Month: May 2020

In Italy, where people are cautiously coming out of lockdown, CN Traveler will dedicate its next two print issues, summer and fall, solely on Italy and enjoying the country, local restaurants and scenery. The expectation is there will be some international travel by then, but Condé Nast Italia editorial director Luca Dini, doesn’t expect Italians to leave the country.

“The tourism industry is struggling enormously, we want to show support for local restaurants and hotels. There’s a big emphasis on alfresco and sitting outside,” he said. With people in lockdown over the last few months, the publisher has built its social media presence, which was low in Italy. Traffic to the title has been higher than average, said Dini, and only two print advertising campaigns were rescheduled for later in the year.

“We expected it to be the nightmare here but it’s turning out to be not too hysterical,” he added.

Travel companies were some of the hardest and first hit by the virus outbreak. The travel industry’s programmatic spend is down 79% month-over-month in April in the U.S., according to MediaRadar, the most deeply hit sector. Between March 2020 and April 2020, the travel industry saw 8% fewer advertisers using programmatic advertising. According to one commercial exec at a travel publisher, branded content campaigns that were booked, with signed insertion orders, have “paused” for an indefinite period. But requests for proposals have been trickling in, often at the larger end of the spectrum because they have taken more time for agencies to plan, while smaller ones have dried up. 

Publishers had to calculate a number of survival strategies, editorially and commercially. In some cases this has meant furloughs and layoffs on the editorial and sales teams. Print runs have halted or been postponed. The New York Times suspended its travel (and sports) section in April, dispersing travel content through the paper instead. In its place is a lifestyle section called “At home.” Some of Condé Nast’s monthly print issues are launching next week, after shifting several of its print titles to later in the year. The magazine publisher has some virtual projects in the pipeline.

Brand-building and content-based ad campaigns are fewer and further between as direct-response and performance-driven ads win out in precision and efficiency. Publishers who are getting people closer to transactions can fare better. 

Online travel publisher Culture Trip has launched cookery classes featuring the chefs from its food and travel series, Hungerlust. For £15 ($18.35) viewers can learn how to cook Tanjia with chef Khalid Berdouzi from his riad in Marrakesh, or Shakshuka & Hummus with chef Atalya Ein Mor from her kitchen in Jerusalem.

In January, as the virus began to emerge in Western Europe, Culture Trip narrowed its focus on selling virtual experiences, like a Berlin Cold War virtual tour and a virtual guided Lourve museum tour, instead of its travel accommodation business, which went live in December.

“You have to accept that international travel will take a dent,” said CEO Kris Naudts. “A business focused on international accommodation would be difficult. But margins are lower on experiences, so we have to drive more transactions and have to have a product that people would want to transact on. Interest in food is universal, it doesn’t change.”

In Europe at least, there are early signs of ad spend unfreezing. Advertising is starting to slightly pick up in The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, said editor Ed Grenby. According to a News UK poll, 65% of respondents want to hear inspirational messages from travel advertisers, (compared with 30% for messages of reassurance and 6% for nostalgia).

Now advertisers are working out how to reach people in the right way.  
“Travel is high in the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” said Naudts. “[Advertisers] can celebrate the easing of lockdown to an extent, but people still lost relatives and friends.”

In recent weeks, JetBlue has started to curate a virtual travel experience on its blog with what it is calling “Wander From Home.” The posts give would-be travelers a sense of the entertainment and activities that they would be able to be a part of if that had gone to Puerto Rico or Mexico or whatever other destination JetBlue has added. The posts are just one element of the light marketing that JetBlue is currently doing. The company has also created an informational video series for children, JetBlue Jr., to help parents keep children entertained at home while also teaching children about flying.   

“Whether our goal is to inform or inspire, as travel providers we are committed to maintaining clear, helpful, and informative communications with our customers so they know what to expect when they are ready to travel with us again,” said Elizabeth Windram, vice president of marketing at JetBlue. “Brands need to continue to engage with their customers, acknowledging the new normal and finding ways for their brand to remain relevant.” 

Currently, the airline is focused on organic reach through its social channels, emails and other owned channels, said Elizabeth Windram, JetBlue’s vice president of marketing. When asked when the airline will return to advertising as it had been before coronavirus, Windram said that JetBlue was “focused on finding new ways to connect with our organic social audiences who are eager for content that allows them to plan for future travel.” 

In mid-March, hotel booking service Tablet has shifted its overall marketing strategy. Instead of being “advocates of travel” the company retooled its marketing to be a “utility and a distraction,” said Lucy Lieberman, chief marketing officer, Tablet, adding that the goal was to keep customers engaged and ensure future bookings. 

Tablet reduced its weekly newsletter output from four to one and changed the content to be focused on highlighting hotels and destinations to think about traveling to in the future. The company also created Zoom backgrounds of various hotels and put together a list of hotel gift shops for travelers to buy from.

