You can’t help giggling, but don’t laugh too heartily, because this could, oh so easily (based on the often suspect standard of translations on the island of Tenerife), have been the complete guide to Puerto de la Cruz, Icod de los Vinos, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Santiago del Teide!
Like this previous S.H.I.T. sign in Terrassa, Catalonia, Spain, this set of initials obviously doesn’t have the same connotations in Egypt.
A wild canary helping himself to a feast of fig in the Teno Alto area.
Photo: By alhh3
"Tenerife: Enjoy it All" is a slogan that has frequently been used for marketing the island's tourism by the Official Tenerife Tourist Board and it's an approach that perplexes me greatly.
It goes against all the rules of good marketing and branding and ends up being the scattergun approach that mostly misses the target: scattered marketing messages aimed at nobody in particular.
Put another way, if you aim to be everything to everyone then you spread yourself far too thinly to be effective at all and end up being nothing to nobody.
Having spent 16 years on the island - and I thought I knew a fair amount about it - I'm still learning new things and discovering that there are many, many places that I never got around to visiting and enjoying. That being so, what is the hope of the "average tourist" (if such animal exists) *enjoying it all* in just 2 weeks?
So apart from doing nothing whatsoever to define and serve the intended market, nor the brand, about the only message I'm getting from this slogan (apart from the impression that the powers that be either have no idea who their markets are, or they’re too cheap to aim focussed campaigns at each) is information overload: a potential number of choices too large to deal with. It harms more than helps.
And what do humans generally do when faced with too many choices?
They find it daunting and mentally exhausting:
People faced with numerous choices, whether good or bad, find it difficult to stay focused enough to complete projects, handle daily tasks or even take their medicine.
People become paralysed into inaction and I'm sure that contributes to the tendency for the majority to plonk their bums on their sun loungers around the pool and not venture any further. Not because there isn't anything else to do, but because there is too much bombarding them in an unfocussed manner they choose nothing.
After all, who wants to make daunting and exhausting decisions on holiday?
Also customers given too many choices are 10x less likely to buy ...
It’s also my opinion that this “cheap marketing” is partly to blame (along with lazy churnalism in the British media) for the *cheap* image that Tenerife suffers.
What do you think? How could this be done better?
This profusion of colourful bracts of Bougainvillea cascading over the wall on the corner of one of the tiny lanes in the village of El Palmar is always a picture.
You can download a copy of this image to use as desktop wallpaper, learn more about this and other fiestas upcoming in Tenerife in August, as well as seeing the weather averages for the coming month, see our page about Tenerife in August.
Download and print this free calendar for August 2011, featuring one of our exclusive images from Tenerife.
Click here to download your August calendar (opens in new window).
To learn more about the image used on this month's calendar and to download the matching desktop wallpaper, see our page about Tenerife in August.
There you’ll also be able to read about the average weather conditions in Tenerife in August and what regular events take place on the island during the month.
We’ll be publishing another calendar page on the first of next month. To ensure you get your copy, please subscribe to our RSS feed or Email updates.
Get a real Tenerife calendar … featuring 12 of our exclusive images of the island, one for each month, printed on thick 100lb cover weight paper high gloss paper, wire-o bound. More …
