In the New Zealand herald today an article came out (click here for article on Base Backpackers) about Base Backpackers receiving a “rap” over the knuckles for the slogan “New Zealand’s best hostels” in their advertising. According to the article this was in response to a complaint by the Youth Hostels Association (YHA) - a direct competitor of Base. YHA complained that travellers might perceive this to be determinmed by an independent review.

What a load of poppy-cock! I am sure it is marketing 101 that you try and find a statement that proposes you to be the best, the legends, the most famous, the number 1 whatever you are in your market. Does anyone really take any notice of this in advertising? In fact, surely this comes back to the increasing disenchantment of consumers with traditional media and marketing sources and a greater emphasis on peer reviews - hence the growth of review sites and forums etc where travellers seek out fellow travellers opinions on the best places to stay. Are YHA and the Advertising Standards Authority really serious that anyone believes these sort of slogans?

Last year I wrote a post on the Art of Writing Web Content which stated that web content should start with a big fat claim to draw people’s attention in. Examples were “lost weight in 21 days guaranteed” and “Pick of the backpacker hostels - Lonely Planet”. I did fortunately qualify this to say make sure it is believable and provable. Perhaps YHA is recognising that at least Base’s claim is believe - perhaps they are the best hostels in NZ, after all the above Lonely Planet claim relates to Base Hot Rocks Rotorua and the y have certainly received their fair share of awards from independent hostel booking website Hostelworld.

Interestingly enough the findings of the Advertising Authorities Standards panel (that the word was hyperbole and comparative) was similar to a complaint upheld against Kiwi Experience last year. I can’t help thinking that surely this is simple evidence of competitors misusing this medium to try and gain competitive advantage. If the businesses complaining spent more time focusing on their own products and less time staring at their competitors they might all raise the standard of tourism offerings in this country to the benefit of the tourists - you remember those people, the ones with the brains who can see through the superficial slogans that the marketing departments continually pump out and make informed purchase decisions based on what they think will be the best product for themselves and then very quickly report back via word of mouth and other peer to peer forums (such as the web) how good or bad the service really is.

Incidentally, I notice on the YHA site that they claim to have hostels in “57 of the country’s best locations” - but they don’t have a hostel in Quail Rise, or Arrowtown, or Cardrona, or … I think these are “bester” (hic) than some of their best locations - are they misleading travellers?

Following my earlier post on writing web content I have come across a really interesting test called the we-we test. The idea here is that websites and in fact emails are very rarely read by more than one person at the same time and therefore should be written in the first person directly to the reader. A reader is interested in only two things when reading marekting content - what’s in it for me and and what do I have to do. in this way your content should be written to answer these questions in the least possible amount of text.

The we-we test analyses your content for words such as “we” or your company name relative to customer-centric terms. Theoretically, the more customer focused your content the better for selling. Here is a link to a little online tool you can try - the we-we test.

I tried it out for a couple of my mates sites and the results we as follows:

Calypso Backpackers in Cairns 8:92 (being 8% customer focussed and 92% self focussed)
Base Backpackers: 17:83
Beyond Backpackers: 40:60
Oz Experience: 47:53
Stray travel: 55:45
Spaceships (NZ): 70:30

Congratulations to Neil Geddes and James Rolleston - it is perhaps not surprising as we all know that like it or lump it Neil is a bloody good marketer and James continually reworks the Spaceships site - they have learn’t for a bottle of wine over lunch I will give all sorts of free consulting!!

I have now lost the source of where I got this from, but I recently came across an interesting discussion on the art of writing web content and the importance of trying to call a customer into the site through making “a big fat claim”. This could be anything such as “lose weight in 21 days, guarnateed” or “pick of the backpacker hostels - Lonely Planet” (which is the opening line of the Hot Rock backpackers website).

The idea is that you make a claim that will call your visitors straight into the site. The important rule is that this claim has to be believable and in fact proveable. This is a really interesting area and something I will do some more work on as writing web content is essential to the success of any website. Look for this to be covered in a future article. if anyone has some interesting research they can point us in the direction of please do.