Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar doing good things driven by data organized by CIM Wales If you're a university student attending today's webinar, you may want to sign up for the CIM Marketing Club newsletter It'll keep you up to date with the latest trends innovations and concepts in the marketing industry all you need to do is take a photograph of the QR code you see on the screen at the moment and It will take you straight to the sign-up page on the CIM website So now I'd like to hand you over to Lucy von Weber head of marketing at Visit Wales Who is our guest speaker today? Over to you Lucy. Oh Thank you Gavin. Y'all can vary on and print out by everybody. Good afternoon from Wales And I put a small picture up because I'm talking from about 20 minutes away from one of my favorite castles there That's Carrie Kennan in command and should just to give you a flavor. So until I see you at the end when we're on the Q&A I'm going to cover a few things today I'm obviously speaking from a Visit Wales perspective where we're a large organization I guess you call us a large organization But the stages that we go well that we've been through in the last 15 months and the three principles that I'm going to Reiterate as we go through. I hope will be equally applicable to whatever size business you may be and the small or large I just wanted to also point out that everything that I show the links will be on the slides So if you download them you should be easily able to follow through the PDF and And get get through to all the links and of course if you follow us on social a lot of the films that I'll be showing in an Inset box rather than playing full-on will are available on our social and particularly our YouTube channel So first of all three stages. I'm going to cover pre pandemic a during pandemic and now Over the course of the next sort of 25 minutes and I'm going to talk about three underlying principles and as marketeers Most of us will know these principles But what we found in the last year is that then you want slightly so for example knowing your customer now means really knowing your Customer and I hope I'm going to illustrate what I mean by that in the next 20 minutes Competing for customers now more than ever means competing for experiences and that's not just the promise of an experience But it's it's promising a warm welcome a safe welcome and a reassuring All-around experience as well and I'll demonstrate that too and then I'm going to talk a little bit about an agile approach And I'm going to talk about what I mean when I say it goes way way beyond just a technology Sort of use at the moment So many of us will be familiar if you do web development work or any kind of digital planning sprints agile is the approach That's used in project management. So I'll come back to that So first of all, I also want to just give a couple of slides on context because It's easy to forget when you're running around trying to react to things Which probably everyone has done if you're in a marketing position in the last 15 months It's easy to forget your brand sometimes and at the heart of everything we do our brand values Those five below are our kind of quality test for anything we might create any sort of assets any kind of messaging and That fourth one which I've just sort of highlighted there is do good things That's one of our core brand values. I think in the last 15 months That's probably be more salient than than all the others But you know, everything is very much in the forefront of our planning also context-wise We were quite lucky in some respects in January 2020. We had a new Tourism strategy for Wales welcome to Wales and I guess links on all of these here and It put us in a really firm position because a lot of our approach to the next five years is actually very much how we're Conducting our marketing activity now We've also got a recovery plan that will take us a bridge back basically to that strategic plan and let's sum up the strategic plan I'm not going to go into a length, but it's very important Particularly that last aspect because that's been such a core part of our activity in terms of the comms We put out over the last year that this equal satisfaction of a visitor to Wales and also locals and residents And you can sum up the entire strategy by you know saying our aim is to grow tourism for the good of Wales Okay, so pre-pandemic let's start pre-pandemic and we were doing back in you know Sort of August September last year. We were planning a big spring campaign We were looking at a competitors landscape looking at the approaches looking at our audiences And I've tried to sort of sum them up here. So main strategic challenges They are the cornerstones of our five-year plan particularly spend seasonality and spread trying to spread the benefit across Wales extend out a sort of core holiday season and Increase spend per head our ongoing product focus wasn't going to change those other three pillars of the Wales brand Landscape culture and adventure They are the three pillars that we believe we can deliver on and we have a strong competitive advantage for so everything We do comes back to those three pillars whether it's a social post or or a big content piece and our market focus 90% plus of visitors to Wales are from the domestic marketplace UK domestic So huge proportion of our visitors are from England And what we wanted to do was try and grow that base and we were talking about staycation long before this word Horrible word actually. I'm not keen in it, but it's being used vociferously by so many people now in the media New to Wales, but not new to the UK. So we have a small international visitor base I'll call markets Germany island in the US But what we're going to try and do through 2020 was to take those that were already visiting at the UK and Try and entice them to extend the holiday or to come to Wales and the people of Wales So a public summary as we'd say in Wales very important. There was an additional focus on that super domestic sort of business and values over volume and deliberately there's an S on that because a Lot of our marketing focus was around how we appeal to people's emotions Sort of resonated with people who wanted to travel to Wales and be in Wales because of our brand and Sort of country thoughts of a friendly warm welcome and community And why do market trends obviously played in and we were looking at Outdoor nature well-being wellness all strong trends that were coming over 2020 There's a lot of research on it launched a report report in we'll travel market back in 2019 and you can see that some of the the creative that we were planning on using was very much about Outdoors and and sort of getting back to nature and enjoying coming off the treadmill a little bit in both senses the word work and also the team so that ended up with Wales year of outdoors 2020 we've been running themed years for several years now and I Confidently thought this would be our most successful yet that picture. There's probably my favorite of all the assets It's a group of ladies called blue tits chill swimmers from Pembrokeshire and they traveled up to Harlech and Went chill swimming on the beach up there, but as you can see big group all standing closely together Gonna see that what our TV ad is up in the top box there So I'll just let that play you'll have the link for it But I just want to read this and pull out a few things So the whole ethos of our concept was the door to Wales wide open You're part of our community.  