Marketing has always placed a large emphasis on emotions when it comes to selling – How do people ‘feel’ about my brand / experience / product. We spend a lot of time on developing products and solutions that make people ‘feel’ what we would like and as a consequence, hope they ‘do’ what we would like them to do! From a destination marketing perspective, if people ‘feel’ the authentic, diverse and innovative nature of Kenya as a destination, they will visit us more often (the ‘do’ part)! Similarly for a tour company, if they ‘feel’ your warmth and excellence in service, they will give you return business and recommend you to their friends.

I want to deep dive into the thinking that goes through the human mind that drives decision making, relating it to marketing Kenya as a preferred destination. I am not a behavioural economist or psychologist, nor am I an expert in destination marketing. My expertise is based purely on my research, the fact that I ‘sell memories’ for a living as well as my love and appreciation for Kenya as a stunning tourist destination.

It does not take a psychology PhD to know that as humans, we do things that will keep us alive in the most pleasurable way possible i.e. we like doing things that make us happy. How do we decide what these things are? We use our memories to guide us!

There is extensive academic literature on this, and I could quote a bunch of them (I won’t), but in essence, we know that storytelling existed before any language was ever written. We keep countless stories in our memories, unconsciously put into our minds with their sole purpose being to help us make decisions in the present that impact the future. The purpose of memory is to help us choose. Everything from getting stung by a bee to falling in love with the wrong person is stored in our memory banks; experiences of the past are recalled to help us make decisions for the future. Worth noting that just because something is stored in the memory bank and used to make decisions, it does not mean that the decision it makes is always correct! In terms of destination marketing, this interpretation of a memory can have a significant impact on collective perception. Arguably African destinations suffer the memory bias of a long run of poor global news reporting, but this is a whole different topic that I will write about in another thought paper.

Anyway, all very well and good I hear, but what does any of this have to do with marketing Kenya as a destination or in helping a tour company marketing its services? Well everything really, because I would argue the essence of tourism and travel is to help people ‘create memories’. We are all in the ‘memories business’. Research reveals that memorable tourist experiences contribute to favourable tourists’ behaviour with respect to destination loyalty and supports the idea that sensory stimuli that lasts a long time in tourists’ memory is crucial for marketing the destination. We know the Kenyan experience creates a plethora of memories and sensory stimuli. The question is, how do we use the memories created to help sell us? If only there was a way to capture and package memories (spoiler alert – there is!).

The power of storytelling and its ability to sell is well documented. A good storytelling based marketing campaign should spark fond memories, evoking a feeling, which leads to increased interest, brand loyalty and ultimately, a transaction. The story should resonate emotionally with the reader, should be personalised and ‘locally’ told and ideally be multi dimensional in content, with relevant nuances that the reader relates to.

The ‘ideal’ travel destination story would have the tourist as the narrator, with the destination having control of what, when and how it is narrated, so that it highlights the best of what the destination has to offer and but is presented to an audience that is heavily vested in its content. Very few destinations in the world would be able to do this, because there is almost always no way of narrating such a ‘controlled’, personalised story. The closest we get is perhaps theme parks where images of tourist can be captured at various points, but in that case the story is often just a single image of an important moment e.g. a water splash on a roller coaster. Most markets either tell generic destination stories (e.g. 10 things to do in Sardinia) or one so personalised, the destination has no control of content (e.g. a couple’s blog of their trip to Sardinia).

Kenya offers a unique difference. We are one of very few markets that can ‘have our cake and eat it’. We can tell a very personalised story of a tourist’s trip, documenting with great accuracy all the major highlights of the trip. How?

1. Kenya is considered a predictable travel destination – a tourist’s travel itinerary is generally well known months before arrival. Consider this the outline of the ‘story’.
2. Use images of lodges and hotels the traveller is staying as the basic building blocks of the story. Use stock images to showcase the best of these locations.
3. Use the driver or travel guide to take images of the guest while they are enjoying the most memorable parts of their trip e.g. while on safari or enjoying a drink by the campfire.
4. Use PerfectPics to put together a high quality book together, ‘gifted’ to the guest before they depart. Ensure the book is well curated and branded with content that showcases the experiences in their best light.
5. A quality book that balances personal content of the guest as well as their most memorable experiences will be widely shared among the tourists’ inner circle, making them not only the perfect informal on-seller for you, but will also be doing so with content you curated.

To summarise, we know that memories drive decisions and memories are created through stories we capture. Via our ‘Safari’ photobook, Kenya is uniquely positioned as a destination where we can create personalised branded communications that very effectively capture stories that resonate emotionally while conveying tourist’s ‘real’ experience. Very rarely does a destination get presented the chance to have such complete control of the storytelling potential of its product – we can define, create, publish, sell, optimise and profit from the curation of a tourist’s story.

The impact of this opportunity in using ‘insiders’ (tourists who feel at one with a place) to convince ‘outsiders’ (people who consider a destination as alien to them or ‘not for me’), will be subject to my next thought paper. Suffice it to say, this insider / outsider conundrum is perhaps the biggest hurdle destination Kenya needs to overcome to truly maximise its potential as a world class destination. For now, I am excited to hear your emotive, logical, academic or even comic responses to these sentiments!

