INLSA
Scenes of Durban will be beamed to audiences across the world, from July, through a National Geographic TV deal. Picture: Terry Haywood
Scenes of Durban could be beamed to audiences across the world from July, if the city is given the green light for funding to step up its marketing campaign to put itself on the international tourism map.
On Tuesday morning, the eThekwini municipality’s executive committee will consider a request from Durban Tourism for R20m – to be awarded in terms of section 36 of the city’s policy rules – for the National Geographic campaign, which forms part of the Three Cities Alliance tourism marketing agreement with Joburg and Cape Town.
The exco agenda states that initially, nine global media companies were assessed and the cities determined that a partnership with Discovery Channel and National Geographic would most effectively provide the necessary programming.
“On the basis of cost, content applicability, media mix and alignment with SA’s proposition, one channel was selected as providing the most suitable strategic option.”
Durban tourism head Phillip Sithole said section 36 was not only for use in exceptional circumstances, but in instances like this where products and services could only be produced by specific companies.
In this case, they had made a choice based on which markets a company could reach and the number of people that were watching television programmes.
For the next two and a half years, adverts of Durban would be played almost every day. The city would also be featured on sister channels, social media networks and magazines associated with the broadcaster.
“This project is the first of its kind for Durban. It is value for money. The return on investment is tenfold and it’s a very specialised field which requires people with expertise,” said Sithole.
While the financial contribution of Cape Town and Joburg is still unknown, Durban is likely to foot the lion’s share of the bill as as the agreement stipulates that it will get 70 percent of the airtime.
Some of the adverts and documentaries would only feature Durban, while others will feature all three cities. Sithole said it had taken about 12 months to put the plan together. He said it was “exciting times” and a massive launch would take place in SA soon, with an international launch in either Washington DC or London in January.
The Durban documentaries would feature various attractions like the harbour and its contribution to tourism, the Inanda heritage route and the “buzzing city life”, said Sithole.
Also, regional managers based in SA would be assigned to monitor what effect the campaigns would have on various continents, while agents based in various countries would work with those regional managers to market tourism packages. Sithole said it was important to sustain the momentum gained since the 2010 World Cup. “People must not forget about us,” he said.
