 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar Express sharing Scotland stories organized by CAM Scotland Before we get started. I'd just like to go over a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate in the Q&A session Presentation will last for approximately 30 to 35 minutes followed by a short 10 to 15 minute Q&A session You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the question chat box in the control panel Which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen if watching on a laptop or along the bottom if you're watching on a tablet or smartphone You can send in your questions at any time during the presentation and we'll attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end If you look in the handout section, you'll find a copy of the presentation slides Which you can download along with a list of additional reading resources to complement today's presentation If you want to share your thoughts on social media, we're using the hashtag CIM events The webinar is being recorded and will be available to watch on demand in a few days time on the CIM Scotland web page and the CIM YouTube channel And finally you'll be emailed a short feedback survey after the event which we'd love you to complete It'll only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous. So please do let us know your thoughts So I'd now like to hand you over to Kat Lever who is our guest speaker today over to you Kat Good afternoon everybody. Thanks so much for having me along today. And so as Judith mentioned, my name's Kat Lever I'm the head of brand of Visit Scotland and I'm here to talk today about brand Scotland So how we built and continue to build a profile for Scotland internationally in what is a fiercely competitive global marketplace Whether we like it or not with the population of just five and a half million people Scotland is a relatively small country in a very large and noisy marketplace. And so the question really was how can we get ourselves noticed? And that starts with ambition. We needed to aim high to know that we were worthy of such status And that requires a level of confidence of consistency and of conviction So let's take a step back for a second Why is competing for international profile important in the first place? Because in a world that's increasingly connected and internationalised We are absolutely at the mercy of our reputation to compete for talent for international students and researchers for tourists and for trade and investors All of whom are vital to driving in sustainable economy Particularly one like Scotland's where our working age population is on the decline and therefore we absolutely need and rely upon migration in order to fill this talent gap and grow the economy Never mind all the other amazing benefits of migration like diversity of thought cultural perspective and a richer and more vibrant society When we set out on this journey What our research was telling us was that awareness of Scotland around the world was relatively low in comparison to other nations of a similar size and or offering Positively when people did know us they looked upon Scotland very fondly Often recognising us for some of the best traits like the warmth of our people and quality of their experiences But their understanding of our offering was somewhat one-dimensional and limited The things like landscapes tartan whiskey and bagpipes often very well recognized But other crucially important elements like our world-class education system and plethora of top universities Our record levels of research or our long-standing history of innovation are less well known And it's these factors that influence decisions to live work or to do business in or with a country And so we had some pretty major hurdles to overcome How do we retain and reinforce those positive attributes for which we are known whilst increasing general awareness for Scotland and Enriching that reputation for these other qualities which we have in spades, but are not necessarily recognized for The first piece of the puzzle was collaboration for decades our national organizations have worked really hard Delivering fantastic results in their individual areas all of which have very wide economic scope But this was often in silos And so in 2016 planning started initially with the Scottish government Scottish Enterprise or economic agency and visit Scotland Our national tourism organization seeking to directly face into these challenges By 2018 these partners had bought on board others like University of Scotland But they had committed significant proportions of their international marketing spend and their own resource To create what is brand Scotland and a new national marketing strategy Scotland is now And this is where I was brought in To drive this new pan agency initiative forward and to develop a strategy to allow it to evolve and grow into a sustainable operating model Our aim to make Scotland a country of first choice in which to live to work to study to do business and to visit We wanted to tell Scotland stories allowing them to evidence and shape perceptions around the world Once we had all the players aligned the first step was to establish a shared vision Nation place brand and marketing is really complex. It requires a long-term strategic view We cannot influence and shape perceptions of the place overnight And so this vision has to be over five ten twenty years or more It has to be based on our research and insights and implemented with agility consistency and rigor Place branding is all about who you are and what you stand for in essence. It's your value proposition But unlike in commercial or product branding, you do not create this proposition It has to be authentic and based on who we are as a nation and how we are perceived Whilst simultaneously, it also has to be aspirational It has to be something that our citizens and our advocates buy into and want to promote and advocate for And so we spent a lot of time analysing existing data conducting new research And establishing what our core