“Miracles” of destination branding

The country marketing has been applied in Vietnam, resulting in initial successes in such provinces as Quang Ninh... Photo: Ha Long bay

How should destination marketing be carried out effectively to create economic resilience, improve the business environment and attract investors?

Not only marketing products

The country marketing has been applied in Vietnam, resulting in initial successes in such provinces as Quang Ninh, Thua Thien Hue, Dong Thap, Da Lat- Lam Dong, Ho Chi Minh- city. Especially, experts and some universities have also contributed to the ideology and practice of this strategy by various localities.

The country marketing is comprised of economic strategy or market-oriented planning (B2B, B2C, and investors); strategy to expand the market and promote the brand for the localities and their products; Tourism, culture, and history or heritage are harmoniously exploited so as to create people's pride and customers’ sentiment and trust; customer-centric strategies are consistently maintained via insight and study.

And then a country branding strategy will drive the thinking and action. Positioning is very important in branding. In other words, branding is worthless without positioning.

Every successful destination branding strategy could be seen afar, not in written or by written planning.

Where is the marketing place done?

Quang Ninh province has gone up advantages of Ha Long Bay, smart and transparent authorities to development of one commune, one product program (OCOP). Those efforts have been sustained, yielding positive results as appreciated by the market.

Dong Thap province, of which leaders are always open-minded, knowledgeable, acceptable to try and learn experience, has built a branding strategy for traditional agricultural products and creative ones as well.

Thua Thien Hue province has realized the importance of its heritage to build the right investment strategies. As once said, "each heritage is a brand", so cuisine as well as landscapes or tangible or intangible heritages, if exploited effectively, will shape an attractive overall brand, contributing to economic, cultural, and environmental harmonious development.

Ho Chi Minh- City is a pioneer in destination branding, in which Vibrant Ho Chi Minh City is internationally appreciated for its positioning and core values. This project is professionally built by a group of experts, a market research company, and a scientific council (2012-2015).

Each locality, whether rich or poor, can find itself a different position, even a unique one, that is a premise for a successful country marketing process.

However, destination branding requires a deeper and broader mindset than the promotion of a particular product or brand. Therefore, local leaders should coordinate and listen to ideas or recommendations reputable experts and consulting organizations. At the same time, it should be absolutely careful to avoid going into the trails, because even though consulting organizations are well-known, the consulting capacity of their experts is sometimes ed.

Professionalism needed 

To avoid re-ideas or subjectivity, provinces and cities are recommended to organize basic training courses on country marketing for potential leaders of all departments. This is the key to the initial success in terms of human resources in administering and implementing marketing strategies, bringing spectacular changes to their locality in the future.

Local authorities need to take advantage of each unique advantage, which is sometimes a small idea, will yield major benefits advertising, trade promotion, or investment attraction. During a recent seminar in Long An province (November 2020), we suggested developing horse farming in Duc Hoa, which has been in recession. If it is exploited again in form of horse racing for tourists, this is a great economic potential of this province. Another surprising product is a row of Roystonea regia made by the people in Da Lat city, Lam Dong province, which has attracted many visitors. It is a typical example of coordination between local authorities and people.

The destination branding at moment is very close to everyone, crop planning and high-demand product processing associated with distribution and consumption efforts, to finding historical and cultural heritage values ​​for brand promotion combined with innovative tourism, friendly and efficient administration processes, and right investment planning… A combination of those efforts, which has long been in the strategy of each locality, now only needs market thinking and spirit of aspirations. That is also something that few localities can do.

In fact, few provinces and cities could organize roadshows to promote destination branding in other provinces, as well as abroad. While Malaysia, Thailand, or even the United States ... have also diligently promoted each small product notwithstanding its low initial market potential, for example promoting the US beef for 15 years ago, in which associations play a key role in marketing each product in association with localities.