Cape Town Tourism is the Official Destination Marketing Organisation for the Mother City and has successfully reinforced the city’s place on the global tourism stage for many years. Previously, the organisation was split-positioned as both industry and public-facing, with each channel owning its own brand mark.
We were asked to reposition Cape Town Tourism with a visitor-facing brand strategy to better represent the work of the organisation, the character of the city itself, and the relationship visitors and locals have with it. With a directive from its members to focus on marketing the destination rather than individual establishments, it has embraced the visitor at the heart of its efforts. With that in mind, rebranding the organisation itself to be more visitor-facing was inevitable.
We conducted extensive research into international traveller trends and also analysed how other destinations positioned themselves. Our comparative analysis identified a trend among cities to create more active branding, using verbs including ‘Visit’ and ‘Discover’. We engaged extensively with various relevant stakeholders including Cape Town Tourism’s staff and board, the City of Cape Town administration, Cape Town Tourism members and city visitors. These discussions revealed a distinct proposition: to create an emotional link that both reflected Cape Town Tourism’s core purpose, and also the reason why local and international audiences choose to visit the city.
‘Love Cape Town’ was selected as a position that reflected both the organisational mandate and the visitor experience. The positioning builds on the existing equity established by previous #lovecapetown campaign activations.
The new brand needed to be constructed in a way that could be adapted across applications. We created a primary logo for Cape Town Tourism that can evolve to reflect Cape Town Tourism’s mandate as a tourist-focused organisation, as well as represent its members. The logo needed to encourage locals and visitors to take ownership of the brand.
We rolled out the position through a new visual language and brand identity that would consolidate the organisational brand architecture across all its touch points. The new brand would also focus on tourism within the broader scope of destination marketing.
With Table Mountain as an internationally recognised icon and also at the heart of the previous branding, we devised a script font that would subtly integrate the mountain into the new brand in a fresh new way.