value proposition was for Scotland Identifying us as welcoming determined creative pioneering and generous of spirits Place marketing is then all about how we communicate We needed to build a coherent and enduring narrative It was pivotal to everything else that we did and so we established the national marketing strategy Scotland is now based on that values proposition Which provides a platform through which partners could communicate consistently with the world out Scotland Step two was about maximising this collaboration Bringing together our shared expertise and talent to work across what we call fillers Which are live, work, visit, study and business And these are the economic fillers around which we operate We needed to build a consistent and unified voice for Scotland with aligned deliverables and activity Our central Grand Scotland team drew in expertise from across our national partners Creating a pan-agency team and ensuring that we had a comprehensive and complete picture Which then allowed us to collaborate at a deeper level than ever seen before In essence, it was all about achieving a consistent identity for Scotland We should largely look and say the same no matter which national partner our audiences are engaging with We needed to make every transaction they had with us as simple as possible And for each of those transactions to reinforce our positioning and our profile Ensuring that the identity we build of Scotland is authentic and endures Step three was about changing that narrative So we knew what we were known for But there were so many other great stories that allowed us to highlight those values for which we hadn't told or we were not known yet So we established our Scotland is now creative looking feel by digital infrastructure and a toolkit for partners to access and leverage the assets that we create In essence what we were aiming to do was open source quality marketing collateral for Scotland that allowed us then to be consistent in our delivery This new narrative aimed to ensure we established a single terrain based on our value set a shared looking feel for our marketing activity and collateral across partners And a central set of digital platforms that act like gateways into Scotland and signpost off to that broader partner ecosystem Ensuring that every online visit that can quickly get to where they need to go And allowing us to tell those stories in a consistent way and in a way that allows us to spread them far and wide On the 11th of April 2018, we launched Scotland is now simultaneously into the us china and london with a bold brand film Outdoor media digital and cinema coverage and a series of major events like the fm's launch in china Step four, which is a bit of a golden ticket is about driving advocacy With considerably more conservative budgets than other nation brand teams and units around the world We have to maximize the voices and networks of others to get our stories out there But to do that requires having something that they buy into So based on all our research and insight, we designed a series of films which spoke to our various audience groups From the same audience groups So allowing the people of scotland to tell their stories in a way that felt authentic incredible and critically in a way that was shareable online We could then use this data to target a forensic level layering targeting data Ensuring the most efficient use of our marketing budgets And these stories built upon our values proposition along with our brand film becoming the core of our advocacy drive Passing out through a range of ambassadors and networks to audiences around the globe A key guiding principle for everything we do as aforementioned is rigor We seek to base everything we do on insight and data as any good commercial would Which means we have to look at how we measure success and that allows us to assess a performance And ensure that we're always optimizing our activities towards our long-term objective It's really important to stress that nation-place marketing is all about that long-term ambition We need to prioritize activity and map out KPIs across the short medium and long term And so that's what we've done here over a 10-year period thinking about what the mix of softer metrics Around awareness perception and collaboration are as well as those harder metrics around engagement propensity and economic impact We maximized on a digital first video led strategy for the launch of scotland is now In recognition that with global audiences that we were trying to reach in a massive ambition We needed to make our conservative budgets work really really hard for us So digital first strategy allowed us to focus on quality networks and distribution channels That forensic level of targeting in real-time results Round which we could learn and adapt and deliver And it paid off on the day of launch. We exceeded all of our targets set We reached one six of the rest of the uk's population with our youtube ad and achieved a position Within the top 10 percent of youtube performance ads globally within an eight full of that year Alongside major brands with far more superior market and budgets like apple and bmw What's more we were able to deliver record levels of positive sentiments So 28 times more positive sentiment than negative and our engagement rates blue benchmark figures from competitors out the water And this created a very positive trajectory upon which our ongoing activity could be built Allowing us to continue to to build upon those strengths over the next six months We grew our online audiences for the 15 uplifting web visitors starting from a point of no Particularly with high levels of visitor growth in our key target markets of london usa and china We managed to deliver greater engagement with an 85 growth in social channel followership Over a thousand daily uses of our scotland is now hashtag and consistently delivered over 90 positive sentiment But beyond this what we found Surprising and very positive was we also saw far greater impact at levels that we hadn't anticipated