The Power of Brand Storytelling in Tourism Marketing
Angela Wu: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the first session of the third and final course of the Belize Tourism Futures series. This course is called Building Resilient Branding and Community Collaboration. Today's focus is on the power of storytelling in branding. My name is Angela from Belizing, and I will be your host for today's session. So as you know, the Belize Tourism Futures series aims to transform the tourism industry by fostering innovation and sustainability.
This initiative is inspired by Lorenzo's dedication to Belize's economic growth and is supported by the Emergent Ventures Grant from George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Our trainer for today is Kelsey Hood. She's an experienced marketing professional specializing in strategic communications, digital media, and content creation. Currently, she is the Marketing Manager at Digital Main Street.
Kelsey leverages storytelling to build brand awareness and drive engagement across diverse audiences. With a background in developing data driven campaigns that inspire action and empower local businesses, Kelsey is passionate about using branding to connect with and support thriving communities. Kelsey Hood: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me today. And thanks again, Angela, for the wonderful introduction.
Like Angela mentioned, my name is Kelsey Hood, and today we're going to talk about storytelling in branding and marketing. So just to start, I'd like to share a little bit about myself. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but I was raised in Toronto where I lived until I was 18. I then moved to Kingston to attend Queen's University where I have a degree in media and I have been in Kingston ever since.
I want to start out this by saying I'm not a tourism expert, and I haven't worked in the tourism industry, but I am incredibly passionate about where I live, and much of my career has involved supporting local businesses, working directly with tourism organizations, which both play a huge role in the economic vitality of our community. In my previous role, I worked for the Downtown Kingston Business Association, where we collaborated closely with Kingston's tourism organizations on initiatives, events, and marketing that benefited both local businesses and visitors that flock to Kingston. Like Angela mentioned, I currently work for Digital Main Street with Lorenzo, and in this role, I champion the success of small businesses and their digital adoption. As the Marketing Manager at Digital Main Street, it's my job to oversee our brand management, from social media to our website, to telling the stories of the businesses we support, and the stories of the people that work for our organization.
Beyond my work, on the weekends, you can often find me with my husband and dog exploring local farmers markets, vintage shops, and the many hidden gems that we have in Kingston and the surrounding areas. So today, we're going to talk about storytelling, branding and marketing, and we're going to focus on branding, the role of storytelling in branding and marketing, and then we're going to look at a real life example in Kingston. Let's dive in. So, we're going to start at the very beginning and talk about what a brand really is. A brand is the identity of your company or organization, product, person, or place. Your brand is the essence of who you are and what you are.
Think about how we as individuals, especially celebrities and influencers. Branding, on the other hand, is how you communicate that identity and intentionally shape how it's perceived by others. Branding is an ongoing process. It's not finite. It occurs through every interaction that you have with your audience or your customers. This includes your packaging of a product, the design of your website, your social media presence.
The tone of voice that you use in your email communications, your advertisements, and it's the story that you tell about your brand. In essence, your brand and branding are woven into everything you do. Beyond logos and color schemes, The heart of a brand lies in the narrative and the story that it tells. Imagine your brand as a person. Your brand is the essence of what makes you human. It's not just your hair color, eye color, or where you come from.
It's the values that you stand for, your reputation, and the essence of who you are. It's the core of your identity. Your branding is how you present that identity to the world. It's how you dress, how you do your hair, the photos that you post on Instagram, or even the jokes that you make and the way that you speak. It's the visual and communicative choices you make to express, and shape your identity.
Your storytelling is like your personality and action. It's how you interact with the world. It's how you communicate and create emotional connections. Storytelling is not just about telling others who you are. It's about inviting people or customers to share in your journey and make them feel like they're a part of your story.