You're gonna discover new corners You're gonna eat swim dancing and we were using the tagline check in check into the real Wales And you can see from that film and also from some of the stills I'm about to show you that there are very few elements of it that weren't Pictures of people enjoying themselves in groups whether it's the top the top group having fun on a beach and having a big outdoor Outdoor meal. We had a really beautiful community pub down in Pembrokeshire groups of ladies swimming and all of that Come March 2020 all of our media was pulled. There was no above the line activity and we basically Went back and went absolutely quiet on all our social channels Resurrected end of March beginning of April and you may if you follow us You'll have seen the visit Wales later message that we were using And continue to use as we moved into April, you know And it's for someone as you'll appreciate for someone who spends their career Telling people or inspiring people to do something. Tell them not to come to Wales was quite a quite a difficult pill to swallow at the time But so we had we had good engagement with it. So let's move on to during so Shelf the campaign and obviously we were back to starting from scratch In terms of our campaign plans We had to shelve all the assets and what we did We also lost a lot of our budget because we're part of government and quite rightly a large proportion of the visit Wales budget Went straight back into the core to help with business support and grant funding for many of the businesses So we looked within if you like use that expression We used our own experiences. We used our own emotions and that's our own experiences of restrictions What we couldn't do and how that felt to us And and we sort of asked ourselves about when we started doing above the line comes again Did it feel right does it feel right to do that now and it didn't for quite some time when when there was so much You know, we were in such a dire situation and people were going through incredibly difficult times It didn't feel right to be doing jazz hands marketing and it just didn't feel right What we did though we triangulated the data and if you're not familiar with that term triangulation is basically just using more than one method and Looking at it all around the same topic as a way of assuring the validity of what you think I'll come back to that and use some examples. So here's how we triangulated We did a lot of consumer collaborative research and we worked really closely with our partners in the other visits Scotland England and particularly and we were running Covid consumer sentiment tracking throughout the year. We're on 33 at the moment We've been doing them every two weeks since last April May and Particularly that latter part of that second bullet point there the reassurance that that visitors who were looking to book We're seeking from from a sector What that allowed us to do and we all love a bit of this because it helps us to create personas and you Doesn't let a persona we were able to sort of group them into categories But in a way a lot of these things were as much about what we could then Communicate to our stakeholders and all the research we did was available to everybody at the same time as it was available to us So it was quality assured and then it was published online So what it meant is that businesses could also learn from it our Organizations and stakeholders we work with we've got all sharing exactly the same data We've our business barometers and as well as the quantitative data around forward bookings and employment levels and Staff furloughed and all those those quantitative elements There was a lot of qualitative aspects to it as well And I think that last one that last quote direct quote some people are describing it as a three winter scenario Winter no summer winter, you know tourism hospitality and events will probably hit Hardest and first when the pandemic struck and has been one of the slowest to get back on its feet events You know, we're all still going through pilot event testing and why the stakeholders. We've never had such close relationships with I believe our stakeholder partners and What I'm about to show you that we've developed we couldn't have done without those stakeholder partners, so Daily weekly catch-ups on things like what we're putting in messaging also issues on the ground concerns around irresponsible behavior or particular worries from particular communities across the country and Also collaboratively with the other visits and the good to go industry benchmark was put in place the industry standard And that was there again as a tool to try and prove that a business had done as much as it could do to reassure a visitor And be safe and warm and give them a very Assured welcome when they came back in a safe welcome and we've implemented that so I think along with visit Scotland in England You can search on our website and there's for businesses that have got that accreditation and of course the good old favorite the The data our own data, which is the easy part of all of this really so we've been tracking Daily at one point, but usually weekly what was happening on the web search So I've taken a snapshot just to illustrate This is the fifth to 11th of July last year and we were just starting to come out of phased phased return from lockdown and there was I think Outdoor attractions were beginning to open the travel restrictions for lifting so you can see on that page You know looking at the results that week and visiting Wales safely was I think it grew by 200% in the course of few weeks We were also looking at where they were coming from and this was quite different from us because normally that top 10 is largely England-based, but we were starting to see a lot of search from Cardiff South-East Wales in general So again helping us help us to define what we needed to do to alter some of our content and Reframe it so it was equally applicable to people who knew Wales already We obviously used Google Trends to look at sort of accommodation interest bookings COVID-19 some of the core the core phrases that were being used and Our inspire me page which I think was probably one of the most useful because it helped us Work out where people were likely to go when they got here and obviously the huge more drill There's a huge amount of build-down data beyond this, but what it did tell us is that people were looking at the outdoors and That enabled us to start planning ahead So let's go down to that a little bit more detail So it's the same week in our top 10 search queries Snowdonia, Pembrokeshire, Tenby So Pembrokeshire and Tenby very very coastal obviously well known for its coast Snowdonia very well known for its mountain walking So although we weren't doing a lot of above-the-line marketing ourselves We found we thought it was our role to make sure that our stakeholder partners National parks and and people organizations such as the RNLI because there was this huge surge of people to the coast as soon as lockdown lifted That was a really important part of our strategy and also the feedback we had from those partners were helping again in that So the triangulation process And then ultimately because you know, we had all of that data and some of it by retrospective and reflective I mean sometimes it was a week or two old, you know I think we're used to having data sometimes particularly from wide wide sort of larger scale consumer research They can take several weeks to come in. This was quick last year, but nevertheless what we tended to do was Go back to all of it and think right. Let's add public sentiment What feels right at this particular time and you know the way things