TOP CMO: Danielle Hollander, Visit Orlando - 'Marketing Memories'

Danielle Hollander  00:00

I think in the travel and tourism space, consumers are relaxed, they are open to different messages.

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Ben Kaplan  00:06

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups.

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Ben Kaplan  00:21

This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan.

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Ben Kaplan  00:28

Today I'm speaking with Danielle Hollander, CMO of Visit Orlando, the official Tourism Association for the greater Orlando area. Danielle has more than 25 years of experience in global integrated marketing and public relations. She served in the Zimmerman agency as vice president before joining Visit Orlando in 2007. She then stepped up as CMO a role she's held for 15 years, she has been through recessions, prosperity and a pandemic, and the challenges they pose for a tourism company. So how can companies strategically adapt their marketing efforts for recovery strategies during challenging times? And how can they take a holistic approach that enhances their product or services appeal and creates a compelling narrative for all ages? Let's find out with Danielle Hollander.

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Ben Kaplan  01:16

Danielle, you've been quoted as saying you don't sell travel, you sell memories. What does that mean? What is the distinction? And how does that impact the marketing you do this notion of selling memories? Yeah. So

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Danielle Hollander  01:29

you know, we're consumer product. And we compete with everybody, you know, our biggest competitor, somebody getting off the couch to go and travel. But you know, just going to see something doesn't make it memorable. But the backdrop we have here in Orlando creates those memories, you can be your true self here. And so, you know, you have adults walking down the street and Harry Potter robes and with with wands, and that doesn't happen everywhere. And it's those connections that happen here because of the fantastical because of the places because of how people can come and they can hang glide over alligators, they can meet their favourite Princess, they can cast a spell to make things come to life. Those are all we saw those memories and those connections. And, you know, as we talk about you come here and you can have do something different every day and have a different memory every day. And when you look back at those pictures, that's really what you hold in your heart is what you remember for being with your kids being with your parents being with your siblings, being with your friends being with with whoever your gang or your tribe is. That's what you truly hold special. When people talk about what are their favourite trips. It's really about those how it made them feel. And that's truly what we're doing.

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Ben Kaplan  02:49

How is it in the competitive landscape among other destination marketing organisations, your counterparts in major cities across the US across the world? A similar effort to distinguish yourself. Obviously Orlando has some things that make it unique, notably Disney World, how do you play sort of a competitive game over memories where other people might be doing that to? Everyone's trying to be distinctive and unique and get mindshare? How do you think of it from sort of the perch of Orlando for

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Danielle Hollander  03:18

us the differences, you know, is really that combination of that fantastical and that authentic? You know, we're creating environments that take people maybe out of their comfort zone, like I said, you know, the things that you that are normal here, you know, I look over a tank that they are nursing dolphins back to health, right that that is my window, I watched two roller coasters being built. That is our reality of who we are and those experiences that we provide, and things the collection of everything here. So yes, Walt Disney World is here but Universal Studios and walking into JK Rollins book of you know, Harry Potter or meeting a transformer or walking in and swimming with dolphins, you know, those are things you can do those things within three days, there's not many destinations that you can do that in, but it's those new adventures and, and adults just turn back into kids, when they're doing this, you know, the joy that it creates, really separates that apart because they can do that. And there's nobody that's going to be like, Wow, you're acting like a kid. That's what's expected and bringing back that fun and that play. And that joy just makes that different here compared to other places.