Storytelling gives your brand dimension and authenticity by bringing abstract qualities to life and showing how your brand does things, not just telling. Ultimately, successful branding and storytelling are not just about building awareness, they're about fostering trust and loyalty and creating a sense of belonging for your customers. But what sets great storytelling apart? In essence, it's how well you know your audience. Storytelling is only a powerful tool when it resonates with the right people, those who will connect with it, relate to it, and be moved to take action. To achieve this result, you need to start with having a deep understanding of your customers.
You need to understand their values, their pain points, their interests, their goals, really feel like you know them on a personal level. Only then is it possible for you to craft stories and tell stories that they want to be a part of. Stories that will inspire them to engage with your brand and become customers, or in this case visitors.
Let's look at an example. Imagine a travel agency creating a campaign aimed at promoting their new adventure focused travel trip. However, the story they tell in their ads features a couple on a luxurious vacation with serene beaches and spa days. While that campaign might appeal to some travelers, it misses the mark for the adventure seekers who would be looking for an adventure travel destination.
The disconnect happens because the story doesn't match the interests or desires of the intended audience. As a result, the storytelling fails to engage the very people it's meant to attract. This leads to a wasted marketing effort. It's also important that your story is authentic and true to who you are as a brand.
Telling a story that doesn't align with your brand and doesn't align with your values, falsely promoting aspects that don't match your offering can lead to disengagement and actually end up harming your brand's reputation. Let's return to the example of a tourism company. Let's say that this company typically caters to those adventure seeker travelers. Imagine this same, the same tourism company suddenly launching this campaign promoting a luxury vacation. This story would feel completely out of place for their audience and customers that know them as the Adventure Travel Destination Tourism Agency.
For their established customers, this creates confusion and distrust. Even luxury travelers, who might be attracted to the images and the ad, If you're a fan of the high end resort, you would be disappointed to discover that the company's actual offerings are much more rugged and adventure focused. This mismatch could damage the company's credibility with both audiences. By trying to tell a story that doesn't reflect who you really are, you risk losing your loyal customer base. and gaining a reputation for being inauthentic. Remember, consumers and customers are smart and they have options.
They are very quick to spot when something feels fabricated or distruthful. Your story should reflect your brand's truth to build your credibility and trust. We're now going to talk about something I'm very passionate about, which is the place that I live. And we're going to talk about a real, some real life examples that I see in the city around me.
I moved to Kingston when I was 18 and knew very little about the city. Over 10 years later, I'm still here. I'm a proud resident, homeowner, and an active member of the community. To give you a little bit of context, as I'm sure there's some of you who have never even heard of Kingston, Kingston was first settled in the 1600s on First Nations lands called Cataraqui. It was later named Kingstown in honour of King George III before being shortened to Kingston in 1788.
It was Canada's first capital from 1841 to 1844. Kingston has a unique geographic layout. It's at the junction of three major waterways in Ontario.
Lake Ontario, the historic Rideau Canal, and the St. Lawrence River, which is home to the renowned A Thousand Islands. Kingston is home to three post secondary institutions, a military base, and is conveniently located between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, all major Ontario cities, and is an hour away from the U. S. border.
Something fun and unique about Kingston is that it has the most restaurants per capita in Canada, making it a foodie's paradise. Now that you know a bit more about Kingston's history, let's dive into Tourism Kingston's brand. This brand has been adopted by the city, the Economic Development Agency, and the Downtown Business Association. I want to emphasize I don't work for Tourism Kingston, but I admire and resonate with the branding they have created around this city, because it authentically represents its history. while crafting a story that entices visitors. So that's why we're going to explore it as a case study today.
Tourism Kingston promotes the city as an authentically hip, culturally vibrant, and constantly evolving destination. Their brand focuses on Kingston's rich history, Canada's first capital, its thriving culture, and distinct local experiences. The brand they create is evident in their marketing, social media, and their web presence, and like I mentioned, is so strong it's been adopted by most agencies in Kingston.
What makes their approach especially effective, is how they use storytelling in their branding and marketing to invite visitors to experience Kingston on a deeper level. As you can see, these are just some screenshots from the Kingston website. You can truly feel their brand and start to see the story come to life.