were changing at that at that point, you know Daily there were different Media stories. There were different Examples of how visits were being made across the UK and I've just taken that abstract It's genuine quote, but I think it sort of sums it up the feeling that we had And this is my particular lady who who was who was a little bit alarmed about visitors coming back and worried about how things would happen now that ended up in Ado and Ado was our response to trying to reach all communities and Visitors that when they came to Wales, Wales was going to try and keep them safe And this was much as much about a promise to visitors as it was about visitors making a promise to Wales three basic tenets care for each other care for the epic land care for our communities and Ado is the Welsh word for promise. So this came in initially as a lockdown was starting to ease and And very Very well received but again couldn't have been developed without our stakeholders and by that I mean from small businesses to the national parks and colleagues in local authorities across the across the country So along with our though came a toolkit. We do love a toolkit. I think in industry We seem to love a toolkit So the visit Wales safely toolkit was all about advice on you know, how to speak to customers How to reassure people how to find out more around guidance and answer queries It had lots of downloadable assets like vignettes video vignettes And also posters, you know, right down to posters that they could print and display in their businesses Now that was pretty much our summer last year and Ado was meant to be a six-week campaign And we were gonna we had great plans for the autumn fab new campaign coming in And obviously we had to shelve but I'm gonna tell you a little bit about now. So Ado is still with us But nuanced content nuanced message. And again, that's been done by triangulating all the data That's coming in and and and taking sort of a water test of that public sentiment as well It's a cornerstone of all our comms still we thought we've had it six weeks We've had it a year now and it's not going away anytime soon because it still feels right and in fact We've extended it to as you'll see from some of those examples to giving advice on you know Or asking people politely not to like barbecues and the outdoors and various other elements and This year we have had some of our budget back. We've been able to do a range of activity including out of home I've got a few figures up on the top there. I didn't want to statistic you here too much today, but The most important one to me probably is that last one on those bullets in the top right hand corner It's the industry support and the way that the message has been consolidated So whether you go to a you're likely to find Ado being displayed and that message being given in a tiny B&B as You are to a National Park visitor center and that's been just so fulfilling this year really It's been great as well because we're starting to return to a little bit of core content and What we call more sort of stock in trade, but again, it's been a toe in the water to test public sentiment So on the left there. We did a four-day International festival all virtual obviously all online for st. David's day and I put a particular There were so many films that were shared during that, but I put that one in because I'd love you to look at that if you could afterwards Because I think again coming back to our brand values. It sums up Community it sums up the real whales. It's very authentic and it was British sign language partners who were signing to Well smash lamp and cardiff castle grounds and it's quite a gives you a bit of a goosebumps moment when you see it It was it I think it was particularly good because it came out when whales were the The spring international spawn whales were doing really well at that time in the rugby So it was a good it was a good thing for st. David's day and moving to the right This is something that we've created stacks of assets for the euros this year Don't want to talk about the fact that we had a sad day on Saturday and whales obviously went out, but Whales as a country were so proud of the football team and where they've got to and also proud of the way that they've done it And we've tried to execute that in again Sweets of assets that we brought out. You'll see that little film playing Yeah, our and Ramsey's in it. Gary bail is in it But actually the core of that is showing whales as a big open country Huge community spirit. So you'll see the kids playing football as you can there people on the beach having a kick about all of that giving that kind of warm warm welcome and setting us up for But returning to sort of our autumn campaign, which we're planning at the moment We're also starting to head back to some of our original, you know perennial favorites on social that puffin video is probably The most popular that we've ever had and that came out first two years ago And of course, we couldn't use it last year But if we're ever needing a bit of engagement on our social channels puffins usually do the trick for us and we're also Returning to general general posts sharing a lot of others information, but we're keeping the emotion very warm friendly reassuring and crucially we're supporting partners, but just a quick example at the top. You've got the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, they've they've got their own tread lightly campaign at the moment which we're supporting and also R&L I really important that with R&L I we're we're able to support the message that they're getting out to To people we've had a huge influx of people over the last year and again this summer Who were maybe not used to swimming in the sea not used to the tides So I like doing this kind of work because it really does show that the marketing that that is undertaken Is always informed by so many different parts of so many different aspects of data So we delve quite deeply into everything and in fact we're in a bit of a partnership with the R&L I at the moment We're running a big industry webinar with them tomorrow so that they can talk about safety on the coast Directly to businesses so that businesses can get that out to their guests and visitors So three underlying principles, I think I hope I've demonstrated how really knowing your customer is so important Competing for customers again, you know, it's about making sure that as well as promising them the fastest zipline in the world which we can do it's also promising them that We're going to give them a really warm safe experience that's memorable when they're here So the experience dimension is taken on a much sort of broader context than just the actual The actual experience of what they'll do when they get here at an attraction or when they check into accommodation And let's just touch on this so agile agile approach I and anyone who's used to dealing with web dev projects are used to doing things agile sprints agile project management is basically a well established approach to To technology development particularly But in the last year we've applied that agile approach basically to everything that we do We've had to pull things we've had to change things. We haven't just had a plan b We've had a plan c and I don't see us at any point at least for the next year and probably Not forever as long as you know, we're doing this at the moment because Going back to just having a plan a you always need something in the bank Now as it happens the plan the plan a we had for last autumn and winter We still love a lot of the ideas we had then and we're