In an age when more people are preferring to spend money on experiences over things and are using online reviews and apps to plan and highlight their excursions, the travel and tourism industry – more than ever – needs to be creative and open to adopting new technologies. However, adjusting to a rapidly changing industry is not easy, and GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ (GWR) knows this first-hand.
Recently, I attended the Texas Travel Summit, where Paul O’Neill, VP Creative, spoke about Embracing Disruption: Five Lessons Learned in Reinventing Business as Usual and how GWR evolved from a one-product best-selling book company to a company with multiple revenue streams and a global IP brand presence.
We had to navigate through uncertainty and adapt to a quickly digitizing and evolving market. Here are five key lessons we learned along the way and how you can apply them to your business:
1. Adapt
Just as online comparison sites and the sharing economies have transformed travel and tourism forever, it was the launch of the Amazon Kindle in 2007 that disrupted us and the rest of the publishing industry. As a response to the shifting market, Paul spearheaded two new business initiatives: pop-up live record breaking and creative record consultancy. In the beginning, there was a lot of internal resistance to adopting these new ideas. To get them off the ground, he gained support from top leadership - without it, these new concepts would not have made it into reality.
Had we not diversified or adapted our business, GWR would have remained stagnant and we'd have a much smaller global footprint today. These new ventures sparked growth that have since led to the opening of offices in Japan, China, Latin America, and the Middle East.
So, as you adapt your business to uncertain times, remember: don't be afraid to revamp traditional brand strategies, find open hearts and minds in the form of influential supporters and allies within your company, expect some internal resistance and power through it.
2. Know Yourself
Most businesses know what they do, but the question businesses need to ask themselves is: what is it about my brand that sets me apart from the crowd? People have bought our book not because we’re the best publisher, but because they are fascinated with record-breaking and love the stories they tell. Forward-thinking PR and Marketing agencies first picked up on this by realizing that record attempts could be a unique, newsworthy way to tell an old or new story. After these agencies approached us to consultant on record-breaking stunts, we realized we may have found a new revenue stream for our brand. Ten years later, this consultancy business has led us to working with 70% of Fortune 500s, top universities, nonprofits and charities of all sizes.
One company who “knows itself” as a travel brand is WestJet Airlines – they created a campaign to reinforce “what sets us apart” in their audiences’ minds and tried something different. WestJet knew it wasn’t just in the airline business, it was in the business of delighting and surprising customers and making sure they love the journey to their destination. To reinforce this message, they decided to surprise their Vegas-bound passengers with an unforgettable record-breaking experience.
Inspired by the roulette wheel, WestJet created an illuminated prize wheel to surprise their Vegas-bound passengers with a spiraling light-show lottery. Flying over the desert, passengers looked out their windows and checked their seat number – the person whose seat number appears in the giant LED wheel would win a Vegas trip-of-a-lifetime. The memorable campaign resulted in WestJet achieving two Guinness world record titles: Greatest light output in a projected image and Largest circular projection. The activation was a hit with passengers, went viral online, and ultimately, set WestJet apart as a unique brand in the minds of its customers.
Knowing ourselves as a brand and listening to customers is what helped us notice the new business opportunities in front of us. If you’re looking to make big changes to stay relevant: listen to your customers – they will tell you why they like you and want to work with you – and know what sets you apart.
3. Experiment
Experimentation can be a challenging strategy to implement in a business context – you take risks that sometimes work out, and other times they don’t. For us, while our brand innately generates interesting and engaging content, we’re constantly learning and adjusting our social media strategy to the constant evolving digital landscape.
For instance, we tested Pinterest, thinking the platform would be a great fit for GWR because one of its key demographics is moms who would buy our book for their children. However, over time we realized that the nature of how Pinterest’s content is curated – being categorized into interest boards – complicated how our eclectic content would be organized and shared. Our YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok accounts, on the other hand, have all become top performers. With millions of fans on each, our digital and content teams have worked hard testing and developing for each social media channel and continue expanding on what content performs best.
Paul noted that building our creative consultancy also has involved a fair amount of experimentation, whether it’s in the form of developing new products or creating record-breaking solutions for clients who want something completely new. In the process, even concepts as simple as pop-up live record-breaking have gone through multiple iterations. Though the premise is simple – offer record-breaking challenge stations that give people an opportunity to try breaking a record and have fun – there is still ongoing experimentation and improvement on the concept.
So, when experimenting, go in knowledgeable and brave: acknowledge the risks involved, make the best use of the resources available to you at the time, and remember that you may still face resistance.
4. Organize
In order to renew your brand and do things differently, you have to be different, and that often means re-examining internal team structures. In order to reinvent GWR into a creative experiential consultancy to better support our clients, we’ve also had to re-organize ourselves to establish a more cross-functional creative process, allowing for Account Managers, Records Executives, and creative teams to work more efficiently together. Merging analytical, technical, and creative minds, we created collaborative project teams to curate record concepts and multi-channel campaign ideas for our clients.
As you adapt and experiment with change, remember that to do different, you’ll often need to be different – review your business and team strategies often, and organize your structure to best support your customers.
An example of how travel and tourism companies can re-organize for the better is the City of Portsmouth, Ohio. Due to the region’s opioid epidemic, the city wanted to improve its reputation by doing something different to bring the community together, clean up neighborhoods, make them safer, and inspire visitor interest in Portsmouth. Creating the Plant Portsmouth campaign, the city organized more than 1,400 people on one day to attempt the record title for Most people potting plants simultaneously. The initiative garnered tons of positive media coverage and interest from surrounding communities, and to continue efforts to reorganize, the City of Portsmouth established a team of “town ambassadors” volunteers to ensure the city remains clean and safe.
5. Rinse and Repeat
As technologies constantly evolve and disrupt industries, our openness to change and testing of new ideas continue. Over the past ten years of reinvention, we’ve learned that it’s not only new product offerings or revenue streams we need to keep an eye on but also the latest trends. Remaining true to our brand, we’ve launched GWR attractions in locations like Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and are developing new traveling exhibitions to educate, inspire, and amaze. We’re also continuing to expand our social media footprint to new platforms such as Tik Tok so that we can reach even more of our audiences.
Disruption doesn’t stand still and neither should any of us. As Paul shared at the Texas Travel Summit: pay attention to changes and trends, then adapt, experiment, organize, work through the resistance, and repeat the process again and again.
Need help brainstorming new, creative ideas for your next PR or marketing campaign? Reach out and let's chat about how we can make your campaign Officially Amazing™
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