Before we take a look at some specific examples at how Tourism Kingston uses storytelling, I want to take a look first at a mock up visitor persona. Like I said, all storytelling starts with the customer. Because I'm not privy to any of the data or knowledge of what our visitors look like, I'm going to use my best guess.
Let me introduce you to a fictional character I've created to highlight a specific audience. Meet Meredith Stampville. Meredith is a 49 year old HR manager living in Toronto with her dog. She's youthful, artsy, and social. In her free time, she enjoys art classes, Yoga, dining out with friends, and exploring new culinary experiences. Meredith has recently re entered the dating scene and is excited about traveling, especially locally, because she likes to stay close to home, where she can always bring her dog with her.
She wants to experience new things and is interested in food focused travel. Her goals are exploration, and she's always seeking out new experiences, especially ones that encompass food. As someone who's entering a new chapter in her life, Meredith is excited to explore new experiences and meet new people. She's eager to expand her social circle and potentially find a romantic partner. Meredith, is experience driven.
She values meaningful, quality experiences. She loves connecting with others in a genuine way. She's an ethical consumer. Sustainability matters to her. She supports eco- friendly businesses, but also wants quality over quantity, preferring local artisanal and thoughtfully crafted products over mass market options.
Now that we have a good understanding of who our potential visitor might be, we can start to tell stories directly for them. Storytelling for somebody like Meredith would emphasize Kingston's local producers, unique food experiences, and its creative community oriented vibe. Kingston's brand can connect with her by highlighting things like farm to table dining, cooking classes, and intimate food festivals. Let's assume Meredith is planning a trip and considers Kingston. When she visits the Tourism Kingston website or social media pages, she doesn't just get information or lists or a directory.
She is drawn into a story. The itineraries on the site are crafted as narratives. They don't just list things to do, they create a story of a day in Kingston. For example, they might suggest starting the day with brunch at a waterfront cafe, or spending the afternoon at an art gallery. and ending the day at a farm to table restaurant.
Tourism Kingston also collaborates with the Kingston Accommodation Partners, Downtown Kingston, and local restaurants to create special culinary events, taking it beyond marketing. Imagine a dinner series where the city's top chefs each create a unique menu inspired by local ingredients. That is, in fact, something that Tourism Kingston does. Meredith would love this one of a kind experience that connects her two people and the heart of Kingston's food scene.
Kingston and Tourism Kingston doesn't just tell Meredith what to do. But they paint a picture of her time in the city and how that might look and feel. They use influencers and share authentic user generated content to tell a story from real travelers perspectives. By engaging and watching a point of view video of a visitor's Mercatus Meredith gets a real sense of what her own experience might be like. These stories create that emotional connection, making Meredith more likely to choose Kingston for her next getaway, because she can already see herself there and wants to be a part of the story.
In all of these efforts, Kingston weaves storytelling into every aspect of their marketing. They don't just provide information, they create a rich, immersive experience that leaves a lasting impression. Their storytelling makes you want to be a part of the journey. Not just read about it. That's the true power of storytelling in tourism marketing, and the power and importance of knowing your customer.
If we were telling these stories to somebody that wasn't interested in culinary experiences, we would have to find another story that resonated to them. If Kingston didn't have the most amount of restaurants per capita, or a true culinary experience, then it wouldn't make sense to promote this story. Your brand is Belize.
As you think about branding and storytelling for a destination like Belize, it's important to ask yourself, what is the story of Belize? What stories do your potential visitors want to be a part of? How can you bring that story to life through storytelling? How can you tell stories in an authentic way? And how do you use them to attract visitors? Storytelling uses narratives to create an emotional value driven connection between your customers and your brand. But remember, storytelling only becomes powerful when it resonates with the right customer. You need to get to know your customers. Because only then can you craft stories that they want to be a part of.
