One of my buddies who is a graphic designer is of the opinion that c'est un plaisir has probably been inspired by BMW's Sheer Driving Pleasure. He may have a point here.
Now, if we Mauritians don't understand what the payoff line means who will?
Thursday, October 15, 2009
How To Tell That the Branding Exercise Has Failed
Easy. One of the persons closely associated with it had to explain it all in a full-length interview. If the job had been well done no explanation would have been necessary. When you see Nokia, Connecting People do you need an idiot's paragraph to understand what it means?
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The Acanchi lady said on television that the french words were interchangeable with their English translation depending on which circumstances the branding is used! This is another proof of the exercise's failure. In any case Mauritius is condemned to live with a sub-standard image unless a harakiri happens.
Any clue about why the media is not putting the local company which designed the logo in the limelight?
To TamTam: From a legal standpoint the contract was between the Government of Mauritius and Acanchi, as far as I know.
About the local company: they ran a rather misleading ad about winning bronze in the Loerie Awards: they should have specified in which category they won (ADVERTISING: OUTDOOR & AMBIENT - AMBIENT MEDIA
) as some 223 awards were given. Get the whole picture here.
Safaraz Saha mentioned in his comments in Le Mauricien (07/11/09) that the US $40m = 5% of the branding budget, ie, another US $760m remained to be embuzzled. See hereunder the text:
MR DULLOO'S COMMENTS
Mauritius, what a displeasure !
Read with keen interest the comments of Mr Anand Dulloo on branding Mauritius. Amazed ! Yes, I am amazed how he explains with great simplicity and with ease the abc of branding. Contrary to the pomposity and not meant to be assimilated explanations provided by Fiona Gilmore's team as well as the pretentious wind-breaking of the Manager of Branding Mauritius, branding is demystified by Mr Dulloo, whose suggestion of "hospitable Mauritius" is supported by very down to earth justifications that are illustrated with factual evidences of the attributes of Mauritius.
Adding insult to injury, the fellow offers free of charge (no consultancy fees, no conception fees, no cut and paste fees, etc) a branding slogan that is realistic and "100% pure" Mauritian.
Oh, this is Mauritius. Locals are second class. Aliens (this is how the USA and Japan officially treat foreigners) are demi-gods. No wonder so many "insultant-consultants" queuing up at the door of Ministry of Tourism to take the hand watch of Hon Xavier Duval to tell him the time.
Greed is just in eating ! Forty millions rupees, that's only 5%. A bill of Rs 800 millions is cooking up for the promotion of Pieter Both as an ICON of the Alliance Sociale (AS) Government.
No wonder the Secretary General of a partner of the AS is saying : Thank you Prime Minister.
Safaraz Safa
safa.safaraz@hotmail.com
Normally, a branding exercise needs to be carefully constructed around two models:
(1) Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism: Here, the model focusses on traits of human personality that can be attributed to the brand:
- Brand inner values (cultural facet)
- Brand relationship facet (its style of behavior, of conduct)
- Brand-reflected consumer facet
- Brand physical facet (its material distinguishing traits)
Where the local exercise failed was obviously:
- brand-reflected facet: did people really connect to a dual-language slogan? When in actual fact call centres need to train their operators to properly talk English and French, both for style AND grammar, it is obvious that we are not, as we may often boast, bilingual. Moreover, our smile that foreigners feel to be warm are actually, let's face it, warm only to them, not among ourselves... Just check it when you walk in the 'magasin' of any arcade in any town/village of our dear Dodoland. So, the choice of a dual-language was based on a wrong assumption that reflected badly like a mirror magnifying a super model's imperfections on her face...
- Brand physical facet: is it really a pleasure to be in Mauritius? Especially at the time that the slogan was made public? No-one liked it (despite numerous explanatory interviews in all newspapers and the self-congratulatory posture of their creators, experts raised eyebrows on how they could have missed our key-selling points, and even the press which traditionally covers glamour events slammed its launching with uncanny pleasure, unfairly pin-pointing to the expenses (gato-pima and samoussa party for 4 million for the launching, when it's actually a normal industry standard).
Two out of six dimensions down, with a logo that smacks either lameness or plagiarism, you can't bet much on that horse...
(2) Aaker’s Brand Personality Dimensions: The model describes the profile of a brand by using an analogy with a human being, and the 5 core dimensions and their facets are:
- Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful)
- Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date)
- Competence (reliable, intelligent, successful)
- Sophistication (upper class, charming)
- Ruggedness (outdoorsy, tough)
The ones where Dodoland failed are obviously on
- Excitement (yes, the old / ubiquitous dodo and SSR were dumped, but a mountain that only locals know about...? Where about about key selling points: beaches, sand, warm welcome, etc?) and
- Sincerity (how far are Dodolanders fully bi-lingual, and how many tourists fully bi-lingual like those from Montreal? Did the Acanchi people consult our linguists at any time? Conduct market surveys? Propose some 'jeux-concours' to our school-goers to test their prowess at imagining their own country in own word, i.e., ensure the connection between the people and their homeland? Never...
Ceci explique celà.
After the “Mauritius, C’est un Plaisir” fiasco, a differentiated / market-specific communication strategy was initiated by the previous minister since May 2010, and results spoke for themselves
Now that the new (and former, until before May 2010 elections) minister of tourism favours the previous branding strategy, guess where the results are going to in the near future...
More pleasure to come?
30 million for a logo? Like i've commented almost everywhere else, a national competition with a mere 1 million prize would have generated better logos with far more sense and taste...
Anyway, we Mauritians are at fault to elect @##% like that :)
@ reena.dkl
Go figure why Robert is insisting otherwise...
@ akaugo...
You can;t explain why some people are plain stupid...so let them be..
Dear Kozelidir afficionados, did you know that there now exists a "Mauritius Blue"?
Hey, if it was possible, guess how much we could have reaped by registering our "Mauritius" as a trade mark...?
Paul Jones shares with us how he's been making an increasing number of Chinese tourists comfortable at his hotels. And why we should rebrand.
Good thing we're starting afresh.
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