The Most Precious Time Of All

Have you seen the Thomson ad? You must have done. Watch “X Factor” and you can’t miss it, which will probably be why I have. Or had.

The Thomson ad is being given added prominence among the Spanish media for two reasons: one, that Tenerife reckons that it is benefiting from it specifically; two, because Thomson (i.e. TUI) is making as much play as it can out of the travails at Thomas Cook.

The ad is one of the most remarkable pieces of holiday promotion you could wish to see. Unashamedly and gut-wrenchingly sentimental, if it doesn’t move you, then you have no soul. It does everything an advert should do, with an emphasis on playing with the emotions.

Break the ad down and you appreciate just how effective it is. Take the language used. Key words and phrases such as “those close to you”, “share with them”, “cherish”, “the people who mean everything in the world to you”, “holidays are the most precious time of all” make you well up just by reading them; they are the art of a neurolinguistic programmer who has got right inside the heart, head and mind of the audience.

The words are those of a child, just to add greater poignancy to the whole thing, but they are spoken by a child for a hard-nosed reason: children are massively important when it comes to family purchasing decisions and especially where holidays are concerned. Advertisers know this and exploit the fact for all it’s worth.

Then there’s the music, a plaintive reworking of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind” with a distinct nod in the direction of Coldplay. It is recognisable without being known.

And finally, there is the imagery: Tenerife, because that’s where the ad was filmed. The island may not be mentioned, but Tenerife is doing all it can to cash in not just in summer but also this winter. Hard luck, Mallorca, the Canaries win again, both because they were the location and because they are open for winter business.

Behind the creativity of the advert, before it was even first worked up and story-boarded, was something much less slushy. BMB (Beattie McGuinness Bungay), the agency which created the ad, was set a “business problem”. From the agency’s website, I quote: “Consumers see little difference between any of the large holiday operators, resulting in low brand preference and attribution”. The “idea” to address this problem was to “remind consumers of the importance of spending quality time with your loved ones and how Thomson truly facilitate this”.

The campaign will end up costing Thomson five million pounds, which equates to over two million euros more than the Balearics have in total for tourism promotion in 2012. But were the tourism ministry to embark on television campaigns in the future, it could learn an awful lot from the Thomson ad.

Look at the business problem again. You can easily substitute “large holiday operators” with “leading holiday destinations”. From this, you can change the idea to “how Mallorca truly facilitates this”.

The advert is generic, not that it has prevented Tenerife from working it to its advantage, but there are important lessons. Firstly, the ad is believable, and this, unlike Mallorcan (Balearics) attempts, is partly because there are no celebrities, which has been a Mallorcan obsession for too long. Secondly, though the imagery of Tenerife is obviously integral, it is also incidental. Shots of landscape and what have you, another usual obsession, do not sell like emotion sells, especially when you want to grab a television audience by the throat.

I have been highly dismissive of adverts such as the Nadal one. They have been ineffective in all sorts of ways, which is why the small promotion spend for 2012 is a blessing in disguise, as it stops the same mistakes being made; mistakes that have centred on a belief that you sell through “place”, which translates as landscape scenes. Yes, you can, but not initially. You sell, most powerfully, through emotion, which is exactly what BMB have done for Thomson. They have taken the simple concept of the family holiday and the simple and familiar representation of the family on holiday and come up with something really rather wonderful.

I am not suggesting that Mallorca should imitate the Thomson ad, even if it had the money to do so, but if an appreciation can be made of the power of emotion then future promotion might just become more effective and might also go some way to demonstrating how Mallorca can truly facilitate the spending of quality time and can differentiate itself from other leading holiday destinations.

 

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Bandanarama

Dock. Dock. Dock.

I am searching for the best onomatopoiea. You may have better. But you’ll know to what I refer. Lie back on a beach, close your eyes, think of nothing in particular, and within seconds your personal bit of tranquility will be invaded by the sound of wooden-racket beach paddle tennis. Dock. Dock. Dock.

There is little that is more irritating. Piers Morgan perhaps, but at least he doesn’t generally speaking plonk himself down next to you on a beach and annoy the hell out of you with his supercilious smugness. I have a theory that Morgan was bullied at school, and that he is now taking it out on the world. I digress though.

The irritants of holidays. Some aren’t irritants as such, more why in God’s name is someone doing thats, such as walking barefoot the ten minutes or so back from the beach. Given, as previously mentioned, the propensity of the local Rovers to scatter their messages from a bottom hither and thither, it is preferable to soil the sole of a flip-flop than the sole of a foot.