Stories that will inspire them to engage with your brand and become loyal brand advocates. But authenticity is key. Your story needs to reflect who you are, your identities, your offerings, what you can provide to build trust and lasting connections. The stories that you tell as a brand or as a place are your most powerful tool for connecting with your audience. When done correctly, branding and storytelling helps shape perceptions, evoke emotions, and inspire actions.
Think of your storytelling like that thread that weaves through every marketing, branding, and touchpoint that you have, from your website and your social media to the experiences that you deliver. It's more than just marketing, it's about staying true to who you are and consistently showing up for your audience in a meaningful way. As you leave today, I'm going to remind you to consider your brand. Consider Belize. Consider your branding and the story you want to tell visitors.
How can you tell that story authentically to connect with the right audience and inspire visitors? Thank you. Just give me one second so that I can stop or exit my thing and then I'll be able to see Lorenzo for the Q& A. Unless you want me, do you want me to leave that slide on the screen, Lorenzo? Lorenzo Gonzalez: When you leave the slide, can you still see me? Kelsey Hood: I can't, that's the only thing. And I want to be able to see you.
Lorenzo Gonzalez: Maybe, Angela can share the final, Q& A. Kelsey Hood: That would be wonderful. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah, this is great. If you have any questions about the presentation as a whole, please feel free to ask, this is your opportunity. You can type it into the chat and we can ask Kelsey live or you can request to be unmuted and ask the question but to start, I will ask one question to Kelsey, which it's always top of mind for me.
So a common issue that I see when people are marketing Belize is that resorts after resort, creating the same stories online, they have these blog posts, and it's the same blog posts as in, as every other resort has, and some of these resorts are, on the beach, on a remote island or in the jungle, but yet they're writing the exact word for word stories online. I don't understand exactly why they keep doing this, but it's a common issue. What do you recommend as a good strategy for telling the story about your hotel, about your resort, about your tour operator? How do you determine what are the things that you want to talk about, and how do you differentiate yourself from others? Kelsey Hood: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think it's relevant because obviously if we see somebody doing something and they're doing it well, we want to replicate that same experience or that same success for ourselves. So it makes sense, you know, if we see one place, doing a certain blog, we might want to copy that.
But I think what we then lose is the heart of what I was mentioning with storytelling, is that it has to reflect your offerings and who you are uniquely. The idea isn't always to attract everybody, and the reality is if we were all trying to attract everybody, you would attract no one. And so that's where I go back to really starting and understanding who your distinct customers are and what they distinctly want. And like you mentioned, A beach destination resort is likely going to have a different type of traveler than something in the rainforest. There's going to be different offerings, different communities that are involved. And so they're, they're ultimately going to be different experiences.
And so tapping into actually what that experience is. And being authentic to your story and sharing what makes you unique is going to be the value that you provide and a way that you can speak directly to your customers. I think another big thing is also thinking beyond the direct experience of that hotel. So let's say the resort is only talking about things that you can do at the resort. They're missing the opportunity of what else might be involved in that experience that they can bring into the story. Maybe it's a local business nearby that offers, the best meal in the area.
And that, again, makes that resort distinct because it has this local offering nearby. And that's how you can Tell the story that's authentic to you and leverage opportunities that you might have in the area. So I think I would just go back to, if you truly are speaking authentically to who you are and knowing your customers, your story should be different from everybody else because you and your brand are uniquely different from everybody else. Hopefully that answers your question, Lorenzo.
Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah, no, that's great. You mentioned, something where you said that, knowing your audience is important, right? And then you just showed the example of a visitor profile that you created for Kingston, and it's an excellent one. I loved it. How do people go about doing that for their business? Kelsey Hood: Yeah, it's a great question and I'm not going to dive into sort of like data privacy and that kind of side of things today because that could open up a whole other conversation, but, data really is king and anything that we can know about our customers.