resurrecting those ready for this autumn and winter to be able to start using them Um, but you know if anyone's learned anything on our team from this year It's been always have a plan b and be prepared to use it as the saying goes And this is the other one and I'm going to finish on this one. Um, and I've got one more slide after it just to kind of Echo it really is public sentiment However, many reports we get in however much consumer research we do which may be dated by a week in some cases Even our web material You have to take a call before you roll out a campaign on whether it feels right at that particular time Whether you're doing a good thing And um, you know, that's something that won't change now as well That's how bench test really of of um of whether we're doing the right kind of content and we're doing the right kind of activity And I couldn't speak today. Well, although we we left the euros as wales on saturday night Um, what the team did when they went on to the pitch kind of sums up That comery wales brand spirit doing good things being authentically well So obviously nothing to do with us, but it just kind of evokes all the right feelings and emotions for as far as i'm concerned So if you didn't see it, um as they went on to play against danmark where they lost 4-0 Sadly on saturday night, but as they went on to the pitch Gareth bale presented the team with a shirt for christian erickson. He's obviously been very ill And on the shirt it says brusher weller, which is Welsh for get well soon And that still gives me goosebumps and I think it made a lot of people in wales proud to see it it summed up the way that they were approaching the tournament and Beautifully kind of sums up the way that we um that we try and evoke the brand and everything that we do And that's a growing tourism for the good of wales So I've come to the end of my um of my section I'm really happy to take questions, um for any remaining time and I do love a q&a Well, that's great deal for our lucy. Thanks very much lucy for a really great presentation Don't forget there's still time to download the presentation slides from the handout section And also just a little reminder that if you're enjoying today's webinar and want to post on social media You can use the hashtag cim events So now we're going to go into the short q&a session There's still time to submit your questions If you want to uh, and we'll try and get through as many as we can in the next 15 15 minutes or so So the first one I have for you lucy is How did you get stakeholder buy-in for the activity during the pandemic? um, I think probably Number of things made it easier for us to a degree and the first first of which is as part of government We've also had a very very close working relationship with industry across the board public private and third Throughout the last sort of 15 months Because we've also been intensely involved with things like guidance and frequently asked questions and and being able to give advice doing a lot of industry engagement and So if I take our though as an example our though the whales promise came about as a direct result of those conversations with stakeholders So rather than us creating something and then telling people we've done it and hoping that they liked it um We we built it up from the ground and made sure that they were involved with the development of it all the way through And again, I think that's a philosophy that that we won't lose after this, you know, it's proven its benefit It's consolidated messaging and it's also helped us Um roll out when bearing in mind we had a very very small budget last year Um, we couldn't afford to do sort of whistles and bells jazz hands marketing and saturate media But what we could do well with our partners is all share each other's material and consolidate messaging So yeah, that's that's probably my answer to that one Okay, thank you. And how can you apply what you did as a large organization and the three principles you mentioned to smaller businesses? Um, I think you come back to those three principles I I worked freelance for about five years before I joined visit whales two years ago and I would be using those now if I was still doing freelance work for a small hotel or for a retail business, you know, it comes back to um Knowing your customer so blooming well and to a degree when you're in a smaller organization That's easier to achieve because you have such closer contact with them. So we were very heavily reliant on businesses feeding back to us over the course of the last year um, and I think you know, the other elements of experiences if we've learned everything anything over the last year, it's that The consumer data all the anecdotal research all of the the media stuff that you read online It's people wanting to return have a warm a warm welcome a very familiar feeling And to have a safe a safe experience and I think You know those elements again if you're in a small business blimey, you know Things like a database a gold dust aren't they at the moment? You know, those are immediately the things that you can you can get direct to your customer and the agile approach Yeah, okay. Maybe as a tinier business You wouldn't use necessarily use agile as project management tool But if you take it to its widest the widest extent of it and use it as a process of Reflecting and changing what you do the following week or the following month based on all of that feedback Then agile works effectively for any exercise business Thanks Thank you We have a question here that says what pr marketing agency are you working with? And why did you choose them? We work we have um as part of visit whales. Obviously we have um various agencies that we work with um We we tend to go out to contracts. I think our last tender was around 18 months ago So each one differs dependent on what we're what we're looking for but once we're in contract We work really closely with the agency. So um, yeah It's all available online as well and I can use that as a follow-up We've got several that we work with at the moment Okay Thanks Um, and has the interest has the increase in interest in whales both the language rising the tv dramas such as keeping faith and hidden Based in the beautiful whale in beautiful whales it says and sport Uh all been good context that has made difference a difference in marketing Absolutely, and thank you for the beautiful whales always like to hear that as visit whales. Yeah, no absolutely. I mean, um one of the anyone who watches Um discovery of witches, which is a sky atlantic program one of the biggest ever programs in recent years discovery of witches season one and season two all filmed in whales and When season two came out at the end of january people were binge watching season one And our web figures always in the top three for about three weeks locations for discovery of witches Then locations for keeping faith also sex education the big um the big doc the big netflix series sex education massive in places like south korea So when that airs you suddenly see the the web traffic reflecting it. So yeah, absolutely You know, I couldn't and sport the same thing, you know Showing showing that last slide with the whales clip on it It just all reflects back on on the nation brand on the camry whales brand, which is good for all of us. I think okay Going back to uh, what you're talking about agile methodology, we've have a question here Who who asked which provider would you suggest to use to learn the agile methodology? Yeah, there is different schools of thought out there Yeah, no, and I'd probably pass that one back to cim actually