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Ben Kaplan  04:35

I was talking to your counterpart in New York, and we were talking about the recovery from COVID. And one of the things that they said in New York was we needed to get out the message that like New York was open again. And of course New York is a big tourist destination. But it's also a big destination for a lot of other things, not as so focused probably on tourism as Orlando is where the entire economy is driven by it. So what has changed in the The marketing now that you didn't do before, are this different now as kind of the economy, hopefully, fully recover some comes back. Right? Well,

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Danielle Hollander  05:09

we were very fortunate because we never closed. So while some of our theme parks closed, that still meant our outdoor, you know, our outdoor parks were full by 8am. So we do look at things differently, you know, we looked at, we needed to give people reasons to still come. So we really leaned into our neighbourhoods, we have really uplifted, we are a Michelin destination. Now, we brought the Michelin Guide to Florida. So we have Michelin starred restaurants, we have 42, Michelin rated restaurants. So people are starting to see us as a culinary destination. You know, our meetings have roared back, we were one of the first destinations that all of our Air Service came back. So, you know, we were very fortunate in that we lead out of the recovery almost a year earlier than a lot of our competitors. And then we expected some of our international markets, you know, we're a global household name. So some of our international markets aren't fully recovered. But we were able to move that forward much faster, which really helped those experiences helped get our tourism industry back to work, we were able to bring meetings here that had to, unfortunately relocate for other cities, but we were able to keep those meetings going. So those companies could be successful. So I think what has changed a little bit, is, I think people are starting to know us, you know, for a much greater product. You know, most people see us for the number one family travel destination in the world, yet only 37% of our travel partners have children. And domestically less than half of the people that come here walk into a theme park. So that shows that people are experienced in discovering the culinary side, the Outdoor Adventure side of Orlando and the neighbourhoods and the broader base of reasons to come and come back.

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Ben Kaplan  07:02

And how do you think about the balance of marketing between sort of the family side and everything else? I mean, I think when I think of destination marketing organisations and and our global agency top has worked on behalf of many of them, when I think of like sort of quintessential campaigns, I think of like, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas kind of campaign, which was this, at the time that that rose up, it was a lot of like, okay, Vegas was becoming really Las Vegas becoming very family oriented. And they want to kind of remind people that, hey, you can come and you can do things without your kids that you can only do in Las Vegas. And it's part of the culture and sort of the ethos there. So how do you balance about like, Hey, we've got to focus on our bread and butter, which is families come in for theme parks and other things. And we can't ever not be that. But yet we want to expand into other things. We have to balance that and how do we message both? Yeah,

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Danielle Hollander  07:54

and I think what we do is we look at, obviously, the theme parks, we have seven of the top theme parks in the world here, right. So that is our bread and butter. But it's not just for the kids, as I said only 37% of our tribal parties have children with them. So that means almost 70% are adults coming either by themselves with other adults or groups, adults. So that's leisure, that's not for the meetings and convention side. So you see whether it is they love that environment as well, and are having that much fun in that environment as well. So, you know, we mark it 5050 Our efforts are 5050 against family in the US and non failing us. And we have spots that are adults. And we have spots. And what's interesting is, you know, our adult spots equally perform against those travel parties with children, because the adults still want to be adults, as well as the adults. So you know, we're marketing and in Mexico, and in Canada, we're marketing pretty equal against each other. So our goal is to get to 80 million visitors. When you start, we're not a subscription service. So you start at zero every single year. So we might be at 74. And I was like you just need 6 million more. Now we have to get past 74 Next year into 80. So we've got to find new visitors, we've got to, you know, have the Repeat Cycle coming up. And we're so fortunate that our partners invest heavily into this market. So whether it's new hotels, whether it's new experiences, whether it is new restaurants, to allow people to come back we'll have epic universe opening in 2024. So that will be a brand new theme park that's coming in. But there's also the investments you know, EA Sports is here. We're developing driverless cars here. And I was so we have this whole ecosystem that matches our tourism side and our technology side, which go hand in hand we have the largest university in the country here. You know, you can be looking at your balcony and watching all the space long lunches. So there's a whole wide variety of reasons to come, not just because somebody wants to bring their kids or their grandkids, you know, but we're the largest honeymoon destination. So in the continental US, so there's many reasons why people come and are so loyal and they may come back, we're a whole lifestyle, destination as well, you may come as a child, then you may come as a teenager, then you may come for convention, and then you may come with your college friends, and then you may come with your own kids. So it becomes a whole lifestyle destination,

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Tom Cain  11:26

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Ben Kaplan  11:34

I know you've made strategic decisions, to in your marketing not be as much of a content creator yourself, but to sponsor other content or be part of other content that gets you existing audiences or other audiences. How do you evaluate those opportunities? How do you think about we want to be attached to a type of content a certain audience? And do we go to those audiences that are our core? Or do we go to aspirational new audiences? You talked about, we gotta get from 74 million visitors to 80 million, we need those 6 million somewhere? How do you evaluate where you want to appear?

