Some thoughts about COVID-19 and the future of travel

For three years, we’ve heard rumblings. The ecological cost of leisure travel was unconscionable. Millennials couldn’t wrap their heads around things like paper passports. The era of peak travel was coming to an end.

And then, 2020. And all those rumblings turned into that train from Snowpiercer.

For consumers, 2020 might represent a seismic shift in collective consciousness. But for travel marketers, it’s more like an acceleration of five trends we were already grappling with. (Or, in some cases, trends we hoped would go away if we twiddled our thumbs long enough.)

#1. We are all SI/SO now

In mountain towns, accommodations are sometimes labelled SI/SO. Ski In/Ski Out means no schlepping gear through town. And suddenly, just as important, it means no steamy buses or sardine-tight gondola lines.

Right now, every travel destination needs to ask itself what its own version of SI/SO is. Maybe you’re running accommodations on a resort property or in a walkable downtown area. If so, the answer to this question is obvious. And you should look to create package deals with nearby attractions that let travelers get from their beds to their experience with a minimum of operational friction and human contact.

Smaller Convention and Visitors Bureaus might not find obvious answers, but they’re out there. Americans are craving nostalgia and have an ongoing love affair with mom-and-pop shops. Put those together and you can design a bunch of new experiences, from drive-in concerts to farm-to-sidewalk outdoor dining. And destinations could use streaming technology to sell virtual ticket options to experiences that have limitations on the number of visitors.

The upside to designing SI/SO experiences? People pay more for them.

#2. Travel sans surprises

In one of my talks, I joke that Baby Boomers and Millennials are the same. They both expect someone else to do everything for them. Boomers use travel agents and Millennials download digital concierges, but both groups expect a curated vacation.

This tendency is probably going to pick up steam among Gen X families seeking to quell their anxiety about exposing their kids to coronavirus. And it’s guaranteed to force seniors online. Before 2020, 68 percent of seniors said they bought something online at least once a week, but 80 percent preferred to shop in person. COVID-19 is going to change that, pushing seniors onto the Internet to consume more content and make more purchases. With 99 percent of Boomers planning annual leisure trips, you can expect them to start learning the same digital techniques that have made travel so much more accessible to Millennials.

#3. #StayCloserToHome

America’s always been Roadtrip Nation. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of people taking roadtrips increased by 64 percent. And, according to a 2020 travel trend report released by a global collection of 750 independent hotels, microcations were rising in popularity among all age groups. And that was before coronavirus.

Resonate recently released a survey that stated that even after stay-at-home orders are lifted, only 11 percent of people would feel safe traveling internationally. But 52 percent would feel safe traveling within their own states. As travelers start dipping their toes back in the water, their first excursions are likely to be those they can drive to.

There are two ways to take advantage of this. First, advertise not just to home-state audiences, but your neighbors. Your first customers might be people within just a few miles, who trust you specifically because they see you on their way to work every day. Second, make yourself part of a curated road trip. Create tools that let travelers reach you without airlines, and show them how much fun they can have along the way.

#4. Your face is your passport

Organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF) have long advocated digital identity tools that’d let you manage a profile, collect digital “attestations” of your identity and decide what to share. United States Customs and Border Protection is using facial recognition to match travelers to passports. And reaction has been mixed, with companies like IBM and Amazon being forced to scale back in response to privacy concerns. But fast forward to today. Travelers might start advocating for biometrics so they can get through security without touching anyone.

Back to the WEF. “In a COVID-19 context, a traveler would be able to securely obtain and store trusted, verifiable health credentials such as immunizations or their health status in their digital identity wallets. This would be combined with other trusted, verifiable identity data from public or private entities.”

This is one of those trends that went from being ten years out to two years out in the space of a month. Every time you hand someone your driver's license, paper ticket, phone or passport, you run the risk of contracting a deadly disease. Consumers will be watching to see how fast destinations offer biometric check-in, digital passports, contactless payment, medical screening and robot cleaning. And once early adopters pave the way, the rest of the industry will have to get on board.

#5. Make healthcare part of the pitch

When you work with luxury vacation properties or ski resorts, there’s often a whispered understanding that somewhere in the decision-making process, someone (often referred to as the Chief Mom Officer) will ask “Where do we go if one of our kids breaks a leg?” And when you work with airlines, there’s always that one traveler pulling a Naomi Campbell.

COVID-19 will turn these whispers into shouts. Proof of sanitation and access to emergency care will help consumers feel confident about being away from home again. And destinations should consider sharing that information on their websites.

[Ed. - I wrote this piece for the Heinrich blog, complete with links and sourcing. I'm crossposting here, just for posterity.]