Which happened until maybe the medium term so after six months We saw referrals to our partner websites growing significantly and a direct economic impact that lists across linked polar activity So for example in the area of the visit pillar In those first six months our activity and channels were directly attributed to 382,000 pounds worth of hotel bookings and that's only the ones that were direct and tracked But as I've mentioned repeatedly because it's important this requires a consistent and long-term vision So this is an at a glance overview of what was delivered in the two and a bit years I've headed up the ground scotland At the heart of everything and not visible on this slide is our organic activity and the work that we do across our owned and earned channels The power of this should never be underestimated in marketing I think we all like to talk about the kind of flashy campaigns and big media buys because that's the sexy stuff By ensuring we maintain our owned and earned channels the old relevant digital platforms and blossoming vibrant online communities That's absolutely at the heart of our success What this slide does shows that on top of all of that undercurrent activity This is our campaign activity in our hero branded events that we ran And as you can see these were all about addressing tactical needs like filling talent gaps for example Or leveraging key moments in time where scotland had something unique or pertinent to share with the world And that was about building upon that core values proposition Strengthening our positioning ultimately scotland's identity In the medium term which we categorize as that six to 24 months period Brand scotland was focused on our awareness and reputation metrics And this is something that we continue to measure and we will do for the longer term Brand scotland uses scotland's biennial and hot gfk mdi report to measure top line success around the awareness and reputation And this is the same approach used by several other leading brand units around the world Including the likes of new zealand and iceland Scotland's overall ranking against 50 other countries is listed as well as six specific categories and attributes The key indicator for us is this overall and the i score Because it talks about our performance Year on year not in relation to other countries performance unlike the way that the rank does so it's it's more comparable And just this morning we got the latest results through so scotland's 2020 score is has come out at 62.6 Which is relatively maintaining our levels From the previous two years meaning scotland remains in the top 20 countries worldwide And indicates that we have a high level of international recognition We've remained relatively stable over these past two years and I think that's very positive given the challenges We've faced around things like brexit in the pandemic We've also built a very strong profile for scotland as a nation brand So in april 2020 the city nation plays an annual exhaust around a survey with nation brand experts consultants agencies and academics from around the world And they ranked scotland in the top five most admired global debate priced brands in the world So that's alongside very esteemed company like new zealand, london, amsterdam and new york And for me, I think that's a marked success It's a huge accolade to have achieved in just two years to have gone from You know not really having a nation brand to being one of the most admired in the world So something we're hugely proud of I'm not going to dwell on these stats too long because I've talked a lot about results But I do want to miss out this broader mid-term results overview because it's important as I said to think about how it all feeds them together You'll see that we've continued to grow reach and engagement across our brand channels But critically we've also started to move the dial and other kpi's like advocacy and collaborative outputs Having painted that longer term strategic vision I'm now going to talk about the sexy stuff So I'm going to talk you through just one piece of our campaign activities an example of how we focus On bringing our value proposition to life through storytelling So by 2019 the biggest challenge facing scotland was brexit over the heady days pre-pandemic 2016 research by the university of strathbite concluded that under all modelled scenarios brexit was predicted to have a negative impact on scotland's economy And so by mid-February 2019 brexit's uncertainty sorry had become an intolerable risk to scottish businesses and communities Prime minister mays deal had twice been rejected by parliament article 50 countdown was running out rapidly And the uk was scheduled to leave the eu on march 29th with or without a deal We were seeing this translate into significant drops in both industry business and consumer confidence Within the uk and within our eu markets And it was impacting every single one of our economic pillars as a result of that And so it was incumbent upon us to act The challenge was this wasn't something with any real certainly deadlines kept moving No one was really knew what was going to happen or what we predicted outcome would be and so consequently This wasn't something that had been budgeted for We recognized that there was a unique window in time here We could use the original brexit day of march 29th to send a bold message of commitment from scotland to europe It wasn't about the politics It was about our european neighbours and natives living here in scotland knowing that no matter what the outcome of brexit We remained committed to our enduring relationship with them The ambition was clear to reach out to people in europe who might be put off from living working studying visiting or doing business with us And send the message that scotland remains an open welcoming inclusive nation With under 30 working days to seize the opportunity the campaign was built on three strategic choices to go fast to go big and to go bold So going fast to maximize impact We took the audacious decision to