| The series of special articles
to follow is printed with the kind permission of Eastern Shore
author and publisher Marike Finlay-de Monchy. |
 Beyond
Buckshot
Dateline: March
2007
6th installment in "Inroads" Series
By: Marike Finlay - de Monchy
"Provocation" from the Latin, "provocare",
meaning to call forth.
During the last fortnight I have been in Upper Canada visiting
my aged Dutch mother. (She regularly laments that her daughter
had to out-migrate to find salt water.)
While in Ontario, I drove around Prince Edward Country, a peninsula
jutting into Lake Ontario. Now 15 years ago Picton was but a honky
tonk town and the environs well kempt but less than affluent.
Today the place is booming. The towns are flourishing. Tourists
abound and not just in summer. Houses galore are being renovated
and constructed. I enjoyed a gourmet meal on the outskirts of
Picton where I was handed a pile of fliers for the wine tasting
trail, the beaches, other hotels and eateries. The server personally
pointed me in the direction of a prize-winning winery. Prince
Edward County was united in marketing itself as a region and a
whole experience. At the Liquor Control Board of Ontario there
was a featured selection of PEC wines readily offered as was a
glossy magazine, "Food and Wine", which latter brings
me to the subject of this column.
The complimentary magazine was replete with advertisements for
alcoholic beverages, gourmet foods, inns, restaurants, and regions:
wine producing areas of California, and Italy, and in Canada,
(sponsored by federal, provincial, county, and municipal governments),
Prince Edward County, specific neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec
City, Charlevoix, Niagara, and the Okanogan Valley. The demographic
readership of this publication was obviously into consuming gourmet
food, drinks, travel, and home arrangements.
I looked for an ad from Nova Scotia. Ah! Ah! Here's one. I recognized
the splash of blue plaid and an inserted lobster and seascape.
"Come to taste. Come to Nova Scotia." I call this kind
of add campaign the "Buckshot Approach" and have seen
several of them for Nova Scotia around. You know, the "Come
to Life Campaign." I suppose that's better than a "Come
to Death" campaign but not by far. No wonder tourism in Nova
Scotia is flagging.
Here is a magazine appealing to people interested in specific
foods, drinks, regions, and commodities and Nova Scotia tourism
marketers are, with our tax dollars, trying to sell them something
general like taste or life or plaids. It wouldn't take a rocket
scientist to imagine that in this magazine you might advertise
Nova Scotia's own wine route of prize-winning vintners. How about
a special advertisement or even written feature about our microbreweries
and master brewers? Or again, why not a promo of the province's
prize winning gourmet chefs and restaurants? Let's try a feature
on how Eastern Shore Lobster is the sweetest, firmest, and purest
in the world because of its pristine rocky bottom, and pure cold
water, while discussing sea food and freshness, and including
specialized recipes and suggested gourmet seafood restaurants
that serve it in the area. The same thing holds for our muscles.
I had thought it common knowledge for the last twenty years -
at least in the communications department I taught in - that specific
demographic targeting was what publicity and marketing were all
about these days. Buckshot just doesn't work anymore. Promoters
are supposed to tailor both their products and their ads to the
needs, interests, and desires of specific groups of people and
place them in the sites where those people are likely to look.
That would imply, for example, ads about Nova Scotia's foods,
drinks and regions in places where gourmet foodies look, or ads
about our golf-course circuits in places where golfers look. I
have yet to find any marketing of Nova Scotia's world class boating
sites in the marine sites and magazines I receive, though to be
fair I do sometimes find our boat manufacturers there.
What is more, demographers tell us that today's young adults
with disposable income for travel are into activities and experiences
rather than buying objects. Perhaps the new generation of tourists
wants something more than images of the ocean, plaid and kilties.
For sure the marketing of music in Nova Scotia has grasped that,
but more is urgently required in other areas. If we know that
one of the most sought after action/experience vacations is hiking
and paddling the Grand Canyon with expeditions fitted to every
level of physical capacity, could we not construct and promote
such adventure experiences here? What about organizing adventures
lobstering with an Eastern Shore fisherman and this in the shoulder
season? Everyone I know, including myself, who has done so has
been thrilled by the experience. The Eastern Shore is one of the
top kayaking spots in the world. Outfitters like Scott Cunningham
in Tangiers know about this, but so too should every single paddling
magazine and gear catalogue in Canada, USA and Europe.