So, obviously, there's resources like Google Analytics and social media analytics that sort of natively tell you a little bit more about your customers. But I can see somebody in the chat saying that, they collect information about their visitors and their special diet requirements and special interests. That's great because that's giving you a really good data set to start with and so if that's something that you can do whether it be surveys and learning about the people that visit you or using things like Google Analytics which you can use as a free tool or a paid tool and learning about the people that are even just visiting your website. and what they're engaging with on your website, you can start to look at trends in the type of people that are visiting you. And it's important to get really granular. You're looking at their age, you're looking at what their interests are.
And so you can start to build those buyer personas with the small amounts of data that you have. But then the more that you get to know your customers and the type of visitors that you have, the more you can build those profiles together. And obviously I'm not Meredith Stanfill is not a real person.
So you're kind of creating almost this ideal person that would be coming to you so then you can work backwards and directly speak to them and what their interests are. But in terms of the question that came through in the chat, what is the best practice for collecting this information? By doing what you're already doing, that's a great way to start and any more ways that you can get this data, obviously with respective of privacy policies and all of that. It's any data is important and can help you shape what that looks like. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah, a pretty common concern is privacy and how to best use the data.
I'd say, whenever you're creating buyer personas, they're aggregated data, right? You won't create a buyer persona on me, Lorenzo, you'll create it on, I don't know, Whatever is the category of a person, you know, like a single person that lives in a city, in New York City or something, what are the attributes of that person? Can you touch more on this , Kelsey? Kelsey Hood: Yeah, I think what might also help answer this question is that you likely will have more than one visitor profile. Like you're not going to just have one persona. There's obviously many different kinds of people that are going to be wanting to come to your destination or resort. But it's like Lorenzo just mentioned, what is the aggregate? What are the commonalities that you're starting to see among people? Are you seeing, you know, an older demographic of people? Do you run an event that people of a certain age group are particularly interested in? And you start to see those trends and those commonalities just when you're starting to outreach.
And if you stay authentic to your brand and continue to do that, you're going to continue to attract the right kind of people, which will help you build that visitor persona as well. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Just to jump on another question. What are some of the most common mistakes that you see people do when they're, engaging in branding? Kelsey Hood: That's a really good question. I think, one thing that I see as the biggest mistake is when they're not staying true to who they are.
And I know I keep going back to this sort of piece of authenticity, but when a brand makes a decision or says something that doesn't meet their actions or what they actually do and can provide, it becomes the biggest mistake. It makes people distrust them and not believe what the actual brand is doing. For example, let's say, McDonald's came out and decided that they were going to do, a brand new, totally healthy menu and have fitness influencers talking about how healthy this is.
It just, it ends up feeling disingenuous to what your core messaging is. And so that's the biggest mistake that I see brands or places making is not being authentic to who they are. And I think the second biggest piece is, again, not knowing who their customers are. If you don't know who your customers are, you're not going to be speaking A to anybody directly. And that's, I think a big thing brands make a mistake with is they, they think more generic. If I can reach everybody, that's going to give me the most amount of reach and the most amount of potential customers.
But you end up with lower conversion rates. So, important because your messaging and your targeting isn't strong. What makes it stronger is when you're speaking directly to somebody, which is why visitor personas, are so important. Because you can really tailor your messaging, and when you tailor your messaging, you're speaking directly to an intended audience who wants that messaging and is more likely to convert.
It goes back to the quality of something over the quantity. If we have really high quality stories that we tell that are speaking to the right people, those are going to have a higher conversion rate than if we're telling just a general story to a larger audience. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah, and let's say we're dealing with a business that it's small and they have a limited budget in terms of branding. Is there a place that you would suggest that they start? Like, where should they start given that they have a small or limited budget? Kelsey Hood: So, sorry, Lorenzo, just to clarify, do you mean like start with sort of building what their brand might look like? Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yes. Kelsey Hood: Um, sort of that visual identity piece. That's a good question.
I think, aside from starting at your customers, because I've kind of already drowned and gone on about that. I think it's starting with, Creating almost a set of parameters or guidelines, what we call in the marketing industry, a visual brand identity standard. And it's essentially a set of rules and instructions of how you're going to communicate your brand.
