Let’s face it, Cold Stone Creamery is pretty much AWESOME. Ice cream made fresh every day in each store, sometimes with seasonal and local favorite flavors, plus the craziest and biggest range of mix-ins (mostly fresh fruit, nuts, and brands you’ve heard of vs. generic). Hard to top that.
But then they do.
Let’s say you walk in one afternoon after kind of a rough day, feeling beat-up, maybe you had to make a lot of decisions (some of which maybe turned out to be not the best decisions you’d ever made). So you just don’t want to have to make any more decisions. At least, no more than one. So you check out their Singular Creations menu, select “Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some,” and then stand back as they work their magic to bring all the different ingredients together into a waffle cup of deliciousness.
But then the next week (or the next night – hey, I don’t want to presume, or judge), you’re back and feeling in charge. You’ve made some decisions at school or at work or at home (or at the track – again, no judging) or some combination of the above, and they all worked out pretty well, so you’re not going to let anyone tell you what you want. You’re going to make it up yourself, and you can pretty much guarantee that they’ve never before seen a mixture as fantastic as this one, and that they never will again.
And that right there – those three things – are why Cold Stone Creamery gets my vote for Best. Marketer. Ever.
But for those who don’t think in ice cream (like I do), allow me to explain.
Those three things above represent the three things that are at the core of smart destination marketing: Consistency, Curation, and Customization.
Consistency
Breaking it down further, take the expectation you have for the quality of the ice cream and the mix-ins at Cold Stone. That’s Consistency. From the moment you walk in the store, you know what you’re going to get, regardless of whether you decide to pick for yourself or choose one of their Signature Creations. And you know it’s going to be good. Top quality product, recognizable brand name ingredients, terrific service.
Now think about the last time you picked a destination to visit. There were probably a bunch of reasons to pick that particular destination – easy to get to, kids had never been, fit your price range, etc. – but at some point you were also thinking about what you were going to do when you got there. And much like with the ingredients at Cold Stone, you were probably thinking some basic level of quality – it’s pretty unlikely that you spent a lot of time researching Joe’s Wax Museum, or the Tarantula Petting Zoo. No, instead you were probably looking for attractions and other things to do that had a uniform consistency about them, things you could trust, things you were pretty sure would be safe and fun for your family.
Curation.
If you’re like most people, you sometimes want people to do the work for you. Maybe you don’t have all the answers, maybe you’re overwhelmed by all the choices or maybe you just had a decision-filled day and you don’t want to make any more. At Cold Stone, the solution is easy as apple pie filling – just pick one of their amazing pre-selected creations.
Same goes for destinations. For example, it might seem kind of against the stereotype of Millennials, but there’s a significant number of that generation that are using travel agents to help make their vacation plans. New services such as Lola allow for a blend of high tech and high touch, of artificial intelligence and personal concierges to help make travel planning a piece of, well, cake batter ice cream. And of course, Airbnb is attempting to curate their own experiences in markets around the world, working with their hosts to pull together the perfect “local” things for their guests to do (note my previous post – sometimes people want to visit like visitors and see a city’s top attractions). With so many choices, big to small and iconic to hidden, why wouldn’t you ask someone to help you figure it out? Curation is a key ingredient for smart destination marketing.
Customization
And finally, Customization. Sometimes you want to make your own concoction. Sometimes mint and chocolate and chips together just sounds plain boring and instead you want banana and blueberries and brownies. The folks behind the Cold Stone Counter will be totally happy to mix that right up for you, and hey, you can take a picture of it, give it a name, and post it to their Instagram for a possible future role on their Creations menu. Or don’t, and keep it to yourself. Up to you.
And for your destination?
When it comes to destination marketing, technology has put tremendous power into people’s hands, and as a result, they have access to cool, interesting, unique things that they’d never heard of a year ago (in some cases even a month ago).
You have the ability to decide what to do after you arrive at your destination, pretty much on a real time basis, guided only by the weather and your whims. Go solo or with a group. Walk it, bike it, camel it, rickshaw it, sail it, hang-glide it – you’re pretty much free to do it and see it however you want.
Want to try a James Bond tour of London, seeing all the 007 sights in an Aston Martin? How about doing core yoga on a paddleboard in San Francisco? Or sit back and relax while hundreds of tiny Garra Rufa fish nibble away the dead skin on your feet? All are readily available and a few clicks away on Peek.com, which makes customization of your visit as simple as chocolate sprinkles.
Consistency, Curation, and Customization – just like the Cold Stone brand is built on all three, remember that destination marketing isn’t just one of them – it’s all of them. It’s knowing that different visitors at different times of their planning and visit want high quality experiences they can trust, they sometimes want some hand-holding to ensure they’re getting the things they most need to see, and they might want their visit personalized and tailored for them vs. getting the cookie cutter experience that everyone else gets.
If you’d like to discuss it further, I suggest an offsite retreat at the closest Cold Stone Creamery. I’ll be at the counter perfecting my recipe for Salted Caramel Turtle Fudge.
Matt and I both served on U.S. Travel’s National Council of Attractions years ago. Make sure to connect with him on LinkedIn (and make sure to let him know you read this article when you send the connection request) so you can read more of his insightful articles. Thanks Matt!
How can I help you in August 2020?
DMOs/Tourism Organizations:
Are you looking for a way to provide value to your partners during this challenging time? Check out the Online Tourism Training Program with this link. I can help you provide monthly virtual training for you to offer to your partners/members. My team and I do all the work and you reap the benefits. Topics range from Best Practices for small business, to Group Tours, to Tourism Sales.
Looking to increase your Tourism knowledge and skills?
Then check out Tourism Pro Academy. This platform is a one-stop-shop. You can check out free resources, courses and other ways to work with me. I am adding new offerings this month. Click here to see what’s available.
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