Six Risks When Your Branding Process Fails You

A good brand lives on forever, but sometimes a destination branding process fails and destinations find themselves in a sticky situation. While getting it right in the first place would be the optimal choice, some creatives jump in headfirst without considering the risks.

Take a moment to envision what a failed branding process can do to your destination so that you’ll think more deeply about each step you take in creating and promoting your brand.

1. Waste Resources

First and foremost, branding takes resources. And destination branding that fails wastes those resources and offers you little more than lessons to learn from. Time, money and effort all go down the drain, risking your DMO’s inner workings and financial stability. Every dollar and minute needs to build towards success. Fail at your branding efforts and you risk seeing those resources cut.

2. Lose Credibility and Trust

While those who control the budgets will lose faith in you, so will your stakeholders and partners. DMOs spend years—if not decades—cultivating relationships with partners in their destinations, working together, building trust. If your branding process fails, you risk losing all of those hard-won connections. 

Looking externally, the media, travel trade members, and anyone else who may have been considering working with your destination will wonder what went wrong. Credibility and trust are hallmarks of any brand, and once you fail to deliver that because of a branding faux-pas, you pull a very important piece from the Jenga tower.

3. Suffer Negative Visitor Perception

Of course the most important risk of any destination brand failure is losing the visitors you seek to attract. Even if partners don’t abandon you, bad branding risks losing those who are most vital to the travel and tourism industry: travelers. If your branding goes rogue and fails to connect with target audiences or if it is received negatively, visitors will perceive you differently.

Not only will you risk losing them, but you’ll now have to work twice as hard to win them back.

4. Confuse Your Market

If your destination brand failure isn’t quite as distinct or authentic as it once was, you risk confusing the market with similar messaging. Imagine if all of the sudden West Virginia touted a new slogan: “West Virginia is for the Amorous.” It would be ridiculous and confusing to a market that was already accustomed to Virginia being for lovers. 

A brand needs to stand out, not mimic or resemble. By failing to distinguish yourself, you risk looking like your competitors. Or worse, sending visitors their way by accident.

5. Decrease Your Market Share

However you negatively impact your brand, the ultimate loss is market share. Fail to resonate with North American travelers, and they will go elsewhere. There is no shortage of destinations for travelers to choose from, therefore it’s imperative to ensure your branding nails it the first time. 

Failure to do so means losing your destination’s share in target markets. And given all the reasons above, it’s unlikely that new markets will be flocking your way following your branding misstep.

6. Risk Long-Term Damage

All of this amounts to the long-term outlook that, even if the branding failure was small, is simply not good. By losing the trust of partners, damaging visitor perception, confusing the market, and losing market share overall, your destination will now be in a precarious position.

The long-term risk is that all of your work up until that point has been for naught. Your DMO will need to work essentially from scratch to rebuild confidence and trust to attract back partners and target markets. Visitors won’t soon forget if the flub is major. The internet makes sure of that.

Rather than avoid working on your brand at all, just be intentional about any future steps you take. Too many brands have been taken down by one misstep, so it’s vital to ensure you have a team watching your every move.

If you’re looking to help organize a team to do just that, get in touch with DCI. We have more than 60 years of experience connecting destinations with creative strategies for their brands. Contact Dariel Curren at dariel.curren@old.aboutdci.com to learn more about working with our team.