to be able to um to suggest I mean that agile as a principle is used by so many people now. So, um to pick one provider would be Probably would be quite misleading in a way so But i'm sure cim would have um documentation and and links to things like that yeah um Next question's asking about uh public sentiment So what if public sentiment is split down the middle? How do you call it? It's very difficult. Yeah, it's very difficult and we were very we were very cautious um last year and we had to Literally dip our foot dip our toe in the water sometimes if you talk about things like promoting features and And also mountainous areas where there was already a lot of interest in travel But equally there was also um, you know, obviously a concern about some of the remote areas with a lot of people coming back in So it was super hard to call But I think probably the easiest way to answer that is to say that if in doubt We left it for a week and then we tested the water again We we always brought public sentiment in it's You know Not that we had much money last year, but even if we had done and we are doing now It always comes back now to what feels right at the time And being aware of the public feeling and and the mood of the nation or the mood of the nations that are visiting you as well So, yeah, very hard to call a really good question Press pause is what we did is probably the easiest thing press pause and double triangulate and verify it again before we moved Yeah The next question is is Very topical and it's talking about indoor events versus outdoor events And the question is outdoor events would be attractive to many as they consider them less threatening health wise as opposed to indoor events Natural setting of wales is ideal for this So how will you develop this for the colder months of the year? um If we go back to really right back at the beginning of um of the presentation when I talked about our strategic plan But they and it's a good read. Am I I obviously would say that but it is a good read. It's it's very um It's very simple. It's very succinct It clearly shows what our priorities are and our priority going into 2020 Was very much to kind of let some of the people periods take care of themselves And generate as much material and activity as we could to to um push into the shoulder seas in autumn and winter And of course events as are a major proportion of of that activity. So Yeah, we've seen some really innovative ways of looking at different covered areas all of those those pieces of innovation coming back from industry But and when the time is right and it's ready They'll have our support to be able to promote that kind of all year round all year round message to generate business throughout the year Um, and which advertising medium do you think resonates with your audience's most right now? Oh We all play a different role really. Um I think I'm bound to say social I expect everyone expect to say so See social but What we've also done this year is is extend quite a lot of our tv coverage because We're trying to also balance the message in wales We'll see a lot more in wales, which we wouldn't have done previously We would have done some in wales tv advertising, but the majority would have been x wales But in a way we're trying to play the two off against one another So they complement and they're reinforcing that message about a responsible return and a warm welcome and a safe visit And all of those other elements. So this year I guess You know social's played a major role But things like I can see my database again being able to get messages out to people who are already loyal and wanting to come back That's before again Okay And what plans are have you got in place for increasing spend by visitors? We need to make sure that this kind of goes in hand a little bit with the shoulder season focus as well Then there needs to be enough product Promoted and available for people to spend their money on you know That's that's part of it And what we're trying to do as well and to reflect back in our original strategy is to those visitors that come if they're coming for a day Are they coming for two days? We'd love them to stay for a little bit longer And spend more locally, you know part of the advo promise was was very much based around buying local supporting local Independent shops restaurants all of that element But it's it's also down to us to make sure that we give those businesses and products profile That we you know, we've got to make it easier for someone to make that to make that decision and make that purchase Um and someone here is asking about uh developing personas. Could you say a little bit more about? Uh developing a persona approach Yeah, so personas again, it's a you know Anyone working a lot in digital is probably really familiar with personas and in the way that web dev takes place and and your social's constructed but What we've done is apply that persona principle to You know when I talk about things like public sentiment and trying to Test the water and see what feels right We'll have a group of personas and we actually put names and people's faces to them So that everybody across the team is very clear on who we're Who we're looking at and who we're targeting. They're not just a statistic We're not just saying this particular audience has you know, x amount of potential to do this What we're looking at is people that we could relate to and um So whether it's a family traveling with a dog and um and a grandparent You know, we'll start there and we'll try and work our way out of what they would be looking for What kind of search phrases they'd want to use what they'd expect to see in terms of the promotional or the general content We offer them So personas, I mean have a google a person as well because it's a real it's a rabbit hole because it's it's really fascinating Go to Quite honestly sometimes You know you strip it all back and you have a you have an image of someone in your mind that you're You're led by when you're when you're choosing your words your copy images And you're looking at what their customer journey would likely be So, uh, yeah personas are a great a great. I mean, I'm sure ciam has done something on personas So and if not, it would be a fabulous one to do. It's a good one Okay, thank you And Here's a great question. Actually How will you keep the momentum going and encourage people to keep visiting wales when people can go abroad again? I know and we're not complacent. I mean, you know last last summer When we came out of a face lockdown in july We had businesses some businesses not all of the sector. It was particularly Self-catering glamping camping some businesses had a really really busy five or six weeks But those businesses in what should have been our year about doors. They should have had a busy year Not just five or six weeks And it's we're not complacent We know that when people came out of lockdown the weather was great everyone was desperate to get outside We know we've got stunning coast. We've got great. We've got great hill walking. We've got a fabulous scenery There was that desire to get out there, but we're also equally conscious of planning for Those element of people that you probably wouldn't have chosen wales in all honesty last year that came because it was It was what they could do What we're trying to do at the moment is try and get a proportion of them back We hope they loved it. Some of them probably didn't and may not come back But we hope the proportion that came tested wales for the first time and loved it And you know have that feeling have that emotional connection and