And this is everything from colors to the type of photographs that you want to use. The type of stories that you want to tell, and essentially creating that guideline and that foundation can be really helpful when you're telling stories or doing anything in marketing. Because if it doesn't go back and aligned with that brand, those brand guidelines that you've set out for yourself, then you shouldn't be doing it because you always need to be going back.
So I think the first place to start is really figuring out what your brand is. What your identity is, what your values are, then the way that you want to visually communicate that. And then obviously that sort of third piece that comes in there is your customers. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Awesome.
Yeah, Angela, do you have any questions? Or has the audience asked any other questions? Angela Wu: I don't see any questions, but, while Kelsey was answering some of your questions and addressing, Ms. Carlene's questions regarding, data and the buyer personas, I had published, two polls and the first one was, does your company have a distinct, unrecognizable brand identity? And 50 percent of the attendees voted yes, that they're working on building a more cohesive brand identity. That was the most popular answer. The next popular answer was, yes, our branding is strong and consistent on all platforms. We only got a couple that says that they don't have a clear brand yet, but they're considering it.
So it's good to see that Those who are attending this session, are aware of their company's branding and working towards building a stronger, cohesive brand identity. So that's great to see. I also published a next poll. I asked, how often does your company update its marketing or branding materials? And, majority of them said occasionally, a few times a year.
Kelsey or Lorenzo, how often do you recommend for companies to update their branding or marketing materials? Kelsey Hood: That's a really good question, Angela, and thank you for asking. I think it becomes part of constantly taking a look at what you can offer and what your offerings are, and not considering it as something that you have to do necessarily on a regular cadence, but similar to branding, you're constantly evolving and constantly making those changes. For sort of distinctive marketing material, let's say it's something like a pamphlet that has your offerings, I think it's important to always make sure that it's relevant. And so if you have an important change, updating that regularly so that your customers and visitors have access to the most recent information.
If not, I think a quarterly or even a yearly basis, depending on exactly what that marketing material is. Having another thing that is helpful is considering that what might have worked before might not be what works in the future and so it's always important to innovate and try new ideas. Maybe last year you had a map of local spots that are located around your resort and that worked really well. How do you expand on those ideas and do something differently moving forward? So I don't necessarily think it's about the frequency in which you're updating them, but keeping your finger on the pulse of what people are looking for and providing them new options and not being afraid to innovate and try new things, especially when it comes to marketing. I don't know if, Lorenzo, you have a different answer for that question, but Lorenzo Gonzalez: I think that's a great response.
One thing I can add is that I am surprised By how many businesses don't have any branding material. It's a bit shocking. Branding should be like one of the first things that you do whenever you're establishing your company. Like that should be actually like, I'd say you do market research first, and then that research should inform your business branding. And then you go about launching everything else, like creating your social media profiles, your website and your copy and everything else that goes after that, right? Like, I don't know if you've experienced this too.
Kelsey Hood: Yeah, absolutely. Because essentially your market research is a lot of informing who your customers are, right? Like that's sort of the heart of market research is figuring out your customers, and then sort of moving beyond there. And I think you can tell, When a brand has really just put their idea and themselves first and not done a lot of that sort of important research into who they're actually speaking to being their ideal intended customer. And I think that where you lose track is you forget And you don't really know who you are until you have that brand identity and have that branding and again have that kind of visual brand identity standards, those guidelines, until you know that you're not actively participating in a meaningful way, you're not making those connections and building yourself as a unique and authentic brand. And I think that really becomes what's missing. When you sort of put the cart before the horse by putting yourself out there without knowing who you truly are.
Lorenzo Gonzalez: Wow. Yeah, I love that analogy, putting the cart before the horse, because it's so true, right? I can give you an example of how I went about doing my branding for my travel website, Belize Adventure. So I talk about everything in Belize, from the beach to the jungle. So, I decided on two colors. Because I believe that colors are extremely important when you're going to tell stories. So, I decided on two colors.
