The call came in late 2024. A gentleman from Victoria's Gippsland region knew his town desperately needed a destination brand to reach more potential visitors.
Retired software executive Kevin Mackin, a member of the Yarram and District Progress Association, explained that the town had a prosperous past - timber and dairy wealth built the grand architecture of its main street - but nowadays was a quiet community of around 1,400 people. It was becoming critical to stimulate its visitor economy and bring new opportunities for jobs and spending in area businesses so Kevin had been tasked with finding a marketing agency and putting together a grant application.
Within a few months, he'd secured a community development grant from Victoria's Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action for the strategy and creative development of Yarram's official destination brand.
Now to work...
The Process
We started by surveying the locals. There wasn't budget to recruit and survey previous or potential visitors but the available data showed that visiting friends and relatives was a core segment of Yarram's existing tourism base. Nearly 100 people - from a town of 1,400 - took the time to contribute their thoughts and opinions. From the key themes and insights which arose from the survey, the WOOF team developed a workshop to further explore these ideas.
Looking at the survey answers, Trip Advisor reviews, Reddit chatter and other online sources, one thing that appeared over and over was that there wasn't always any cafés or restaurants open in Yarram. With only a small handful of venues, and a small local population, it didn't make financial sense for owners to staff their cafes or restaurants every day of the week. It was possible for a visitor to roll into Yarram, hungry and weary, at a time when literally nothing was open. Additionally, there were no established tourist attractions, no fancy hotels, and definitely no day spas.
So why visit?
The list of great attractions in and around Yarram was actually 100-deep. Numerous waterfalls, Tarra-Bulga National Park, hiking trails, picnic spots, lookouts and mountain drives. There's gorgeous hidden beaches, a jetty at Port Albert where you could order tasty meal of fresh fish and chips, pristine Ninety Mile Beach, Australia's best volunteer-run golf course, cycling the Great Southern Rail Trail, and fishing. Australia's best street art lived on 24 walls scattered throughout the town. Over and over, locals used the words 'rainforest to sea'.
The Solution
A brand's positioning differentiates who they are relative to similar options. We use a proprietary framework to test a brand's best attributes against those of its comparable options, whittling the list down to its strongest points of differentiation.
When compared to nearby destinations, others have more boutiques, eateries, bars, galleries, historic activities, theme parks. But as locals mention over and over, within and around Yarram are so many things to do and see - nearly all of which are outdoors. Have a browse through the attractions section of the Yarram website - very few art galleries, museums, shopping districts or other tourist staples make the list. So, how might we define a place which is distinctive for its rainforest setting, near the sea, with murals in between? Yarram is: Gippsland's Gallery of the Outdoors.
We also gathered Yarram's top drawcards into content pillars: Tarra-Bulga, the Sea, Culture & Heritage, Koalas, and Cycling. Personality-wise, the town was peaceful, creative, undeniably warm and friendly, and had a touch of the mystical. Ancient ferns, quiet solitude and fresh air have that mysterious appeal.
A brand identity was developed with a beautiful, rich colour palette, a wordmark logo, key messages, and a series of hand-drawn illustrations. Since most regional destinations have small budgets for advertising but are highly resourceful, the in-house team was set up with templates, fonts, and a style guide to create the content they needed to market Yarram.
Outcomes and Learnings
While the destination brand is in the process of being launched by the in-house team at Future of Yarram, here are some important learnings we can share for those wishing to undertake a similar project:
1. Your stakeholders need to be involved early.
Nowhere in regional Australia is there a marketing budget big enough for what the destination deserves, and the marketing team needs. Therefore, stakeholders who promote the brand on your destination's behalf are invaluable.
For our brand projects, the survey and workshops provide a forum for interested parties (tour operators, restauranteurs, accommodation providers, councillors, curious locals) to contribute. Later, when the project team needs to make decisions regarding key pieces of the strategy or creative, they can easily justify their decisions because the outcome was developed based on community input rather than their own preferences.
2. Your project team is critical.
Yarram was incredibly fortunate to have a thoughtful and collaborative project team representing their community. Whether it's one person or several, the role is done well if they are willing to listen to feedback from stakeholders, explain the reason why certain decisions were made, and have the good judgment to know whether or not the feedback warrants a revision.
3. Your brand rollout is as important as your strategy and design.
Make sure you know what your marketing budget can afford in the year or two after launch and factor that into the creative development brief.
Will there be investment in a multi-faceted ad campaign, or will you be handling a lot of content in-house? Will you be prioritising social media or website content? How will your brand partners and locals be involved? Can you invest in brand assets to make it easy for them to participate in your brand story?
If you have an idea, use that to inform the deliverables for the creative development. It's no use having an agency write a TV spot or radio script if you can't afford to produce or run the ad. Yarram, for instance, intends to upgrade its website so the project team specified a website design concept in our contract.
How can we help?
We'd love to hear about your marketing challenges and see if we could be the right fit to help you get results like these.