thought yeah, that's the place I'll return to we wanted We want to start really focusing on them and bringing them back But yeah, it's a fantastic question and of course and I think every Every uk destination is probably thinking the same thing at the moment. You know, we're not complacent Yeah, and the next question really is on the back of that which is how do you deal with negative public sentiment? Do you use messages to address this or do you push messages to divert it? Well, luckily in digital a lot of our over the last year a lot of our negative sentiment has been on social When it has come up, it's been on social and we all know it's a it's quite a transient medium So and also we kind of left last year when we did have one piece of negative sentiment We would like the community almost discuss it themselves and thankfully thank goodness Um, you know, let's take our facebook following. We've got around 1 million on our facebook following If when we were going out with the visit Wales later messages, there were some negativity There were there were some comments where you think all the other unfortunate comments put in there and But rather than take it down immediately We were waiting to see what happened with the rest of the community and as I say, thankfully 95% of them were then coming back and saying I actually know it is you will get a great welcome and it is a fantastic place and So we try to let that kind of we didn't step into the fray last year with any of that and always at the back of my mind Because businesses asked this throughout the year. You would have one piece of negative sentiment that made the media I would always say to people. Let's look outside Wales. This is happening not just across the uk It's happening in the states. It's happening in western europe It was an automatic and immediate reaction to a change in circumstance with Having it, you know been very quiet for some time having people come back in but I think we've come I hope we've come full circle. I mean tourism is such an important part of the economy in Wales and Many of our friends and family are all involved as well the supply chain and I think you know, it's You can't you can't get too involved and too obsessive about the negative You have to let some of it just roll for the time being and not be too reactive And what measurement tool then to use to measure sentiment across social We do um, we obviously scan it ourselves. We do social sentiment analysis all the time. I mean it We're not a huge team. So in our social media team, they're three four people So as a group, you know, we're all looking at things as they come in and I think probably more than ever last year It was almost like operating in a small business because whenever we put something out Everybody in the team would be waiting to see what the reception how it landed what the reception was like and so again reliant on partners as well, we've had tremendous feedback from destinations and from other partners across Wales Um, so we monitor to make sure that they're no blips in what we're doing and what they're hearing as well So we've been able Tell you enough how important it's been over the last 12 months to consolidate messaging But also to substantiate what we're hearing by speaking to our For our stakeholders daily if not weekly Yeah So so then what were the core problems? When it came to delivering activity over the last year and how did you overcome those? I think the core the core problems were probably principally and it sounds very simplistic But knowing the right time to do something that became very difficult and As I said, I think I mentioned when I was talking if you're in a team where your whole Your whole race on deck is to encourage people to visit Wales to have to tell people that they can't visit and they have to visit later Went against the grain of everything we would normally do so that that was difficult and um and also challenging budget circumstances But over often above everything it was knowing the right time and the right content without And again can't reiterate enough plan a but have a plan b and c we used our plans b and c More than we used our plan a's last year And I can see that happening again for all sorts of other reasons. I just think it's a good way to to plan You know always always have a backup plan and always have different scenarios scenario planning is so important now Okay, thank you, and we have a question here that says um Um When when you Looked at the campaign Why did you settle on the word ador or promise? Rather than something like hirraith? Which is uh for the non-well-speakers out there, which is like a feeling or emotion or a longing I thought that question was going to be why did you use a welsh word because but actually it's just why didn't Why did you use that particular welsh word? Um, so i'm going to answer both of those because i've asked myself that question now We used a welsh word because a part of our brand. Um, the welsh language is an absolute You know, it's a core of our brand values and about being able to express authenticity and and You know, you'll you'll see what welsh use across all of the things that we do um, we chose out though because It was it does what it says it was a promise and what we've been trying to introduce at the time everyone said Oh, you need to charter you need a visitor charter or you need a you know a visitor Um, a visitor promise and we thought well, let's just play with it slightly and we will have a visitor promise But to make it unique to wales it it will be called out though and it's our promise That's brilliant. Thanks. Lucy some some really great questions. There's some bad questions. Thank you. Yeah So that's all we've got uh time for in the webinar today I'd like to say thanks to lucy for today's presentation and cim wales for organizing the event We do hope that you found it interesting and worthwhile Our next webinar express How to have the energy is wednesday the 14th of july at one o'clock hosted by cim greater london You'll find further details listed on the events page on the cim website Where you'll also be able to register for the session So on behalf of cim Thank you once again lucy for a really great presentation And thank you for joining us. We hope that you will enjoy the rest of your day Well vowed. Goodbye


Now, CEO Tehr, renewed attacks on Bentley communities by militia herdsmen, and the one-turn destruction of lives and property, stakeholders across the state have endorsed the enforcement of the law Tehr provide for the establishment of community of volunteer guards and for the purposes connected there was, which was enacted in the year 2000. Griffin journalist after the stakeholders meeting, Governor Samuel Othom said the attacks had overstretched the conventional security agencies in the state. He said stakeholders had mandated the government to recruit more vigilantes and support them with logistics as provided by the law to help contain attacks on Bentley communities. The chairman of the council will be the chairman of the volunteer guard. The DPU of every local government with their member, the DSS representative with their member, the second class chief with their member, the third class chief with their member and all the 40, the default class chiefs in each local government with their members of these volunteer guard at the local government level. There will be a state coordinating unit, which will include my humble self, my deputy, the SSG, the attorney general, the commissioner of police, the director, DSS, the first class chiefs and the other people as may be applicable.


