Bottling the gees

Who would have believed that the main subject of conversation between middle-class white women over coffee mornings and dinner parties would be soccer? Who would have seen themselves grinning wildly and have an overwhelming urge to embrace total strangers spending their euros and dollars at our shopping malls? For the last month, the new national pastime became ‘go to malls, fan parks and stadiums to watch the tourists’...

And the question we're all desperate to answer is how to keep the goodwill going? Well, that's where branding, marketing and ad people come in to the picture. They must work out how we bottle the gees and make sure everyone has their daily glass?

Word of mouth

A few years ago, Prof John Simpson and his team at the UCT Unilever Institute of Marketing produced the ‘Wildfire Index', which showed that there was no finer way of advertising than word of mouth. And if the roughly half a million overseas visitors that poured into the country tell just one person about their amazing experience, our tourism rates should soar, because very few of these people will come here on their own.

Last year in October I wrote about the lack of South African branding overseas. In the US and Europe there are posters everywhere for Australia, New Zealand and the Bahamas - but South Africa, zip... And mention the country anywhere and the response was "But what about the crime?"

So exactly how do we cash in on the images that went around the world of our beautiful country with its smiling happy locals and overjoyed guests?

The police spent around R640 million on buying new equipment and setting up mobile command centres - which proved effective as the crime rate plummeted. But what we all want to know is how are they going to take this forward? Are we going to be plunged back into a fear-ridden nation again or have the criminals suddenly decided it's too risky now to commit crime?

What is planned right now?

Our minister for tourism is talking about securing the Olympics for Durban in 2020, which would be amazing, but what does his department have planned right now - while the buzz is still there?

Perhaps the real onus rests on each one of us to proudly spread the word wherever we can and stop running our own country down at every turn. Maybe it's time for the doom-and-gloomers to see the light and realise what a unique country this is, where people speaking 22 different languages and many different cultures and religion can come together as one and say "Ke Nako"...