The Destination Experience_dan pearlman

INTERVIEWS
INTERVIEWS
DAN PEARLMAN — THE DESTINATION EXPERIENCE
66
No Ufos
please
COMMUNICATION IS KEY
Marion Heine, Founder and CCO,
sping Brand Ideas
How do you communicate
a destination?
First and foremost, destinations are
places – places for art, for learning and
teaching, for information sharing or
pleasure, for socializing, for politics or
business. The essence of all of these is
that they’re places where people come
together. And naturally, communications
experts play a critical role in shaping
that essence. To do that, we first need
to have a holistic understanding of these
places. Working from that comprehensive
understanding, we then energize
them through communication, turning
them into places of desire – places
people want to go to and keep coming
back to.
And how do you do that?
One example is the marketing campaign
for the city of Berlin. As a guiding
principle, we decided to use the
hashtag #freiheitberlin to center the
campaign on the city’s unique feeling
of freedom (Freiheit). Freedom is the
essence of the history, attitude, and options
that Berlin offers its residents. We
very intentionally kicked off the campaign
with an “Ode to Freedom,” which
appeared without any logo or source
and focused on quotes about freedom
from famous people. Next, we got up
the nerve to ask Berliners, one of the
toughest target groups in the world,
what Berlin meant to them. The result
was a set of unconventional images that
told the story of Berliners’ attitude to
life and freedom. The “what,” “how” and
“why” of everything we communicate
ultimately comes down to people. The
goal of communication has to be to fulfill
people’s needs and desires, and to
build real relationships. Only when you
truly reach people through communication
can you create dialogue. Otherwise
you’re just landing UFOs that will
always remain alien.
How complex are these relationships?
To put it in philosophical terms, relationships
with places form in much the
same way as relationships with people.
Ideally, places need to have a “magic
moment,” a love-at-first-sight experience.
When a place speaks to me with
a special language and a special look,
it moves me to enter into a relationship
with it. Every time I come back, I’m
building trust and creating new memories
and experiences. In time I come to
connect the place with a feeling of familiarity.
My relationship grows. Negative
experiences damage the relationship
and can eventually cause me to
“fall out of love.” So you have to be
constantly fostering the bond through
communication. As communication experts,
we’re significantly involved in that.
A place has to speak to me before and
while I’m visiting it, and also when I’m
no longer there – for example, via digital
communication channels, where I
can share my visit as a “grammable”
experience.
DAN PEARLMAN — THE DESTINATION EXPERIENCE
67
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