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Danielle Hollander  12:12

So we take a look at our overall strategic plan. And everything is based on research and insights. So we have a strategic plan we currently advertise in 10 markets globally. So UK, Brazil, Chile, Canada, French speaking Canadian, you know, so we really look at where those is that opportunity for the short term and for the long term, as well as the meetings and convention markets. So one of our things is, is we want to make sure we have the domestic market, the international market in the meetings and convention markets. Because what that does is it flattens out, we don't have these huge like peaks and valleys, we want to keep it flat. So we keep everybody employed, we keep everybody generating money for our community, because that's what we're in the business of is generating economic development for our community through tourism. So we look at like any other marketing products, you know, we're looking at who we trying to reach. Is that the upper funnel? Is it a little bit down to the lower funnel? How do we remarket? How do we capture them into our database so that we can be remarketing or marketing to new audiences or looking at look alike audiences? So we're looking at how are we driving to our website to tell the whole destination story. But then who are we partnering, we just partnered with TripAdvisor and created we are the first North American destination to work with them on their wanderer series. And it's in 190 markets in five languages, that is a big reach for us to go through that we create 3000 pieces of content internally. So we're pushing out on our social channels, we're pushing that out through our various owned earned and paid channels. So it's a combination. You know, we worked with disparate America for our, you know, our multicultural plan, which is super important to us. That's a big growth area for us. So we're really looking at what are those growth packages, we want to protect our share, and we want to grow, you know, because we got to get, you know, that family market, that adult market, that general travel market, but within we're also looking at culinary travellers, we're working to looking at our multicultural markets, we're looking at which international markets are going to perform the best. So it's a balance between how do we hit all of those, and one market may be doing fabulously and the other men may be struggling and allows us to shift to keep that balance in check.

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Ben Kaplan  14:34

And what is your advice for very common now in cities across America? I live in one of them San Francisco that are tourist destinations in their own right, but some of those urban centres have been hit by problems like crime or the Fentanyl crisis or homelessness that discourages people from visiting. So what are your advice to other destinations and how to think about make In your case and trying to recover and how people come back when there's issues affecting the city, or it's just bad PR affecting the city that might be affecting their visitors. Right?

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Danielle Hollander  15:09

Well, you know, we feel like as being the biggest industry in the community, we need to be have a seat at the table to solve some of those issues. So for instance, we do like most people do a Restaurant Week, ours happens to be six weeks Visit Orlando's magical dining. And a portion of that goes to charity, and we don't shy away from it was workforce two years ago was feeding people this year was a lifeboat project that works with victims of human trafficking, right, every area is going to have those those issues. But we as an industry can be a part of that solution, and help that solution from that PR perspective. And from that perception perspective, you know, our role is to make sure people have the accurate and right information and be that trusted source. So that if they have questions, or if they are concerned about things, they know where to come to get that because there's a lot of things that are reported out or social media that may not be 100% accurate, and you know, may be overshadowing the best things about different destinations. So you know, we really work to be that trusted source and be able to be that accurate. We have our vacation planning team, we help plan vacations, we'll plan them for free, but they're also in the forums answering questions if they're not being answered correctly. So we want to make sure that people are getting the right information, have a source to go to to ask those questions. Because we want people to have a great travel experience. And I think that goes for any destination, you want to make sure that people who are coming in have the accurate information about your destination and can make the best informed decision for themselves.

