Cultural Realms - Rossitza Ohridska-Olson's blog about the business of cultural tourism

Back to the “Symbols” of Bulgaria

Aparently, I was not alone to think that the “Symbols of Bulgaria” campaign was a non-sense from tourism marketing standpoint: Vagabond Magazine http://www.vagabond-bg.com/?page=vote made their own campaign among foreigners and the English speaking Bulgarians abroad. While with great sense of humor, this campaign is much more logical, when it comes to judge appeal of our country. As the magazine says: “Do you know where the Madara Horseman is? Or even what it is?”. Probably not, but evidently most of the people who ever visited the country have seen downtown Sofia or the “rakia and cigarettes smoke”.

And the most important – Vagabond didn’t spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars to find out that “Martenitza” is a unique, self-propagating symbol of Bulgaria. Bravo, Vagabond! At last to see somebody in my country has some common sense and humorous approach to travel experience and marketing.

Cultural Destination Symbols

Are destination symbols obsolete or they are still part of the branding of places and tourism attractions? How they are chosen and are they corresponding to the real essence of the place? I am asking myself this question ever since Bulgaria decided to throw millions of dollars to “find” the symbol of the country (http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/Theme_Lifestyle/Material/Madara_horseman_national_symbol.htm). The goal for this exercise were not clear – on one hand, these symbols would represent Bulgaria as travel destination, on the other – they would be printed on the reverse side of the Euro coins in 2012. Now the idea is that each region in Bulgaria must find its own symbol. Each 1000 sq meters (roughly each 1000 sq yards) have to have its own symbol. A total of 110 symbols for cities, towns, micro-regions and various places.

The symbol frenzy contaminated dozens of companies sponsoring the campaign. Is this part of the national strategy for tourism development? You would say – yes – if not, who is making all these efforts? No. If you read the dozens of pages of empty wishes declared as “Strategy for tourism development of Bulgaria for the period 2008-2013” you will not find any trace of idea about gluing a symbol to each 1000 sq meters.

Big cities, as Paris, London, New York and the like have symbols – the Eiffel Tower, the Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty. And not because somebody voted for them. It happened  because of the million visits, million photos made of these monuments, published for the last 100 years, and millions of dollars spent on destination advertising. A symbol of a tourist destination comes naturally. It doesn’t appear because of nationally organized voting campaigns.

Even more, when a city or a place symbol is well known, it extend its influence beyond the initial intent of place branding and become symbol of a country. This is the case of the Statue of Liberty, which became a worldwide symbol of the “USA”, not only of NYC. Taj Mahal is not associated with any city in India, but it became its symbol and the most visited building. Some symbols are only country symbols – like the Pyramids, which are perceived as a symbol for Egypt, not for Giza. Most of the countries concentrate their cultural destination branding around already known symbols, they don’t try to create new ones, since this is a double edge sword. A newly coined symbol can be created by branding specialists and tourism destination consultants and be on target about representing the essence of the place, city or country. But still this will be a “We say” brand, not “they feel” brand. Specialists normally don’t have the tools to create an emotional branding – they go after the established rules.

For new countries, like Canada, well thought symbols are chosen to represent the Tourist board or any governmental body dealing with the tourism issues. The symbol (the leaf) of the country doesn’t provoke any emotion. But the branding is helped by the slogan (Keep exploring), which is right on the buck to attract adventure travelers - the target market for the Canadian tourism. I still believe that Canada is an greatly successful exception for artificially created symbols. Normally, professional branding symbols are used only for country advertising and destination branding by official organizations. Sometimes they don’t mean nothing to the 1.4 billions of users of Internet and almost 1 billion of travelers per year worldwide. For this vast amount of human masses, buried under tons of information, the only symbol, which could “cut through the noise”, is the symbol they have grasped intuitively, not the one which is imposed to them by advertising.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Bulgaria is not a vastly advertised country. Its monuments and cultural heritage sites, are unknown to the global public, although the Bulgarians believe that everybody should know something about the Rila Monastery or the Tryavna Woodcarving School. So for my friends, the Bulgarians, choosing the symbols become a huge fight what should be more important – the monument of this region or the fortress of the rival neighbors. They somehow don’t realize that these fights are irrelevant. The country is almost completely unknown to biggest markets for cultural tourism – the Americans and the Canadians. In China, India and Russia (the countries that will climb on the top 5 list of world cultural travelers in the next 12 years), Bulgaria is known only to the old people, still believing in communists solidarity. So why on earth this is a BIG DEAL to chose the symbol of Melnik or the one of Lovech? Isn’t enough first to popularize the country with the rose symbol and then to worry about the 110 micro-regions? Are the Bulgarians impatient to wait until the visitors and the history find and promote what they mostly like in our country? Or are we afraid that somebody before us can grab a symbol and claim it as its own, as Turkey claimed the tulip symbol – a flower mostly associated with Holland?