Sand and jungle, it's a shade of brown and then a shade of green for the jungle. And that's how I decided on making everything cohesive within my travel website. And I'm particularly proud of it, but I don't know if anyone else likes it, but I'm really proud of that. And again, like, colors matter a lot. When I've worked at different places, when they are choosing colors, they think about, why are we going to choose blue? Why are we going to choose burgundy? Or Purple, for example, what color is usually associated with royals? Kelsey Hood: Blue, the royal blue or purple. Actually, purple is one of the royal colors, but no, it's, it, you're entirely right.
And that's where, like what I mentioned in the presentation, your branding has to reflect your brand. And that goes to even your colors and your logos and the emotion that you want people to feel. I mean, when people color test, or even pick paint swatches for their walls, you test things because they evoke an emotional response.
They're not, it's not ultimately like you said Lorenzo, it's not just a color but it becomes part of your story and part of your brand. So you have to make sure that it's authentically representing you in that way. Angela Wu: I think a good example is the last slide or the presentations that everyone has been seeing, in the Belize Tourism Futures series. Like you notice that every slide is, or the formatting and the colors, the scheme, everything is similar. So Lorenzo did a great job, with that every presentation, you have this same exact slide, or not the exact slide, but different, or different information, but same formatting, color scheme, and everything just for consistency. So like, when we think about branding, I think we're seeing it basically everywhere.
What's standing out, that means that there's probably good branding, because you know, it's memorable. Kelsey Hood: I think that's a really good point, Angela. Thank you for sharing that. And I think, another thing that's really important is that you always want to make sure that your branding is a part, like Angela said, a part of everything that you do. If you have strong brand guidelines, and know your branding and your brand really well, it actually will make things easier for you. Because you have sort of a set foundation that you're on.
If you're building things like a pamphlet or even like an advertisement, you know the colors that you're going to use, you know the story that you're going to tell because you know that brand and that, and that brand has become a part of what you do every single day and so the decisions that you make as a marketer and the stories that you're able to tell, are just second nature because you end up knowing that brand so well. And if it's authentic and true to you, it makes it even easier to do that. Lorenzo Gonzalez: And to talk about the importance of colors and branding, an issue that we have in Belize, it's really frustrating, is that I always see different colors of flags for Belize, like some of them are dark blue, some of them are light blue, some of them are sometimes a different country's flag, but people are using it as Belize.
Um, anyway, I don't want to get off topic too much, but it is something. Kelsey Hood: No, but it speaks to that consistency piece, right? When you're not seeing that consistency, it can be frustrating and a little bit misleading and you have a hard time associating it, right, because it's not the same thing every time. And that's again what makes branding so important is that by having that consistency your audience and your customers can come in to rely on you for something. That's another way of building those loyal customers is providing that consistency. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Great.
Yeah, so just switch the topic a little bit. I want to ask you a bit about storytelling. I was wondering, if you have any advice as to how we can become better storytellers. Kelsey Hood: Yeah, that's a really great question.
I think being a good storyteller aside from what we've already talked about, isn't being afraid to work beyond your brand or your company. Some of these great stories, and even the ones that I pointed out for Kingston, it's involving other businesses in the community. It's working together to tell that story and narrative. And the more people that are kind of telling that same story, the stronger that story is going to be. And so I think a way to be a great storyteller is to work with the other people that are involved in your story and have that unified voice to come together.
Um, I think another great way to be a storyteller in marketing is to tell different stories. If you're telling the same story over and over again, eventually people are going to lose interest. But if we go back to our example of the culinary experience in Kingston, that's the real story, right? You can come to Kingston and have this global culinary experience.
But there's different ways we tell that story. We tell that story of an itinerary and coming for two days. We tell that story through, what is the, a new restaurant, a new specific restaurant offering, or we say what's the best dessert that you can get in the city. We have that same messaging of promoting our culinary experiences, which can be a pillar, but where we kind of take that to the next level is telling that story in different ways, and engaging potentially different audiences with the different stories that we tell.