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Ben Kaplan  16:54

We focused on tourism and travel. We have a lot of CMOs and other marketing leaders who listen to this podcast who are not in tourism and travel. What can you learn from the industry? If you're a marketer and something else in any and you haven't worked in tourism or travel before? What kind of kernel of insight can you get that just might help you in marketing in general, that someone like yourself knows and understands from having worked in the industry for over a couple of decades? Now. You

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Danielle Hollander  17:20

know, I'm a big believer that you can learn a lot from other industries. You know, as I said, we'd like to be on the leading edge, we may not be on the bleeding edge. So I looked at other industries, and how are they doing things that maybe we can learn from that? I think it's the same. I think there's a lot of partnership opportunities that, you know, people don't understand, you know, the travel industry incorporates art, you know, architects, engineers, lawyers, hotels, tour companies, restaurants, and a lot of times they don't know how to access that industry. For partnerships, you know, people be like, well, we want to do something and a giveaway to Orlando, and we want to be able to get in and do that we're like, well, we can open the door for that. We can also you know, so I think from the industry, we are a close it industry. We do a lot of partnerships, you can open up and find out a lot about a destination from a DMO. But I think in the travel and tourism space, you know, you're really connecting with those consumers in a time that they are relaxed, they are having fun, they are open to different messaging. So I would say one of the biggest things is is looking at opportunities to partner. You know, we do that a lot. You know, we don't own anything, but we market the entire destination. So we partner with everybody here to put forth that one message about the destination. They're all talking about their hotel, their business, their this, we're that one group that is doing everything. And it's a huge, huge business, travel and tourism has a huge footprint across the country. But sometimes people don't see that aggregation because they might think of a hotel chain or an airline or a theme park or a bus company. But the impact of the industry is huge. And really, you know, with that partnership aspect, it really does put forth the face of the city. You know, we just partnered with our economic development agency. And we did that because it was fragmented. We now for the first time have one brand far community because they're trying to get businesses to move here. We're trying to get tourists to come here. They need our assets that talk about live work and play. We need there's when we're getting conventions to talk about the types of businesses that we have here and that we're a serious business community. So you see the dovetail between the business side and the tourism side.

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Tom Cain  19:47

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Tom Cain  20:23

zombies, yeah, we have to throw some zombies in there. Your vision, our craft, topthoughtleader.com. can't listen to the first draft again, back to the show. What

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Ben Kaplan  20:39

is interesting from Travel and Tourism is that you're naturally oriented towards partnerships because if you're focused on like the the visitors experience, right, there's a lot of interlocking parts, you know, you get on your plane to fly to Orlando, you land there, and then other people may engage you and you get to your hotel, and then you get to different destinations and, and all of those have to come together to have the right experience. And psychologists also have taught us that we're a little bit more biassed towards remembering and recalling happy experiences overall. So even though as part of that trip, we do maybe not everything was amazing. And we had to wait in line at the airport security checkpoint, and that was annoying. And our seat wasn't as comfortable as we would have liked that magical moment with the dolphins. And this might be the thing that stands out in our memory as well. Right.

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Danielle Hollander  21:30

And that becomes a lot of people's happy place. Right? So one of the things you know, we work with one of our hospitals and but we're talking about positive on your mental health, the positive on yourself, physical health, wellness, tourism is a big thing. You may those things will fade. But when it pops back up in your social feed, or a prospect of it's gonna bring a smile to your face, or you're like having a bad day, you're gonna be like, No, but that was so much fun when we were screaming our heads off on that roller coaster, or that was so much fun when we celebrated and drank a milkshake that's about this big. You know, that's where you're gonna come back to what was really special. And it is it provides joy, it provides that mental relief, and it's good for your mental health and your physical health.