No matter what is the reason behind the campaign, I consider it a huge waste of money. First, because Bulgaria already has a symbol for its tourism – the rose. Second, because the country is so small, that mudding the waters with another 110 symbols will confuse even the Bulgarians, leave alone the foreign visitors. And third – because these symbols have to come naturally, not as a local initiative.  Symbols appear by themselves as for example the Loire region’s symbol -  the famous castles, or the Moscow symbol - Kremlin. Visitors have the talent to see what is more prominent and spread the world. Now with the Internet, this becomes even easier. If you receive 10 images to your iPhone from 10 different friends who have visited Paris and all of them are sending you the Eiffel Tower photo, why should you wander what is the symbol of Paris?

How symbols can continue to be relevant in an era of overwhelming information? Should we, the gurus of tourism theory and branding decide what is important for a destination? Or should the local citizens decide if some monument or feature of the place should be relevant to the fairway visitors?

I believe that a cultural destination symbol should be the most popularly attractive building or feature for a place. No matter if the local citizens agree or not that it represents the essence of the place. The efforts of state or country agencies and tourism boards should concentrate on popularizing the unknown places as part of the big picture and first brand them with the country or region symbol. Once an unknown destination starts to be popular as a notion, as a word-of-mouth topic, then the people will find the symbol.

This way the symbol will become part of the emotional branding of a destination, the “gut feeling” for a place, globally transferable and marketable much easier through social networks. 

The Orangefest – an event rebranding dilemma

BBC published a curious and funny news about the Orange Walk and called it Orangeman slams cultural tourism  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7503644.stm). I was not surprised to see that politicians are (miss)using the notion of cultural tourism for their purposes. This is an old communist trick that I have “enjoyed” during the 30 years living in the Eastern Block. What I was surprised to see this type of propaganda rising head in old Ireland, in a very funny situation.

A religious order is objecting to event re-branding of a 4 centuries old tradition. Who made a bigger mistake? The Orangemen or the members of the ruling DUP? Of course, this time – the politicians. If they wanted to use the Belfast Parade as a tourist attraction, why they first didn’t consult with the “famous” Orange Order and get their blessing to reshape it accordingly to their idea about cultural event? Simply because, nobody is paying attention to the Orange Order, an obsolete and pompous institution, claming to represent the conservative cultural values of the country. As John O'Dowd put it very well: "Nobody listening to the speeches of Order leaders today can conclude that the Orange Order is a religious and cultural body - it is not."

The Order is Protestant, anti-Catholic organization, which since 1700s plays big part in dividing the country, not uniting it. Then, why re-brand the Belfast parade to relate to this order? I guess the intentions were to make the parade look and feel more peaceful, civilized and to attract more tourists. As Northern Ireland's first minister Peter Robinson said: "There is no good reason why Northern Ireland should not become a magnet for those around the globe who are interested in cultural tourism." He was right about the destination perspectives and opportunities and wrong about the way to achieve the goal. Because you cannot re-brand a controversial event, on which even the retailers refuse to work in objection to the parade. Much less you can create a positive cultural tourism experience in the midst of local animosities.

The Russians did the opposite to the Irish – and they succeeded better in creating a new cultural tourism product. They admitted that their 70 years communist experiment was horrible. There was a consensus that all conflicts belong to the past, to the museums, and hence - they are exhibits, cultural attractions. They opened the doors to the Lenin’s office, the Stalin bunker and dozens of “attractions” which still cause terror to the survivors of this era.

The new Russians didn’t try to dress in flowers the nightmarish experiences – they even made them look more horrible than they ever were. Why? Because this was the image about the USSR during seven decades. So instead of fighting with the established brand, even when this image was created against their will, the Russian marketers started using it to the fullest extend.

After 18 years of perestroika, oligarchy mafias and times of quick petroleum buck, they even restored the 9th of May military parade in 2008. Why? Surely not to showcase their war trinkets, about which every military intelligence knows more than everything they can demonstrate in 4 hours, but to sell more Coca Cola around the Red Square, more hotel rooms and more tickets to the Kremlin. It was a brilliant combination between imperial uniforms fashion show, an air show and brass band marching bands concert. Isn’t it a tourist attraction? Of course it is, unlike the times when the parade was shown on the Western TV programs to incite fear and justify the arms race.\

So why re-brand the Belfast Parade, symbol of sectarianism and extreme nationalism? I would advise the Northern Ireland tourism experts to drop the re-branding idea and to let the parade as it is – an old custom, of which the political connotations will disappear with the democratization of the society, not with the renaming of the event. In the meanwhile, old fashion-dressed Protestants will march on the streets, and, if the retailers don’t go on strike, a lot of beer, hotels and meals will be sold to the curious camera-happy tourists.