3.5 thoughts from #99conf

I've been planning to write up a long and enormously insightful post based on my experiences at 99u earlier this month. But time is getting away from me. So in lieu of that, here are a few thoughts and stories from my notebook. Basically a teaser for something much better that may never happen.

1. My super power is experimentation. This surprised the hell out of me. So many people I respect - clients, creative teams, account people - have told me my enthusiasm for advertising is why they trust me with their brand. And yes, energy was high on the list. But in the end, the SYPartners superpower test revealed that the biggest benefit I bring to a team is the willingness to throw ideas on the wall without worrying if each one is a guaranteed success.

2. The single most creative thing you can do is change the question. I have heard this thought before. But it was good to hear it repeated by people like Shane Snow. If you keep asking the same questions, you just get incremental improvements on old processes and tired ideas. But if you change the question at the outset, you’ll get lateral jumps into whole new approaches.

3. Anil Dash said the key to promoting diversity is to share your origin story. Not sure how mine will help. But here goes. I was working in a startup agency as its sole copywriter, PR person and sometime-account guy. And at the age of 22, I had no compass for knowing what good work was. My dad, who ran marketing at a big company, introduced me to the president of his agency, Dave Reece. Now, I’m the client’s kid, remember? Reece had every reason to butter me up. But instead he did the nicest thing anyone could have done. He told me my portfolio sucked and I had to swallow my pride and either go back to school or find some creative mentors I could trust. I followed his advice and headed off to Creative Circus. A couple years later, I graduated and came back to thank Reece. But he didn’t respond. And shortly afterwards I found out why. He’d gotten a brain tumor. He died soon afterwards, at the age of 46. Dave impacted a lot of people in Denver, and he’ll never know just how much my thirty-minute talk with him changed the direction of my life.

Bonus thought: Rohan Gunatillake can solve his “annoying voice” problem by getting Kelly McGonigal to read the audio on his mindfulness app. Trust me on this one, folks. I’ve done a lot of radio. It’s going to work.

You don't need a flashlight if you're a lighthouse

Social media analysts like to buzz about how important it is to join the conversation. To search it for verbatims. To monitor and measure and react to it. All that is not unimportant. But I don't think it's the main thing, either.

Our job is not to control consumers' conversations, but to capture their imaginations. And the best way to do that isn't by spinning in the comments or linking on the forums. It is to create content worthy of being passed around.

I had a personal experience with viral content recently. On Aug. 24, 2010 I published this post named "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising." It was subsequently picked up by The Denver Egotist. Then by The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist, The St. Louis Egotist and Design Taxi. It was named post of the month on Only Dead Fish. Quoted on waxmuseum. And linked on Twitter here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And then my eyes glazed over and I broke Google.

I'm not saying my little essay was the equal of Arcade Fire's devastating multiscreen music video. (Linked at PSFK, The Denver Egotist and Contagious Magazine. Go watch it now.) I'm just sharing it because it is a personal story. And the lesson I have learned is this. "Join the conversation if you must. Create it if you can."

Karsh\Hagan launches American Crew Trichology Hair Recovery

Hairloss.americancrew.com and youtube.com/askamericancrew are up and running. Karsh\Hagan created the sites and the 103 videos on them for our client, American Crew. The videos were shot by Roshambo Films and the site was developed by The 1st Movement.

The print campaign that drives men to the site is currently running in GQ and other national magazines. And non-traditional out-of-home is under construction in New York and other big cities. In the meantime, I'm going to post six of my favorite videos. Two new ones will go up on this blog every morning. Enjoy.

Marketing that which does not need to be marketed

I have always wanted to do one of those dense, integrated campaigns that seduces consumers with mystery. I tried once, but the effort was just a stopgap measure performed on my own time and creatively it was a huge flop. The marketing supporting the film of Watchmen is just the sort of thing I wish I could have pulled off. Microsites, games, coffee and much more. But I wonder why one needs to do viral marketing for this film at all. The director of 300 helms the film version of the greatest graphic novel of all time? That's going to get attention from every theater, website, movie critic and entertainment show in the world. And my guess is that the sort of people who use their iPhones to play online multiplayer games are already going to see this film anyway. Maybe they should have spent their budget on TV?

Creating a great viral video is mostly like creating a great video

So there I was, watching The Feed Company's list of 2008's top 10 viral videos on ReelSEO, when I realized that there wasn't anything necessarily "viral" about them. They were just great videos, released in an easily sharable media. If they'd been shorter, many of them wouldn't have looked out of place on TV.

If you want to make a video that goes viral, make a video that kicks ass.

