and communication channels and generate cooperation, mutualisation and co-branding agreements.

In the Internet hypermarket, the style of the brand helps it stand out from the crowd and this is a real challenge for the Tourist Office marketeer.

Emotion comes from tribal sharing :
A literary or cinema success can add a universal dimension to a place lacking clear appeal. Who ever heard of Rosslyn Chappell in Scotland before the publication of Da Vinci Code? The popularity of arctic ice hotels owes their success to a certain Bond, James Bond... The real power comes from adding a supplement of soul.

Tribal sharing adds value to experiences, taking them out of the ordinary run of the mill and creates as great effect on the emotions as brand personality.
This evolution towards tribal network marketing is bringing changes to marketing methods, tools and tourist organisations. It demands a deep understanding of surfers behaviour to evaluate the appeal of experiences carried by the Web.

In other words, the challenge from now for Tourist Offices is to work on emotions and identity to support the Destination brand and help potential visitors want to share and not just buy an offer on sale.