Others are genuine irritants. Like the I’m completely ignoring the sign at the entrance to the local Eroksi which asks that I don’t enter minus a top (presuming I’m a man, that is) and minus footwear (with or without whatever might have been trod in en route).

Let’s say, for sake of argument, that you come from Luton. Do you go to the local Tesco wearing only a pair of shorts? As a rule, you don’t. Do you walk the ten minutes to Tesco’s in bare feet? Normally, not. And do you, either on a work day or at the weekend, wear a bandana?

In Luton there are, even now, building workers, plumbers, chartered accountants thinking to themselves, “you know what, when I go on holiday I’m going to get me a bandana.” Or get the whole family bandanas. And a Jeep convertible. A family of bandanas, all black paisley affairs, rode into town the other day, with his and her matching bandanas and those for the kids as well. A statement of bandana-ism is clearly best made when everyone can see it. Wearing bandanas whilst concealed by a Ford Focus would be pretty stupid.

According to the website coolbandanas.com, a cool bandana is “great for heat-related health problems”. I can accept that there may be a health benefit to the bandana, but so there also is to the hat or even the hair. A further advantage of the bandana, so says another website, is that it keeps hair out of your face, which it would if the person wearing one had any.

The typical bandana-wearer (male) has usually gone the full Phil Mitchell. It’s the double whammy of fashion victim-ism: a number one covered in a square piece of fabric with connotations of gangstas. The number one (or lower) is hugely impractical in hot climes. Just ask former England cricketer Chris Lewis, for instance. He shaved his hair off during a match in the West Indies and promptly got heat stroke. The bandana might have helped stave it off, but then why opt for two fashion statements when you can do without either?

That’s the thing with the bandana. It is a fashion statement. No more, no less. But, in addition to its association with American gang culture, it is also has an association with gay culture. I’m not about to explain how this works, but suffice it to say that some wearers, giving their heads a relief, might wish to avoid putting the bandana into a back pocket.

Nevertheless, one could excuse the bandana on the grounds of metrosexuality. New men wear bandanas. Unfortunately, they are also inclined to wear something else: the sarong. This does at least, and mercifully, seem to be declining in popularity, which can be put down to Luton metro man having had a rare rush of common sense and realised that he looked a complete pillock.

But of course, there is more to it than just a fashion statement. It is about doing things, and wearing things, that you wouldn’t dream of doing when not on holiday. The bandana is about letting your hair down, not that most wearers have any. We should in fact praise the bandanarama on display in a Jeep convertible or strutting along a prom; praise it as a symbol of being on holiday and really not caring a stuff. Because back in Luton, you really would look daft with a bandana and would probably be arrested if you went into Tesco’s only wearing shorts.

But if bandana it is, please, please don’t dock, dock, dock and please, please, put something on your feet because … watch out! Oops, too late.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Beach Is The Only Place To Be

There are probably those who live away from Mallorca who think enviously of those who do live on the island and of their heading off to the beach on a daily basis. It is a rather false impression.

While there are those who do make the beach a daily ritual, and those for whom the whole day at the beach is the ritual, there are plenty for whom the beach is a rare event and some for whom it is an alien place. And not just those who live away from the coast.

When some first come to Mallorca, as in a permanent way and even if they are meant to be working or running a business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling that life is just one long holiday. Legion are stories of those whose business went belly-up because they were toasting their bellies on the beach while packing away a cold Saint Mick or several – day after day. Life may be a beach in Mallorca, but it is also a bitch, if the beach becomes all-consuming.

Look around in some bars, restaurants and other establishments, and you may well see some pasty faces. How can this be, you might think. All that sun, and little by way of a suntan. The other day, the delightful Swedish girl at the Laberinto maze said that I didn’t have much of a tan. “I haven’t been to the beach yet this year,” I replied. It’s not as if it’s far away. More or less just around the corner.

Well, I did go – yesterday. For about an hour. Old blogotees among you might recall my reminiscing about a previous career as a beach bum and about beach life as it once was. You can never take the beach out of the boy, but is the man who is tired of the beach, tired of life? No. Just gets restless. And it’s not holiday, after all.

Perhaps that’s it. Go to the beach, and there are loads of people on holiday. And you’re not. It seems like a bit of a fraud, something to be a bit guilty of. There again, the beach, as the heat really kicks in, as it now is, is the only place to be in the afternoons – for a while at any rate. But as a place to get some freshness. The beach becomes functional as opposed to romantic; it’s like having an air-conditioned room that you can take yourself off to when the atmosphere, only some metres inland, becomes stifling.  

