A response to my Pomegranate Phone blog entry from NS Come to Life
October 04, 2008 | 2:00 pm
Well, it looks like I've stirred up some interesting debate and some decidedly different opinions than my own when it comes to the Nova Scotia Come to Life campaign for the Pomegranate Phone. I received an email this morning from Stacey Jones-Oxner, from the Come to Life dept at the province thanking me for my blog posting. She had several corrections to my post. Firstly, the campaign is by Come to Life, not Tourism NS which is targeted at "business leaders, senior civil servants, expatriates and media" in "Toronto, Boston, Ottawa and Calgary". Fair enough, I apologize for the discrepancy. Secondly, she also let me know that "[they]'ve received more than 21 thousand visitors to the site in four days and the majority of those visitors are reaching the Nova Scotia site." These are impressive stats. Now I'm not going to retract my post about the fact that the campaign may or may not be hitting the intended audience and maybe some of them are getting to the Nova Scotia site buried inside. But, the Nova Scotia marketing component still feels like an afterthought. It's not tied in enough to the overall campaign and I'd be very interested in seeing exactly what percentage are making it to the NS site and whether or not they're bouncing straight away or what. The numbers are good, but they don't tell the whole story. Anecdotally, most of the people in the industry (and friends and family who are not in the industry) that I've talked to are not getting the connection. And these people are the target market. Perhaps over time, the campaign will bear, uh, fruit, but I'm still undecided as to whether or not the investment of $300,000 is sound. Comments for this post are now closed.
I would like to know how
I would like to know how many of the 21,000 people reaching the Nova Scotia site are staying, for how long, and what they're being asked to do once they get there. I would also like to see the objectives and metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Come to Life campaign. Advertising Nova Scotia to Nova Scotians strikes me as a huge waste of money and I see far too much of it - in this nonsense, and the tourism campaign.
I would be interested in
I would be interested in actually seeing the stats first hand, but I doubt that will ever occur. Also how many are from Nova Scotia?
The government may say all is good however can they back it up?
I guess I'll blog about this soon.
i would be interested to
i would be interested to know how many of those 21,000 visitors were actually nova scotians (like myself) checking out the website after reading about it online or in the local media.
i stuck it through to see what the message was, but i would think that many people would just "x" out of it after a couple of clicks.
to tell the truth, and with due respect to the folks at come to life, it seems like a ridiculous concept to me.
Hi there. I've taken
Hi there. I've taken Carmen's advice and decided to comment here!
You make some really valid points Carmen and while we're really happy with initial webhits the true test will come when we measure perceptions of Nova Scotia.
When Nova Scotia Come to life was first developed, perception research was carried out and followed up in 2007. What do people think of when they think of Nova Scotia? Right now its lobster, coastal, culture, historic and genuine people. We are much more! We have an educated workforce, 11 top notch universities, access to global markets, a safe and balanced lifestyle, a world class communications infrastructure. I could go on and on. That is what Nova Scotia Come to life is working to communicate to some key markets. We'll follow up that perception research in 2010. Those perceptions are starting to change.
And why did we go with the pomegranate? We didn't think blueberry was believable - and remember we didn't want people to know this was tied to Nova Scotia. We wanted people to figure that out on their own. And the Apple was taken. Pomegranate sounded believeable. It is also known as the super fruit right now and is tied to health benefits. That's all from me. I've really enjoyed this discussion - so thanks for allowing me to participate!
In response to your 'When
In response to your 'When internet marketing goes wrong'. I posted a blog about the campaign, from a tourism point of view, and admitted I also thought it was bizarre. See here: http://matthewparsons.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/new-york-video-vs-nova-sc...
I also got a comment within hours from novascotialife.
But I'm actually coming round to thinking it's a pretty good campaign, and these stats would reflect this. Tapping in to the global fascination with mobile phones is actually genius!
Let's see more of them, and even it's not a tourist board, it's something tourist boards should look at.
I say hats off to Stacy
I say hats off to Stacy Jones-Oxner for replying to your post - great to see. Would've loved to see the response in the comments section of the post... but, nevertheless, good stuff.
While the stats from the first four days are impressive, the real measures have to go beyond traffic. After all, if all you wanted was traffic, then make the PORNegranate Phone! Beyond traffic, the real questions are:
How has the conversation shifted surrounding doing business in NS as a result? How many expats return home? How much positive media buzz is generated around the core benefits of the proposition? etc.
Commenters to the original post were somewhat correct... it isn't so much what we in the fish bowl think of the campaign that's important, but rather the tangible results. I loved the fact that many seemed to like the Landlord Lou campaign (which costs WAY less than $300K I should add), but at the end of the day it's all about renting apartments. Full stop. Similarly, the important measure for the Jonzed campaign is if it actually takes positive steps towards reducing binge drinking in NS, not whether we like the Facebook app or the site.
Overall, it will be interesting to watch this latest effort from Come to Life develop and there's likely to be learning in it for all of us. While I remain unconvinced, I'm open to the results eventually proving me wrong.
Here is a thought, there is
Here is a thought, there is a lot of marketing lately that is pushing "buy local" be it produce, services, whatever, so why is Nova Scotia promoting itself with a site based on a fruit that isn't native to the province?