launch on march 29th despite our 30 day window The day the uk was scheduled to leave the eu and with the spotlight of the world on the uk We couldn't wait for certainty in what the brexit scenario would be on launch day So we designed a creative idea that would work at any one of the six model scenarios So ranging from a greed deal to snap general election to crashing out with no time for formal creative testing We called upon our network of offices across europe last term and guidance on things like cultural and language issues The go big was about the initial planning. So the initial planning We'd identified seven priority european markets based on their socioeconomic relationship with scotland But we quickly took the decision to focus on just four france germany spain and ireland By going big in four countries, we took an educated risk that the resulting pr and social media impact Would reach other countries even if our paid media didn't Brand scotland audiences are very diverse and complex spanning tourists businesses students and people open to living and working in other countries instead of strategy instead of Focusing our strategy. So we're going to keep our targeting in nuance. We decided to ladder up So the biggest progress message that would resonate with all of our audience groups And our objectives were equally as big We wanted to reach at least 10 of the population in our target geographies by mid april And achieve 30 percent agreement that scotland is an open and welcoming nation Going bold to maximize impact. We took the decision to invest the bulk of the budget into five massive days of paid media We backed a fame and inspiration media strategy using premium formats to maximize reach and impact And make the biggest possible statement from youtube homepage takeovers to double page spreads and new papers We took a calculated risk on investing in digital video rather than tv advertising Sacrificing that tv stature for the bigger opportunity of provoking a visible public response on social media This was all in an outrageously ambitious endeavor They required multiple organizations to create a massive pan european campaign from scratch in under 30 working days With absolutely no way of predicting what the brexit scenario would be on launch day This required extraordinary levels of collaboration from brown scotland partners and their agencies amid unparalleled political uncertainty The proposition was simple scotland values its relationship with europe no matter what happens and this will not change But the delivery was complex. It had to transcend cultural and geographic boundaries. It had to shine a spotlight at a time It was very very noisy So instead of asking what will work in these markets we asked ourselves If you or I were to speak to our european neighbors what we would want to say What we would want them to hear at this point of time What really matters and so our creative idea was born We wanted to send a message directly to europe with the cheeky tagline. Hey europe, let's continue our love affair On friday the 29th of march 2019 the uk government held a final vote on treason a's brexit deal And the brown scotland team held its breath knowing our campaign was about to break This slide shows the campaign in a nutshell. We combined as I said digital display youtube takeovers paid in organic social media news display ads With double page spreads and key international publications and some out of poem and some major airports And that was all about delivering a large scale integrated media campaign aiming to maximize reach and frequencies with those key audiences We also leveraged power in reach of our brand scottland partners and their channels So building on that collaborative piece and focusing on our own earned activity We were able to generate widespread pr coverage both at home and abroad And the results speak for themselves. This was the most successful campaign ever run by the public sector We exceeded every single smart objective set by at least twofold In just five days we reached over 78 million people with the paid media alone And that's 39 percent of the entire population of our key target markets against an original ambition of 10 percent We also delivered 25 million completed video views in that period But it wasn't people just seeing the campaign. They were also acting upon it We saw huge spikes in web traffic and social channel followership and engagement and sharing What made this campaign truly unique and special Was the way that the world reacted Beyond the video views scottland's open campaign inspired almost 9 million engagements and over 90 percent of the social commentary was positive For any marketer, it's this response that you that you live for Hearing from your audiences and making sure that message resonates and within minutes of the campaign launching We were awash with emotional heartfelt responses from europe Our plan to go big in just four key markets worked It created a ripple effect not just across europe but also far further across the globe We had engagement from people as far afield as canada and australia Reasserting the purposes of this activity, which wasn't just about our relationship with europe But by the underlying commitment from scottland to be a good global citizen Recognizing the value in our relationships with other nations and nationals from around the world And beyond that scottland got behind the campaign Living those values and showing the world that we really were an open welcoming inclusive nation This was more than just a campaign It was a strategic and tactical activation with key positioning statement that feeds into our overall long-term strategy You'd anticipate good results from a campaign with this scale But what we created and delivered was extraordinary levels of engagement This campaign far exceeded not only the targets that we had set for it But all industry benchmarks around engagement and performance and in terms of the social response It's where you can call truly viral marketing And linking back to that longer term