Tourism’s ‘Tag your Treasure’ campaign launched

NELSON Mandela Bay is often known as a city of hidden treasures – but a new campaign by the city’s tourism agency, Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism (NMBT), is set to reveal some of the city gems and get a national and local audience interacting with them on a digital platform.

“Drawing from NMBT’s overarching campaign, the 101 Reasons to Love Nelson Mandela Bay – which aims to highlight the fact that the city has a lot more to offer than meets the eye – the new drive takes from the outcomes of the I love NMB campaign which we ran from September to January and integrates the findings of that campaign into an exciting new way of presenting tourism attractions,” said Mandlakazi Skefile, NMBT chief executive. 

“Essentially the I love NMB campaign saw locals vote for what they believe the city’s top icon to be – from this we came up with the top ten icons. Of course, the next step was to promote the icons and the Easter holiday season provided the unique opportunity to cleverly do so, using the concept of an Easter egg hunt and combing it with our top ten treasures and new media.”

The campaign will largely be run on-line drawing on the power of social media and networks. People are encouraged to “like” the Nelson Mandela Bay – South Africa Facebook page after which they will be led to a graphic image featuring a montage of the top ten icons.

“The idea is to click on a part of the image you think could hold a prize, a kind of treasures within treasures approach. So basically you are hunting for a prize,” added Skefile.

The image is gridded so participants can choose a square, tag where they believe the hidden prizes to be and thereby enter themselves into a draw. Prizes range from the signature prize, a yacht experience on-board the Warrior on the Saturday of the Easter weekend to watch the Splash Festival fireworks in luxury, to weekend getaways and smaller prizes likes flip-flops, towels and sunglasses. There are 101 prizes in total, linking again with the overarching campaign. 

“As the power of instant media and communications grows, it is critical that all sectors, especially tourism, keep up with the technological Joneses. This campaign aims to do just that, but still achieves its mandate of marketing the city, creating hype about what’s on and will literally put bums in beds as prize winners are drawn from around the country.”

Skefile said that the main target market for the campaign was Eastern Cape residents and also those in the city’s “feeder markets” like Gauteng and the Free State.

“Trends seem to be changing and people are more likely nowadays to decide their holiday destinations on a whim rather than the traditional approach to planning well in advance. We would like to catch some of those people and at the same time make sure our ‘regulars’, visiting family and friends, are well catered for in terms of our top ten must see icons and the top ten events over the month of April.”

The campaign, however, will run until June and also incorporates the winter season. “New artwork will be developed for the winter section of this campaign, but in general we want to make sure that the top ten icons remain top of mind for the next four months,” added Skefile.

Also enshrined in the campaign are the city’s top ten events over the month of April. These include the showcase Splash Festival as well as Ironman South Africa, Hobie Cats 16, Motherwell Freedom Run, Bridgestone Great Outdoors Expo, Easter Sunday Music Picnic, SA Mens Suf-lifesaving, Yellow Pages SA Track and Field, and the NMB Food, Wine, and Cheese festival.

The top ten icons are the Red Location Museum, the city’s beaches, Shark Rock Pier, the NMB stadium, the Donkin Reserve, the Campanile, Addo Elephant National Park and its big seven offering, The Boardwalk, No 7 Castle Hill and St Georges Park.

“We encourage everyone to get liking, tagging, tweeting and treasuring,” quipped Skefile, showing her social media savvy.

Visit the Nelson Mandela Bay – South Africa Facebook page.