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Tourism Malaysia

Challenge

A global internal, external brand and communications audit and strategy for Tourism Malaysia

There are more than 600,000 competing communities in Asia and more than 1,000 regional and national economic development agencies, all competing for tourists, making it easy for even the most compelling messages to get lost amid all the destination claims. For years, Tourism Malaysia spent tens of millions of dollars creating beautiful ‘me too’ destination campaigns but visitor numbers from high value countries were falling because the campaigns were unable to break through the noise and be noticed.

Tactical campaigns, often created independently of other departments & without consultation were also ineffective and Tourism Malaysia wanted to understand why. Finally, Tourism Malaysia employees lacked brand knowledge and there was a lack of strategy.

Solution

Fusionbrand developed the first ever custom built global internal & external brand, communications and experiential audit to get deep under the skin of Tourism Malaysia at home and in 12 key global markets.

At the time, this was the largest brand audit ever in Malaysia and the most comprehensive brand audit for the global travel trade.

The brand audit explored the image of Malaysia in those 12 key markets as well as brand identity, perceptions, reputation, messaging, motivations, communications, experiences, influences, decision making, marketing, tagline & much more.

Outcome

The brand audit revealed a plethora of branding issues - one example, Americans responded positively to the concept of 'Malaysia, Truly Asia’. The Vietnamese response bordered on hostility - "we have 4,000 years of history, what can Malaysia tell us about being Asian?"

A global brand strategy centred around building the Malaysia brand and 12 individual country brand strategies that targeted specific interests and experiences of those individual countries.

The results, Tourism Malaysia increased arrivals despite an economic downturn while the data driven brand strategy saved over RM25 million in advertising expenditure on one region.