vision It fed into a continued strong performance across our kpis Showing that our strategy was working people were seeing and engaging and doing more than ever before We'd reached in this time. So by september 2019 Over 221 million people on the paid media alone never mind the organic side We'd have we'd had over 181 million views of our videos Our web visitors and our social channels continue to grow and advocacy showing through things like our hashtag Continue to grow now up to over 2000 uses every single day When we're only just getting started That was already two years ago now And since then we've ran Scotland is open again in response to the new brexit date of 31st of january 2020 And that achieved even more overwhelming results It built on something that we had established across partners across audiences and delivered High performance particularly organically where we saw one single organic facebook post Generate 2.64 million in terms of reach and just under a million video views And that's pretty unheard of for an organic facebook post But what it really does is show How scotland is now and the power of collaboration and storytelling Deliver as a marketing tool It evidences why having a clear purpose and values proposition that underpins Everything that you do will help you to retain authenticity and allow you to resonate with your audiences In divided times the collaborative spirit of brand scotland shows that what can be achieved when we dare to align behind a common goal and be brave together And but it ended there because it's an awful lot to get through and hand over to judo so that we can have some q&a But thank you so much for listening to my presentation today That's great. Many thanks for your insights there cat So we're now going to have a short 10 to 15 minute q&a session You can still submit questions for cat in the questions box And if you're enjoying today's webinar and want to post on social media, you can do use the hashtag cim events So our first question today is How can Scottish local authorities partner with scotland? The brand to work to showcase Their own regions following you So we do a lot of work across Various gamers local authorities, etc. It's a number of things they can do so using the toolkit and the assets They're there very much to help you promote both that scotland wide and a more specific region in terms of Shining a spotlight on specific regions. We then also Ask people to come forward and contact us so that we can look at what's the what's the unique proposition there? And is there something that we can either develop or are there areas that you're already working on? So we're not duplicating effort to either amplify it through our channels or build it into our longer-term strategy and so as I said the kind of brand scotland's key focus is on that scotland wide Cross-pillar proposition, but absolutely underneath that there's a lot of strengths that sit at an individual regional level That they were seeking to build up and we did some great work with the likes of dundee, for example When the vna opened as an opportunity again to capitalise on all eyes looking at scotland a lot of media attention And how we could present both dundee's past but also its future in terms of its strengths So I would say get in touch use the assets we have get in touch let us know what you're working on And we can look to where there's alignment Okay, thank you Next question was it difficult to get partners on board and bought into this when it hadn't been done before? And how did you approach that? Uh Yes, and those and so I think it's always difficult when you're talking about multiple stakeholders I was very lucky in that the kind of Embryo of brand scotland was in place before I was brought and I was going to take it forward And so a lot of that partner alignment Had already happened and I think we were very lucky because we had the right people in the right positions at that time Um, so in the kind of senior marketing and ceo take positions across our partners who really understood the value and the importance of this Longer term There's a there's a need to continue to maintain that so I think If anybody who's worked in any capacity across multiple stakeholders or collaborative Uh initiatives, it's it's fine getting them on page at the beginning But you need to keep them there. So there's an awful lot of work around communication and stakeholder management Visibility reporting just making sure that they understand What you're doing while you're doing it and how they're feeding into it It was quite unique as I said in terms of the setup because we had that Contribution at the beginning in terms of both all of our budget was made up from the partners and all of our resource initially was made up from the partners So that allowed us to Get a balance sort of an equity in terms of what people were putting in even if it wasn't equal in terms of value Um, but it allowed us to get back to in view in a holistic picture of what was going on but yeah, I think the key things for For managing that is ongoing communication And managing expectations. So for us People understanding that this is a long term vision that you can't change perceptions overnight And we're very much working towards, you know, the 10 or 20 years to see the major impact we want to see Okay Practical question probably quite a quick one to answer what proportion of the budget was spent on research from the campaign budget So it depends Uh on different stages in the first year if you do so before we launched all of our budget was on research um, and then it was on Sort of the delivery of you know setting up new digital channels, etc Once we've launched it probably breaks down to about 20 percent of our spend goes on research and insights. It's quite significant Um, but it's really really important for us and actually what we're trying to do is move towards models that increase the efficiency of that So the long-term view is hopefully we can do kind of mass benchmarking exercises for Scotland across things like our