The company has used a “tiny bit of paid social to find like minded travelers looking for a distraction” to promote these efforts, said Lieberman. Overall, Tablet has reduced its marketing budget to be just about 5% of what it typically spends. When asked when Tablet will return its advertising to pre-pandemic levels Lieberman said that still unclear but that it could be in the fourth quarter of this year or could be next year. 

Aside from airline and hotel brands, tourism boards are looking for ways to engage people during this time as well. For Experience Kissimmee, the Florida tourism board for Kissimmee, advertising agency Zambezi has been exploring ways to do just that. One option is to send out informational newsletters about alligators as Kissimmee has a gator park, said Grace Teng, executive director, Media & Analytics at Zambezi. 

By focusing on information and inspiration, travel marketers are able to talk to consumers in ways that are appropriate for the moment. “People are beginning to put their toes in the water,” said Matt Hofherr, chief strategy officer and co-founder at Muhtayzik Hoffer, adding that light marketing tactics make sense as people are still thinking about travel even if they aren’t buying tickets. But the marketing has to change. “If you’re a travel brand right now you can’t plan your media based on behaviors of last year,” said Hofherr. “Everything has changed. All bets are off.”

Call it the Disney halo. Having spent over two decades inside the House of Mouse and most recently having overseen the successful launch of Disney+, the 58-year-old Mayer brings industry credibility to TikTok at a time when the app is looking to break into the top echelon of tech platforms. A former college football player at MIT with an MBA from Harvard, the Bethesda, Maryland, native also carries with him a more aggressive approach to doing business that helped to transform Disney’s business for the streaming era and is suited to the tech industry’s breakneck pace.

TikTok is an an awkward phase now that Snapchat can relate to. The more popular that TikTok has become, the more scrutiny the video app has received. Advertisers are wary of its young user base. “TikTok is an awesome emerging platform for advertisers as long as you can get past the 12-year-olds dancing,” said the brand executive. The unique part is TikTok parent company ByteDance being Chinese at a time of rising tensions between the U.S. and China — and increasing calls to clamp down on Chinese tech champions — see Huawei. U.S. lawmakers have expressed national security concerns about the app being owned by a Chinese company; following Mayer’s appointment, Republican senator Josh Hawley tweeted, “I look forward to meeting with him. Under oath.” Doesn’t sound very friendly.

Disney “is a widely trusted brand. So there is a halo effect, and I’m sure TikTok is hoping that that would translate over,” said Eunice Shin, a partner at consulting firm Prophet.

Mayer is a serious player in the business world. After short stints as CEO of Playboy.com and then Clear Channel Interactive followed by some time spent consulting, in 2005 he returned to Disney, which he had initially joined in 1993. During Bob Iger’s 15-year tenure as Disney CEO, Mayer was one of Disney’s top corporate strategy executives — becoming chief strategy officer in 2015 — and was instrumental in the company’s acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. Those deals helped to reinforce Disney’s position as one of the biggest media companies at a time when tech companies like Google, Facebook and Netflix were overtaking the market and Disney rivals like Time Warner and NBCUniversal were selling to telecom giants. Mayer was also involved in Disney’s purchase of BAMTech, the technology that powers the company’s streaming services.

Then in 2018, Mayer was tapped to oversee Disney’s direct-to-consumer and international division, which included the development of Disney+. Iger has called the streaming service “the most important product the company has launched in my tenure,” and Mayer delivered a product that has attracted more than 54 million subscribers since its Nov. 2019 debut.

“Kevin was able to help [Disney] move at a tech company-level speed of going to market. If you look at any other organization that has the history and heritage of Disney, they’re not moving that fast because they can’t,” said Shin.

Mayer’s leadership style likely played an important part in pushing Disney to move at that accelerated pace. “His style of leadership is a bit more brash, direct,” said John Lustyan, founder and managing partner at strategy consulting firm Ilium and a former member of Disney’s global business development team. That approach — and the 6′ 4″ Mayer’s ability to balance that approach with Disney’s congenial corporate culture — may have been a major reason why Iger had tapped Mayer to oversee the streaming service.

“Disney is a very comfortable culture. The majority of the people there do what they do really well in their lanes. So you’ve got to bring someone in that’s brash and direct and disruptive and aggressive and is going to race and push people to hit those timelines. He was able to do that,” Lustyan said.

Those qualities made Mayer a frontrunner to succeed Iger, only he didn’t get the job, which instead went to Iger lieutenant Bob Chapek.

With Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook racing to establish themselves as the dominant entertainment platform, for ByteDance to join that race “they needed to bring in a heavy hitter,” Shin said.

As much as Mayer’s appointment as TikTok CEO may help to ease advertisers’ concerns and provide a more familiar face to government regulators, his role as ByteDance COO will have the bigger impact, Lustyan said. In that position, Mayer will lead ByteDance’s music, gaming and emerging businesses as well as Helo, a popular social platform in India. And considering his M&A background at Disney, he will likely add to ByteDance’s corporate portfolio.

“ByteDance is the the big mothership. ByteDance is Facebook to TikTok’s Instagram,” Lustyan said. Now with Mayer, ByteDance has its Sheryl Sandberg.