If there’s no news, manufacture some. That seems to capture Kerala Tourism’s newfound approach to creating a buzz.
What other rationale could account for the press release that
presumably fuelled newspaper reports that talk about how British celebrities
who visited Kerala have used Twitter to create excitement about going to Kerala.
For more go here, here and here.
While Kerala may, perhaps, trend on Twitter occasionally, I’m not so
sure if two British ‘celebrities’ Tweeting about Kerala qualifies as a
celebration of God’s Own Country’s charms. Especially as both Sadie Frost’s and
Preeya Kalidas’ tweets are from almost a year ago — March and April 2011 to be
exact.
So it is rather strange that these ‘celebrity’ Tweets and visits, and
a bunch of others, are being tom-tommed now, several months after they happened.
Intriguing too that Claudia and Gerhard Mueller are on the list of celebrity
visitors to Kerala courtesy their footballer son Thomas; filial fame is transferable
I guess.
Now the UK has, for years, accounted for the largest chunk of
foreign tourists visiting Kerala. So it would have been pretty meaningful and, perhaps,
interesting if Kerala Tourism had told a story connecting these celebrity
visits and tweets with the real leg-up they gave Kerala’s tourism sector. If
they had been able to say something like: ‘OK, these celebrities from Britain
visited Kerala in March last year and spoke about the great time they had here.
Based on those endorsements these other folks have actually visited Kerala.’
For example, Sadie Frost sent this tweet to three of her Twitter
followers/friends suggesting that they holiday in Kerala. Let’s assume that at
least one of them actually took her advice and visited Kerala. What a powerful
story it would have been if Kerala Tourism had tracked the response that this
particular tweet evoked and had been able to say: ‘Sadie Frost’s endorsement
worked because “so and so” visited Kerala on her advice.’ A real life story
like that would have added so much more to the Kerala Tourism brand.
Instead you have communication that seems more vapour than water. And
that’s a pity for a brand that has always done things differently.
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