Perhaps also it’s the case that familiarity breeds familiarity. The same old beach. I need to re-connect with the beach, re-discover the beach, which may well mean not going to the same beach. Yesterday was quite alarming. I recognised some who are there every year, some who I know. A German family, for example. It’s quite disconcerting to note the way that the children have grown. But they’re still the same, as they were last year, two years ago, the year before that.

That is almost certainly it. So many beaches and so little time to go to them. But like all the other attractions of Mallorca, the natural ones, that is, the tendency is to just slip into the familiar and the easy. And there is another impulse to break the familiarity trap. Not going to the beach is as much of a crime as going to it every day, all day. In my book, anyway. I had this awful feeling a couple of days ago. Summer’s been here for some time, and I’d not been to the beach. I got that line from the Style Council – “the long hot summer’s just passing me by”. That would never do. I’d thought so much about it, that I dreamt about it. October was here and the beach had gone.

No, you don’t spend your days on the beach, but to not go to the beach … Why be here?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Holiday, Celebrate

Forty years ago and forty years on. This blog has celebrated all sorts of anniversaries, but in a sense the forty years since the BBC started its “Holiday” programme somehow seem imbued with greater pathos than even anniversaries such as 30 years since Elvis and ten years since Diana. Those years are more personal, more intimate, more understandable.

How it’s all changed – holiday that is. I guess the BBC decided to finally ditch the “Holiday” programme two years ago because there was no need for it. Why would there be, when the internet can offer you videos, webcams, forums, informed and misinformed sites, when there are any number of books, of DVDs, any number of this and that. The “Holiday” programme was, though, its own portal, one into a world that was new, different, mysterious. In 1969 foreign holidays were the exception. The destination was largely unknown. What information that was available came from the brochure and was often a work of fiction.

My first Mallorcan holiday was in 1969. Arenal. See how things change. Arenal barely raises a mention on the Brit Mallorcan itinerary nowadays; it’s Berlin, Bremen and Baden-Baden. I can remember little of it, except that it was August and at times unbearably hot; except the scene from the hotel room of what amounted to a shanty town on some scrubland where one family appeared to live under a tin sheet. How things change. Except a bar across from the beach where my father and his mate spent many an hour and was memorable if only for being an establishment of alcohol that was not denied to minors. Except going out one night to some show – no idea where or what it was (a manor house maybe) – where they came round with one of those thin-tapered wine/sangria dispensers and literally poured it down your neck, even the necks of minors. Except my older sister and her friend meeting some local boys and there being a bit of a to-do, from which I was excluded. I guess some stuff doesn’t really change.

Perhaps there was an element of it all being a status symbol. “We’re going foreign this year. Mallorca.” Though of course we would have certainly spelt it with a “j” and probably pronounced it with one. We got a colour TV the following year, just in time for the World Cup, but we could also now see holiday destinations as they really were, rather than stripped of their blues and yellows.

The telly was our eye on holiday, it was our only eye. The “Holiday” programme – Cliff Michelmore, John Carter, Frank Bough, Des Lynam, Kathy Tayler, Anne Gregg,  Jill Dando, Monty Don. It begat the ITV version with Judith Chalmers, wishing we were there. And so it remained our eye until the devil unleashed the internet and spoiled us with information, spoiled us into becoming virtual tourists, denied the excitement of the unknown. There is of course excitement about holiday, of course there is, but we now know everything we need to know before we even arrive at the check-in. The mystery’s gone. The fascination has disappeared. No more are we innocents abroad with innocence as to where we are going. As tourists we are like lovers from  whom the spark has gone after the initial lust of newness. Instead we merely cuddle up to our destination and fall asleep in a familiar touch and embrace.

And what of the Mallorcans? Were they to know that on an island many kilometres north were people watching a man in a suit with sturdy-rimmed glasses imparting knowledge as to resorts such as Arenal? Were they to know that the name of their island was to become, for many years, a pejorative by-word for total naffness? Were they to know that this holiday movement was to bequeath Alcúdia its Mile or Can Picafort a whole new town of unrelenting hotelness or Muro a length of road running parallel to its playa and to even more hotelness?

Forty years. Not a lifetime, but millions of holiday lives. No, I don’t suppose the Mallorcans or even Cliff Michelmore could have anticipated all those.