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Ben Kaplan  22:16

What do you do on marketing to different age demographics. I'll give you another psychology example. And I'm kind of a student of psychology and positive psychology and studies. And one of the conclusions of different psychology studies is that negative emotion is the purview of youth, meaning we're more negative when we're younger, because we're focused on at those points and you're in your 20s or your 30s and you're accumulate a lot of information experience and you do all that and then what they found is as you get older, some of those negative things resigned and you kind of focus a bit more on the now or the moment and in general focus on more happy things. So how do you think about marketing to whether it's on the family side, younger parents versus grandparents different age demographics that might have different experiences, if you're in the memory, selling business? How does age come into play?

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Danielle Hollander  23:06

That is the one thing about bad Orlando right? You've got such a depth and breadth of what you can do here. You know what I like to say is you know when you get on a plane or get in a car, you know that you have to sometimes make those choices of this vacation is really for this person in the family. But this vacation is really what this person when family, you can do anything here literally besides snow ski, right? So it's not like I'm going to this type of vacation and my 15 year old is going to be happy and my four year old is not going to be happy. Right? We can't do something because the grandparents so this you literally have enough things to do here that it is everybody's vacation so when they get on that plane or they get in that car, or some groups of friends that are coming, you know you can go to cocktails and screams or you can go to a themed Alice in Wonderland bar or you can go to the beer spa or you can go play golf or you can go play mini golf. That the variety that is here is everybody's vacation needs can be taken care of

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Ben Kaplan  24:10

is the beer spa exactly what it sounds like. Is it a spa? Where you drink beer? Is that what it is? It is any beer okay did not know that was a thing. Yes. So

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Danielle Hollander  24:19

you know you have you know, no matter what your party size and your party makeup is, everybody is going to be happy because they can do what they want to do. So if you know you know one person is an adventurer, and one person is a relaxer and you want to go You're a tennis nut and you want to go to usta and play on three out of the four Grand Slam surfaces. You can do that here. If you want to play on a course that's designed by world renowned golfers, you can do that here. You want to learn how to water ski, you can do that here. You want to go bass fishing, you can do that here. So whether you're like I is high energy or I want to go Kayak or I want to try something new, or I want to go hang gliding, you can do that here. So you come here and you can satisfy everybody's vacation needs. And I think that's one of the nice things about this destination is it has so much to offer that you can pick that out. In fact, it would take you 103 days to do everything there is to do in Orlando.

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Ben Kaplan  25:25

One final thought for you. And one final question for you is, what would you like to be doing now in terms of marketing that you're not doing at the moment? You said, You're not on the bleeding edge? You want to be on the leading edge? Where is marketing leading for you? What will Visit Orlando or your destination marketing organisation be doing two years from now that you're not doing now? Yeah,

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Danielle Hollander  25:47

I think one of the things that as we were in the recovery, we were very big based on performance marketing and audience targeting and you know, you had to be empathetic and efficient. You know, my neighbour on one side wasn't ready to travel, the other one was, so you had to find a way to do that, as we have come back, we are able to now be in more of our international markets. And I think for us, a lot of our growth comes into those international markets. So being in more of those core markets, we're in 10. Right now, we'd like to be in a lot more of those. The other is bringing back a lot of the activations. So we've really focused on doing you know, we brought in 10 broadcast opportunities this year, you know, that telling that deeper story through that longer form, but then getting back into doing more consumer activations is, I think, where we'd like to do, we're partnering, and we've got pro bowl here we will, the first six Olympians will be crowned for the Paris Games in Orlando for the marathon trials. And those are happening the same weekend. So think there's really three things how do we continue to attract some of those high profile events here to Orlando, you know, how do we connect more through some of the activations that we just we weren't able to do during the timeframe, people weren't doing activations, they didn't want to be in big spaces, and then continuing to tell that story through that longer form so we can tell that greater story. Cool.

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Ben Kaplan  27:17

It's been a while since I've been to Orlando, maybe I need to put it on my list coming up, I think so. Danielle Hollander, CMO of Visit Orlando. Thank you for joining us on TOP CMO and thank you for giving us some perspective in how the number one US destination for visitors how it markets and what all of us as marketers can learn from it.

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Danielle Hollander  27:37

Thank you and thank you for having us on.

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27:43

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