I see the odd biker daring to share the highway 7 with cars and
trucks. What if there were a biking/hiking path alongside and
a map including all of the extraordinary LOOPS recommending stopping
off points for viewing, lunching, dining, sleeping, and even repairing?
Then advertise this in all of the sites pertaining to hiking and
biking. (By the way, many of the electronic sites out there are
free to list on.) The pan-European hiking/biking trail with suggested
pleasure stops, has, since its inception, resulted in a huge boon
to tourism on that continent.
Cold water being a deterrent to summer vacationers on the Eastern
Shore, let's provide a map of the "secret" warm swimming
spots that we all know exist in the area. Of course, then the
heads of many harbours would have to do something about the sewage
that goes floating by and that has often horrified many a local.
These are just a few suggested examples of many possible ways
that marketing and tourist venue construction or preservation
could go hand in hand in the area and in the province.
A B&B owner in a part of Montreal that I once thought of
as grungy but which has since been promoted as "in",
like Soho in New York, told me that the most sought after commodity
by her guests from around the world is, you guessed it, WILDERNESS.
Well, we certainly have enough of that in Guysborough - Sheet
Harbour. The Barrens at Canso is one place that knows that and
markets it superbly. Were we to establish a region-specific tourist
marketing effort we could do far more to market our wonderful
and unique wilderness. Provided, that is, that we do preserve
it. When I first arrived 10 years ago you can imagine my disappointment
when I ventured into the so-called "Liscombe Game Preserve".
Let's not make the same mistake with the proposed "Ship Harbour
- Long Lake Wilderness Preserve."
I do not pretend to be privy to the ins and outs of Nova Scotia's
provincial ministry of tourism, so recently headed up by our current
premier MacDonald, while tourism in the region and province has
declined. But I would like to throw down a gauntlet. A regionally
specific development of tourist venues in tandem with demographically
targeted promotional campaigns could find a way to successfully
market the area of Guysborough - Sheet Harbour. Our promotions
need to be undertaken by people who know about their own activities,
how to do them here, and sites to communicate that to like-minded
people around the world. I know how to appeal to the boating community
and am sure that a biker, golfer, foodie, and so on, here would
know how to reach their peers. What is more, if we don't dare
to imagine a different way of proceeding than in the past, we
will reap exactly what we sew: a meager percentage of a declining
whole.
Oh yes, one last thing. While I was away in Upper Canada, a French
woman from Lower Canada was staying in my house on West Quoddy.
Compared to the hot, humid, polluted air in her home city, Montreal,
in the summer, she loved the cool, fresh fog in the air. With
a regionally-based, demographically targeted, promotional organization
and some smarts, even the FOG in Guysborough - Sheet Harbour can
be marketed as a tourist attraction!
WHAT WE CAN DO? FORM A REGIONALLY SPECIFIC ORGANIZATION MADE
UP OF STAKEHOLDERS AND INNOVATIVE THINKERS TO MARKET THE GUYSBOROUGH
- SHEET HARBOUR AREA. WORK IN TANDEM WITH EXTANT TOURIST FACILITIES
AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT. GET A RESEPCTIVE PORTION OF THE BUDGET
FROM NOVA SCOTIA TOURISM TO DO THIS.
Read Installments - 1,
2, 3,
4, 5,
Coming in April - "It's Not Rocket
Science"
Marike starts a new 3 part series of
articles in which she outlines the social and economic challenges
facing the Eastern Shore and proposes some Low Capital Strategies
for Creating Sustainable Development on the Eastern Shore.
 Marike
Finlay - de Monchy taught Communications at McGill University
and abroad, practiced psychoanalysis, carried out development
work in Latin America, and managed an organic farm in Quebec.
Marike sailed to the Eastern Shore and loved it
so much that she has since settled in West Quoddy where she runs
a small writing, editing and publishing business.
Marike and Karin Cope are co-authors of "Casting a Legend
- The Story of the Lunenburg Foundry".
"Casting a Legend - The Story of the Lunenburg Foundry"
Buy the Book Now!
Buy Karin Cope's book
"Passionate Collaborations: Learning to Live With Gertrude
Stein"
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