The International Soil Moisture Network, ISMN, is a global network of soil moisture measurement sites that provides access to data from over 500 stations around the world. The network is designed to facilitate the exchange of data between participating networks and to make this data accessible to researchers and other interested parties. The ISMN currently includes data from 19 networks and covers a wide range of geographic locations, including North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The data is available in a variety of formats, including raw data, processed data, and metadata. The data is also available via a web-based interface, allowing users to search and select data sets based on location, date, and other criteria. The ISMN is an important resource for researchers who need accurate and reliable data about soil moisture levels around the globe. This article was authored by W. A. Derigo, W. Wagner, R. Hohensen, and others.


You know, people often complain and people often point out that, no, not Mitt Romney, but people often point out that the United States has some of the highest cost of health care in the world, and it's true, we pay a lot for health care, and there are lots of reasons for that, lots of reasons for that. But one of them certainly is the fact that the United States, on a per capita basis, has fewer doctors than almost any country in the western world. The United States has a doctor shortage, primarily primary care physicians, but generally we have, and I didn't know this, but there was an excellent article in the Atlantic Magazine illustrating this. He asked even I didn't answer the question, sorry. I thanked you for it, but I didn't answer it, and I'm not going to. The United States has fewer doctors per capita than almost any other country in the world. Countries like Switzerland have a substantially higher number of doctors per capita than we do, and a country like Sweden has, relatively speaking, a free health care system than most of Europe does, and probably in some ways, you know, less of a mess than the American health care system that's neither here nor there, and is in some respects the worst of all worlds. So I didn't realize that one of the reasons that health care costs are so high why doctors charge so much is because of shortage of doctors, and the question is why does the United States have so few doctors? And it turns out that I don't know, around 19, about 40 years ago, 45 years ago, there was doctors decided that there were too many doctors in the United States, and they basically used their influence to start dramatically shrinking medical schools. They started making it more difficult to get in, started shrinking the numbers of students going into medical schools, started shrinking the number of people studying medicine in the United States, and they dug this massive hole where, you know, we have a shortage of doctors now, but it was worse 10, 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. And even though we're now accepting more students into medical schools, it's not catching up, and part of the reason for that, of course, is, well, I mean, what happens when there's a shortage? Well, when there's a shortage of something, you can charge a higher rate for it. So doctors have been raising their fees while making sure there's no more competition. So the American Medical Association and other associations are basically being actively, actively. We're trying to restrict the number of doctors that get licensed in the United States. Yeah, now, we can get a whole debate about whether government should license doctors or not, clearly not. It's a violation of rights. Somebody should license doctors, probably medical schools and medical associations and, you know, different professional groups. But licensure is wrong. And then you use the licensure, which is what the doctors are doing, to limit the number of doctors who study in your schools. Now, it's not just that we have fewer students going in. It's also that as compared to other countries, studying for medicine is a lot longer of a process than it is as other countries.  And it adds, and then you do, you know, you do, in a sense, an internship, what counts as an internship for three, four years. And it's insane. The amount of debt these students go into and the amount of time it takes them. Most other countries who are under world, you can go into undergraduate as a medical student and within six years you're done. You don't do these two, four year, five year, six year things. And they don't have this crazy internship system. And they produce more doctors per capita out of their medical schools. But again, this is all meant to slow the process down, weed out people, let them drop off, and ultimately reduce the supplies so the cost can go up. But then of course, so that's one way in which they do it, then of course there's another way. One of the ways in which they do it is they dramatically restrict the ability of foreign doctors to work in the United States. Even though these foreign doctors are trained, some of them, and some of the best medical schools in the world, they can't just come to the U.S. in practice. Again, they have to get licensed, which means they have to do a whole, have to go through a whole process. I had an uncle, an uncle who lived in South Africa, who was a dentist, been a dentist his whole life. And his three daughters all moved to the United States. They all lived in LA, my first cousins, they all lived in LA. And he would have loved to move to LA and start up a dentist practice. But he couldn't. Even though he'd been a dentist all these years, fully qualified, he would have to take a test, go back to school, take a test, do all these things to get a license.  