We know that, as humans, we use memories collected in the past to make decisions for the future. Those memories are stored in our brains in the form of stories, but sometimes the stories we store are distorted or influenced by external perceptions and don’t always lead to optimal decisions. Billions is spent on marketing just so that we can influence human behaviour enough to make someone chose us over our competitors based on how well we tie our brand story into the consumers memory based decision process.

When looking at tourism, people travel to collect memories. They want experiences that make them happy so they can remember them and enjoy the memories that holds. They create stories of these pleasurable memories, store them and use those memories to make decisions in the future. If the story of their trip is retained as a happy, memorable one, the travel destination benefits in two main ways:

1. If the story is well captured, visitors remember the experience more intimately and will be more apt to re-visit the destination and even more importantly;
2. Recommend the destination to others. Visitors in fact become informal tourism brokers through the relaying of their memorable travel experience.

Ensuring that tourists take home good memories is your job, it is what everyone related to tourism in Kenya should be about; and to a large extent is what we as a destination do well. Turning those memories into a tangible product and using that to promote the destination is what I am advocating.

So tourists come, collect great memories and take these back with them. The modern tourist captures these memories via photos and videos on great cameras and phones. What they do with these images is not always clear. Many will share them on their social profiles, some will print out the significant ones, but most just keep them in their digital form on their devices. Even when images are shared, the shared image only matters when there is a story behind it. Stories is what we make up and then use to make decisions in the future. An image can tell a great story, in fact sometimes a single image can capture the essence of a whole trip, but only in the eyes of the beholder.

For memories captured by tourists to be effective in marketing, the story told needs to be explicit to both the ‘narrator’ (traveller) as well as the ‘narratee’ (their family and friends). Relying on just the traveller and their images to tell the story of the destination risks important context being left out, leaving the friends unhinged on their perception of a destination. For a destination to use memories of a traveller to market its offering, it needs to be the ‘author’ of the story told.

Some destinations are fortunate that a simple image can tell a very effective story. A selfie by the Eiffel tower in Paris is very effective in promoting Paris as a tourist destination when shared on social media. That coupled with many generations of stories of Paris as a ‘romantic, must go to’ destination means it will always be an easy and popular destination to visit. Destinations like Paris or London or Disneyland have done a great job over time in creating a collective perception that is well understood. Combine the collective perception with a personal endorsement (the selfie outside the Eiffel tower or Big Ben etc.) and the destination’s marketing is self perpetuating forever.

For a destination like Kenya, a single selfie by Mt Kenya or in the Mara or at Giraffe Manor doesn’t quite cut it. The single image tells a great story to the traveller, but as the collective perception of Kenya is still not very distinct, to a ‘outsider’, Kenya can be a great many things. Many know us for our wildlife and beaches but perceive the country to be poor, 3rd world with basic amenities that are ‘not for me’. A selfie with a Giraffe at Giraffe manor to the ‘outsider’ can be perceived in many ways depending on what they know about us (in general, it will be less than what they know about Paris!). This selfie to someone could be an inspiration to visit Kenya as it tells the story of adventure and intrigue, while to another it says basic and rudimentary. Tell the same story with images of Giraffe Manor, its grounds and iconic breakfast and suddenly the true perception overtakes the pre-built preconceptions. For some markets, telling a fuller story is more important with respect to promotion than it is for others.

If Kenya is ‘unlucky’ that its collective perception is not as well ingrained as Paris or London (does a terrorist attack there have as great a negative reaction as one here?), it is ‘lucky’ that it can tell a complete tourist experience story better than Paris or London can. How we can do this is all part of the magic we have created here at PerfectPics, suffice for you to know that we do all the hard work with creating these stories.

1. We use the tourist’s travel itinerary to create a story outline. This is already painstakingly planned by you in advance!
2. Since we know where the tourists are staying, we can easily start building the story even before they arrive. We can even use some stock images to showcase the best of these locations.
3. Capturing the guests experiencing their magical story is not too hard either. As most Kenyan Safaris are guided, and since we know what the most magical parts of the trip are, we can do all the work for them, letting them put their feet up and enjoy a G&T by the fire (if captured, that image will make it in the book!).
4. We have experienced staff, a dedicated App, plus a powerful backend software to help make books quickly without compromising quality in anyway. We’ll ensure the book is well curated and branded with content that showcases the experiences in their best light (branded with your preferred logo of course!).
5. We can have books ready for the tourist to take back with them on their flight home which could include a picture of them having a bush breakfast just 4 hrs earlier!
6. A quality book that balances personal content of the guest as well as their most memorable experiences will be wildly shared among the tourists’ inner circle, making them not only the perfect informal on seller for you, but will also be doing so with content you curated.

We know that Kenya is a spectacular destination. Tourists come for a ‘magical’ experience and in most cases I believe we over deliver. Currently, they take back special memories and thousands of images, whether they truly enjoy the memories captured in their photos is open to debate (how often do you relook at holiday images you took? Bet you don’t do it as often as you’d like!). Packaging their magical experience in a photo based book would not only be very appreciated, it would allow them to use it to on-sell their experience to some of those back home that are perhaps a bit more sceptical. Turning sceptics to paying customers is not easy (I can write a whole book on that!), but when opportunities present themselves to make this happen, they should be taken. They should be taken even more so if the cost of that book is borne by the tourist, while the ‘author’ and beneficiary of that book is you and your travel business!