perception studies um, so that there is one Scotland wide Base of insight that any partner could then draw down on and within reason that would be also public information So that allows everybody to benefit from this information rather than individual organizations having to go off and conduct their own And but yeah, 20 percent score via an accurate figure Okay, um the next quite quite a topical one Does brand scotland have a narrative around cop 26 and the opportunity that creates for Glasgow in scotland? Maybe explain what cop 26 is for people who may not know the clock is the Where all the nations come together to talk about climate change um, so we had the Paris agreement came out of clock for example the next big clock for just 26 is in November It's supposed to be November of last year, but for obvious reasons was not It is due to be November of this year in Glasgow and it's an incredible opportunity because Well bringing bringing together kind of thought leaders decision makers politicians, etc from around the world to talk about climate Um, but particularly because scotland has such strengths in that area in terms of world bursts and world leading initiatives around climate change and sustainability France scotland does And feed into that and does have a narrative to build around it You're working really closely with the government who obviously Have their kind of policy driven objectives as well So working with them to establish Where what they're doing and how we build upon it? Um, but you'll have seen that kind of climate in green has been at the core Of an awful lot of our narrative for several years because as I said we have such incredible stories to tell Um, so we'll be building upon that further now to say what opportunity cop offers us and then beyond that as well because that's just kind of a Climax to all those things coming together But actually there's there's so much more to be done. Um, so showing what action we're taking off the back of it Yeah, it's great great platform So what would you say would be the biggest consumer change you've seen in in your business and how have you reacted to that? You've always seen some of the comments that have come from your campaign But have have people changed their behaviors or their intentions and how they're doing things Yeah, I mean the pandemic has um Changed things at a seismic level. So we've gone on the kind of visitor side You know, we've gone from record levels of international tourism and in fiber and growing industry To industry and complete crisis on a global scale um So travel restrictions the prevalence and risk of infection confidence around travel And the actual limitations to that have had a notable impact um similarly that then impacts other areas like the migration of talent the investment opportunities how willing people are to Set up new businesses in Scotland at a time when movement is so limited So we've seen huge changes in terms of our our audiences and how we've had to react to as a result to that Okay So the the campaign's obviously been very successful. How are you capitalising on what's been achieved with this campaign to move forward? So the next 12 to 12 ones to three years say So that do you mean sorry the campaign as in the one out the one part I just got to go with Scotland is now Scotland is now say um So we I suppose the whole the whole point of it is to continue to build upon success. So it's about Reinforcing that that narrative and the value proposition to each individual piece of kind of tactical campaign activity like Scotland is open or Our diversity campaign or climate and campaigns They're all part of the story that show the kind of nuances and layers of character that Scotland have and as I said those broad first world leading exciting stories that we have to tell the world Scotland is now how we build upon the trajectory is by continuing to focus on our long-term ambition and objective And make sure that all the tactical things and performance based activity we deliver feeds into that So that we're building upon those strengths and continuing to strengthen that identity Okay um Next question Scotland the brand involved in any campaigns to try and attract dual professionals And the the examples they've given as social workers teachers, etc. Because you've mentioned about attracting tourism and business investment Is there that sort of level of Targeting There is there is so again the I think when I showed the At a glance and he's very quickly at the glance what we've done in the last two and a half years There was a few in there. So there was gpu recruitment teacher recruitment, for example to the big gaps that we have which are largely filled by The migration of talent into scotland. So they're not largely but they're Are filled by lots of immigration of talent into scotland. So How we work with that is there's the the moments in time activity that we do as I said that's your brexit your cop, etc And then there's the policy driven or economic driven actions, which would be things like we have a dearth 500 thousands or 500 teaching roles How do we fill those and then that's when we respond to a very specific talent attraction campaigns or student attraction campaigns, for example Okay, and then we've got a question. Um, what social listening platform did you use? practical question We've used a variety currently. We use band watch and Vulcan in terms of analysis in the same Okay, um, and the question, um, we've got from, um Talking about lockdowns Previous lockdown We've just heard it on the news in in England recently. Everybody going mad now looking at holiday destinations Um, did you see any changes in from potential destinations once restrictions are lifted? And did you have to alter your messaging to reflect that so potential staycations or perhaps instead of targeting mainland Europe, maybe the rest of the UK? Yeah Yeah, absolutely I think so with my kind of visit Scotland rather than the brand Scotland hat on we've had to be very agile and adapt our messaging Um, so that we've kind of