So one way in which they restrict them from coming in is through licensure and through restrictions and immigration. Indeed, it turns out that when NAFTA was negotiated, you know, the North American Free Trade Agreement, so much for free trade, one of the restrictions placed in there explicitly was to limit the ability of Mexican and Canadian doctors to talk about Canada, Canadian doctors to practice in the United States. Why? Because they're not as good? No. That's not how you do with that. It's in order to maintain the shortage of doctors for the sake of American doctors, at least for the short-term superficial sense, the sake of them. This is the kind of short-term irrational thinking that permeates licensing laws, that permeates professional organizations, and that permeates politics. And it's complete insanity. In, you know, why not allow anybody with a medical degree into the United States? It's not like they're going to go on welfare. It's not like these doctors are automatically going to ruin American culture. So what is it that prevents us from allowing highly-trained doctors from all over the world to come here and practice medicine? Think about the quality of life that that would improve for all of us. Who cares that their countries need these doctors? I don't care about other countries. And who said they need those doctors? How do you know? But why are we thinking at that level? This is about individuals who want to come live here and practice medicine here and improve the quality and the cost of medicine in the United States for you and me. Instead, we've got a cartel limiting the number of doctors in the U.S. through the government, reducing the quality of our care, and increasing the price. I don't care that other people need their doctors. Other countries need their doctors. Why would anybody care? So anyway, it's, you know, there is a writer. Let me just see if I can find the article. There's a writer in the, let me do this one second. Yeah, good for Travis. That's a national socialist belief that doctors should stay in those countries because they need the doctors. It's exactly national socialism. But that's exactly the way it is. Let me just pull this up. Ah, pull this. I'll show you the, let's do a quick screenshot of that. Yeah, there's the article. It is by Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson is, he writes quite a few good things. I mean, he's obviously left of Santa, but he is pro-progress and he's looking for ways in which we can increase progress. He talks about abundance as the goal. It's a good article. I encourage you to read this article and to follow this guy. I wanted to show you the, no, not that chart, this chart. This is a chart of physicians for $10,000, 10,000 people in the population. The dark red is general practice. The light red is a specialization. And you can see here, Austria has the most doctors per capita in Norway, Lithuania, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Iceland. What surprised me is how low Israel is. I always thought Israel had very high levels of doctors per capita, but look where the United States is. We haven't even got the United States, there's the United States, just above Mexico and just below the United Kingdom that has one of the worst socialized medicine in the world. And yet, we have fewer doctors per capita than they do. That's insane. We should have a lot more and exactly market pressures would dictate this as wages of doctors went up, as it became a more, more lucrative profession. More people would come in and places would come down. That's how markets work. And what happens when you don't allow markets to work is you get distortions. And in this case, the distortion is hurting people, hurting people, wet counts and their health. They can't get primary care physicians. And this is the little, this is, that's not the economist, it's the Atlantic magazine. These are kind of the little things that would use the quality of life, that would use the standard of living. You have to wait in line for hours to see a doctor. You can't ever see a particular kind of doctor. And for a lot of people, it's expensive. So it's good to see good articles being written out there about real problems with real solutions. The solution here is to expand our medical schools, to do away with any restrictions, to let real competition be there, to stop these controls and to open up our borders, generally, but certainly to doctors. And to get rid of licensing laws broadly. Now I know people don't like the idea of licensing laws in the United States, right? Jennifer, do you think that malpractice litigation is higher here? Yeah, much higher. There's no malpractice litigation really as an issue outside the United States. It really is an American phenomena for all kinds of reasons. Liability laws are looser here. It's much easier to sue here because of liability laws. We have a culture where that's the way in which we seek retribution. And then when you have socialized medicine and doctors, for example, in the UK, working for the government, well, who are you gonna sue? The government doesn't, you're not gonna get very far with that. I don't think doctors in the UK have to buy liability insurance because they're government employees. At least those who are not in private practice. And it's only a small number, relatively speaking, of doctors in UK who also have a private practice. What do you call a person who graduates last in their class from the worst medical school? Your argument assumes all MDs are equal skill. No, they're not all. That's why some of them work, I don't know, it's Stanford Medical Center and some of them work at Ho-Dung Hospital in the middle of nowhere, but Ho-Dung Hospital in the middle of nowhere would rather have a relatively badly trained doctor from a third-rate medical school than no doctor at all, which is the alternative that they face. And indeed hospitals and clinics in the rural parts of this country have no physicians, have no doctors. The other thing that the doctor associations have done is they've restricted the ability of nurses to do things that they shouldn't be able to do. They require that only doctors can treat XYZ when it's not true and nurses can do a lot of this stuff. Again, partially away, you know, again, let the market filter. Now, again, what happens, what about, I don't know, all the nuclear engineers who graduate and some of them graduate from Ho-Dung universities, what's gonna happen to them? They're gonna build nuclear, nuclear power plants, they're gonna implode. What's gonna happen to all the pilots? I mean, when you get on a plane, do you make sure that the pilot is the best pilot from the best school? I mean, every industry builds in mechanisms so even the people who are mediocre are not doing too much damage and the people who are bad get filtered out. But the solution to that, it's not like in Switzerland, you've got dozens of really, really bad doctors doing really, really horrible things to people. No evidence of that, no evidence of that. But markets are really good. When weeding out, people are not very good at what they do. But what we rely on is government, government licensing. Instead of allowing, instead of allowing the private sector to figure out ways to qualify doctors and to make sure that we're not letting the really bad ones in, that's what markets, markets do that brilliantly, brilliantly. Governments screw it up and they're screwing it up now because a lot of places just don't have doctors. For a second or third level, they just don't have them. And that's the worst of all worlds. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are ready subscribers and those of you who are ready supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.