The key to being a great Internet brand is to be a great brand

There have been lots of new media channels invented in the past decade. Ad agencies have a responsibility to be experts in all of them. And the only way to get good at something is to practice. So I have a blog. And a microblog. And a tumblelog. And nevermind any social networks, online communities, and video or photo sharing sites I may be a member of. (They're all aggregated on Friendfeed, if you're interested.)

Recently, I've had this crazy thought. It's sort of unorthodox. So of course I'm going to blog it and let the whole Internet tell me I'm dumb. Here goes:

Web 2.0 is more like a conversation than a media experience. Yes, some of these conversations will be about you. But you shouldn't try to control them. People will start saying nice things about you when you stop being an asshole.

The fact is, no company has ever been able to control the conversations that went on about them. Ever. One hundred and fifty years ago, someone was saying that Joe's Horseshoes suck and someone else was agreeing and suggesting Benjamin's Horseshoes as an alternative.

Today, companies have the ability to see these conversations take place in real time on the Internet. So they want to get involved in them. But that makes as much sense as barging into someone's living room and telling them to stop badmouthing you.

Instead, create something useful and beautiful. A better product, a better experience, a tool or widget, or even an ad. And then trust that your creativity, value, attitude and usefulness will shine through.

I'm not saying that brands should exit the social media space. I'm just saying that being engaged is nice, but being great is better.

New work for ICON Advisers

Karsh\Hagan has new work launching this week for ICON Advisers, including a microsite, banner ads, email, SMS and callcasting.

I was the writer, Dennis was the art director.

"I'm not going to get too deep into who I am. That's what Google is for."

David Armano speaking on design and integration, via Gareth Kay:

It's not or. It's and.

Twenty-eight of the ideas in the Denver 50 used the Internet either as medium or delivery mechanism. Only one of those ideas came from a digital-only agency.

What does that tell you? Maybe that many traditional agencies understand and operate in the online space as well as, or perhaps better than, some digital agencies.

Consider posts at AdPulp and AdWeek:

Digital agencies are improving their skills to help clients strategically, but still fall short in their ability to lead broader marketing and brand strategy, according to a new report by Forrester Research. That inability means Web agencies in the near term will continue to be relegated to the role of implementer, while a client's traditional shop takes the lead, said Brian Haven, a Forrester analyst.

Right. For a traditional agency to get into the interactive space, it only needs to clear two hurdles. The first is expanding its skill set, which is as easy as hiring the right people. The second is accepting that advertising can be story just as easily as it can be spectacle. (See my related post "Agency segmentation: A slideshow" for more on this shift.)

But for a digital agency to encroach on traditional space, it needs to pick up strategic, media and conceptual skills. Plus it needs to become an expert in print, broadcast, guerilla, out-of-home and direct.

Modern marketing isn't about or. It's about and. Lead agencies must be able to concept fresh ideas in all media. Everyone else will be relegated to development roles.

You must participate

Even though I'm a writer, I have a thing for Web 2.0. Social networks, blogs, SMS, widgets, that sort of thing. I like them because they're marketing tools that "don't just show life to people, but make them live."

To invoke Guy Debord in an essay on marketing tactics is to dare the wrath of a hundred thousand college sophomores. Situationist International wasn't known for purchasing Nikes. But maybe it should have been. After all, "Nike killed the three martini lunch." (And who am I quoting there? Fenske?) Without a raft of ads encouraging us to "just do it," those who can take lunches would probably spend them hitting the bar instead of the barbell.

Nike got rich using traditional media to promote an active lifestyle. But everything top-down advertising does, Web 2.0 does better. It lets people connect based on affinity instead of proximity. It lets local actions take place on an international scale. It gives the people access to the powerful. Perhaps best of all, it tests the concept of juristic personhood by daring brands to live up to their legal status.

And for all the good it does, Web 2.0 only has two real downfalls. It immortalizes everyday language, holding it to an impossibly lofty standard. And it encourages content creation so much that it has confused shamelessness and celebrity. (I wrote a despondent essay on the latter issue; someday I may even post it.)

I think most marketing people buy in to the idea that Web 2.0 is an opportunity for brands to engage with consumers. But how many understand the flipside? Web 2.0 is an obligation. Because consumers now expect brands to make life better. And so Burger King creates a game and Target builds a Facebook group and Adidas shoots a practice film and ESPN makes a widget.

See what I'm getting at? Traditional advertising asks consumers to pay a premium for a product based on brand equity. Web 2.0 asks consumers to pay a premium for a product based on brand utility.

Web 2.0 marketing is perhaps something Debord would have welcomed, if he could have forgiven the spectacle of it all. Because while a brand can't make you live, it can now give you tools and opportunities. That's something that a print ad simply can't provide.

Crossposted on Karsh Connect.