Thinking out of the box

A couple of days ago I stumbled across a very nice article on the internet about what has come to be my favorite local brand of corned beef Delimondo. The article was not new. Written by Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman, it was published by Businessworld online on December 22, 2016. That's right, six years was how long it took for low-tech me to catch up with certain things on the internet.

The article was entitled "Delimondo's Disruption" in case you might want to give it a check too. Anyway, what struck me was how Katrina Ponce Enrile, president and CEO of JAKA Investments Corp., the maker of Delimondo, thought out of the box to market the brand that has become one of the most sought-after in its category. Simply put, she junked conventional strategies and came up with her own.

For one, Enrile refused to allow Delimondo to be buried and lost in a sea of bright and flashy multi-colored packaging and opted to make it stand out and easily recognizable by being plain and simple white with black lettering. As for the taste, she had to approve it personally, based on her personal dictum "you got to love your product first because who else will?"

Reading about the Delimondo success story brought my mind to two recent articles written successively by fellow columnist Atty. Josephus Jimenez for this paper. The two Jimenez articles dealt with an entirely different subject matter --tourism-- and were more about the failures and problems than successes in the industry. So why does one remind me of the other?

Because I realized that in order to address the failures and problems besetting the tourism industry in the Philippines as enumerated by Jimenez, and which I cannot but wholeheartedly agree with, one has to think outside the box the way Enrile did with Delimondo. Of course I am no expert on tourism to be putting forth any bright ideas. On the other hand, that might precisely be what thinking out of the box means.

Thus, just as Katrina insisted on the uniqueness of plain simplicity and refusing to advertise other than by word of mouth, perhaps we can do something similar for our tourism objectives. If my observation is correct, the main thrust for so long of our tourism initiatives is to advertise heavily as a great destination. But other destinations advertise just as heavily. We cannot stand out in the clutter the way Delimondo did.

Okay, this is just me talking. But maybe we can stop advertising heavily, stop inviting tourists to come over and check us out. People with money to travel will travel, with or without advertised come-ons. At the very least, a trickle will come for sure. This is where our mettle will be truly tested. Can we take care of those who do come? Can we make their stay truly beautiful, meaningful, rewarding, and memorable?

If we can answer those questions with a resounding "yes we can!" then we start addressing the problems and grievances outlined by Jimenez in his two columns. A few satisfied visitors can become our greatest advertisers without us having to pay out a single lousy centavo. If there is something as quick and as effective as a runaway virus in spreading, it is word-of-mouth. Imagine that word-of-mouth in our favor.

The most expensive, persistent, and alluring advertising will be for naught if we pack in the tourists, only to have them go home badmouthing us over what Jimenez listed in his columns. But the few who can speak to high heavens for us, the Delimondo of tourism. To keep the customer satisfied we need to love and have self-respect for ourselves first. Let us serve with pride that visitors may be proud having met us.