There's some people that might want culinary experiences, but unlike Meredith, are looking for that really high quality experience. They're not looking for that sort of farm to table, they want that fine dining experience. Well, it's not wrong to promote it to them. If it's part of our brand, it's part of our offering, but we might tell a slightly different story while still promoting that same message. So I would say those are two other great parts of storytelling.
And, you know, again, going back to really what you have to offer and focusing on that being the most important part of your storytelling and what your customers want to be told. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Um, yeah, I really like the advice on don't be boring, basically. You can tell the same story, in many different ways and more interesting ways. Um, by any chance, just off the top of your head, would you have more examples of this being done? Kelsey Hood: Do you mean different examples of the way we could tell stories specifically to a destination, or just, you know, like, I could share a little bit about how we tell stories at Digital Main Street, which is a totally different example, but kind of can show another way of storytelling. Um, so at Digital Main Street, what we do as an organization is promote small businesses in their digital adoption. So we encourage businesses to get online, learn more about social media, e commerce, and cyber security.
And so, the way that we tell our story of how we can promote businesses is we share and we interview about our businesses experiences. So we can, we conduct interviews and we tell success stories of how businesses have successfully found digital adoption. So rather than just saying, hey, we've helped 20 businesses in the last year, we can do the same thing for you. We're telling the story of how we did it, through the eyes of a business owner. And that way we can actually attract more business owners because they can see themselves in that story better than they can see themselves as just a number of a business that we've promoted.
And so to kind of tie that back to something that's a little bit more of an idea for maybe a tourism experience is maybe a story that you could tell is interviewing one of your visitors and asking them what they learned in their experience to Belize, what their favorite part of your specific offering they enjoyed, and hearing it from that sort of perspective of somebody that's done it is a really powerful tool in storytelling. It's kind of the same as customer reviews. If that makes sense, customer reviews are so powerful. It's a way of turning that into a story. Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah. I love that idea.
I think more businesses in Belize should definitely interview their customers because they won't tell the same stories as other people because then they'll be interviewing their actual customers, which is different, right? Kelsey Hood: Right. And it's a great way just going back to learning and having more of that data to learn about your customers, right? It kind of goes hand in hand with that thing that we were just talking about, but it's another powerful way of storytelling because people really, They don't want, sometimes they don't want to hear from the people that want your business. They, they're hearing from people that customers, they don't ultimately at the end of the day, have a reason to promote you or not promote you. But if you get that authentic review, that authentic answer from them and use that to tell your story, what a great way to engage more people that are coming from that same place. And they can rely on that person's experience to form their own and be a part of that.
Lorenzo Gonzalez: Yeah, that's wonderful. Okay, thank you so much, Kelsey. Do we have any questions from the audience? Otherwise, it's time to wrap up. Kelsey Hood: Yeah, I was just going to say if anybody has any questions after this, feel free to send me an email or send me a message on LinkedIn. I'm happy to, answer any specific questions, do any brainstorming, or chat with anybody a little bit more about Belize.
Lorenzo has made me very excited to plan a trip, and do some things. So I'll definitely be reaching out when I reach that point, and hopefully getting to meet some of you. Angela Wu: Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.
Thank you Kelsey for that wonderful presentation and thank you as well Lorenzo. Kindly note that there is a quick test that you can complete after this session. Before we conclude, I would like to remind you of our next session on November the 20th at 1 p. m. As mentioned earlier, this initiative is supported by the Emergent Ventures Grant from George Mason University's Mercatus Center in collaboration with Belizing.
com and The Lodge at Chaa Creek. Thank you Kelsey for this awesome presentation and we appreciate everyone's participation and engagement for today. If you have any further questions or feedback, please feel free to let us know and thank you all once again and we look forward to seeing you in November.
Lorenzo Gonzalez: Bye everyone.
2024-11-02 00:05