responded to that total shift in audience demographic and behavior where Naturally, we've seen this rapid decline in international presentation Um, so we've had to move our messaging to more kind of dream now travel later We've had to but then also be reactive to when restrictions change and Things allow for us to move to more of a conversion based messaging um What's been really interesting I suppose for us is that Resulted in a massive spike or it did result when it went out a massive spike in domestic tourism Which shifted our focus to things like staycations And we saw a big increase in self-drive self-catering rural and coastal holidays um, but that had an impact on like cities And their offerings so there's this this flip side in terms of what we have to then be able to position and strengthen As we move forward as they move and back up again Um, and it's not just tourism that impacts. Obviously, there's a lot of other economic colors Impacts everything about what students are coming here And investors are coming here except just so It's absolutely shifted our messaging approach Okay, and then um looking at learning A question is has there been any learning from previous scotland the brand partnership initiative such as the one that was running the late 90s And how have you applied that learning to this most recent campaigns? Yeah, absolutely. I think for me it was really really important that when I came in and when we started doing this We didn't kind of throw the baby out of the bath water and start again assuming that Um, nothing had been done before so there's there's a lot of great learnings from previous work that had been done They were all very different models. Um, so not directly comparable, but it doesn't mean there wasn't things to learn so Um, scotland the brand from the 90s what we learned around that was the focus was an awful lot around the mark itself so this mark of governance um, and it was Directly it was developed by one of the economic agency Um, but not really in partnership with the industry or with other national organizations And eventually it was kind of privatized and licensed Um, and that was never really going to work when there wasn't that level of buying across We hadn't consulted both industry hadn't consulted with other partners and brought them along on that journey so We learned a lot from what worked and what didn't there Um, and similarly with other initiatives that have focused on either collaborative efforts or branding of a nation both within scotland and elsewhere Okay, and I think we've got time for probably one last question. Let me have a look um brexit Someone's asking, you know, was that was the key to this campaign the brexit result? Um, but how how do we move forward from that? How is things evolving as brexit's panning out? And and will the campaign be evolving in future what will come next? I don't think the key was the result I think that's what made it quite a brave move from the partners actually to to allow us to do what we did because We we've developed the campaign and the idea based on the fact they didn't really matter what the outcome was That was outside of control What mattered was that we wanted our european natives and that and neighbors to know how we felt And they that we still valued their relationship and wanted to continue working with them. So I don't think the result changed anything particularly And certainly in terms of the responses we saw from the audience is it was it was that emotional connection And they really resonated And that resonated that made people want to listen to it and be part of it and respond Moving it forward quite a lot. So as I said, we ran the campaign on the next brexit date But then we also um when we now officially left the eu Ran out kind of the next episode I suppose of that campaign So obviously Scotland is open is not quite the right message for this moment in time The sentiment of what we meant by that in terms of opening welcoming And the warmth of the people and the the willingness to continue to collaborate and work with nations around the world and welcome people in That remains so the next part of that campaign was a development of our scotland is here creative which ran from 1st of january this year Um five days And again, we saw similar levels of engagement and positive sentiment in response and that was about Saying now we have left That doesn't change our relationship and then we still are committed to working with europe So I think in terms of the that very specific part of the narrative That doesn't change and it's not just europe we want to work with you know, we recognize that Most nations when they talk about nation branding they talk about the biggest and best and Things and things that they did the best at we do do that But we also want to talk about the fact that we can't do things on our own So, you know, we can't solve climate change alone. That's a global effort So it's very much about recognizing how we continue to work with other nations to deliver results against those global challenges Okay, thank you. And I think with that we'll draw the question section to a close. That's been excellent Thank you very much cat. Um, and there's a very good questions and answers there So that's all the time we have now for the q&a session today We just like to say thank you so much to cap for today's presentation To cim scotland for organizing the event and a thank you to you all for watching We do hope you found it interesting and worthwhile Our next webinar express is performing under pressure from thinking clearly to brilliant marketing And that is on tuesday the 9th of march at one o'clock hosted by cim greater london You'll find it listed on the events page on the cim website where you'll be able to find out more information and to register for the session Once again, you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's webinar and we'd really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback So on behalf of cim. Thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day