Royal results
Various cities or specific locations in the Netherlands have a strong connection with the royal history. Everyone knows a number of locations: the recently opened museum 'Paleis Het Loo' and with it the city of Apeldoorn, but also The Hague with its palaces. The fact that Leeuwarden and Breda also have 'Orange roots' is less known. However, very interesting in terms of storytelling and strengthening the cities profile.
In recent years, Leisure Link has carried out a number of projects with this theme. Last year, a study was carried out into the idea for a 'Royal Light Festival' in Apeldoorn. Before that (from 2018 to 2022), Apeldoorn, Delft, The Hague, Breda and Leeuwarden have collaborated in the Royal storyline of the Netherlands. This collaboration, led by the NBTC, was carried out by Carolien from Leisure Link. Even further back, work was done on an exploration for a royal museum.
What insights has this yielded? What tips are there for similar collaborations or themes?
Pearl for profiling
Experience shows that choosing a theme, for example the royal character/history, can be a real gem for the profiling of your city or specific location. It gives direction to the story you want to tell, the atmosphere and the development of the leisure offer. In Breda, for example, work is being done on creating new or adapted leisure facilities that fit in with the history and the royal story.
Important advice in this regard: there must be something for visitors to actually experience, for example an attraction or museum, a route along special places or the organisation of events. In recent years, for example, Noordeinde Palace has been open to public in the summer and guided tours are organized in the royal waiting room at Holland Spoor station!
Big budget... but...
What stood out in the Royal storyline is the power of pooling budgets. By collaborating with multiple destinations/locations on 1 topic or target group, not only the budget, but certainly the impact is much greater. This made international campaigns feasible for the storyline and the result was impressive (more than 13 million reach and 1.3 million media value!).
At the same time, combining budgets also entails challenges: preconditions or requirements are regularly imposed on the way in which the budget must be spent. Sometimes even at the level of the percentage distribution of space in, for example, an advertisement. As a result, part of the efficiency was lost (due to high time expenditure and a less clear message to the visitor). It is therefore useful to make good agreements about this in advance!
Transfer to target
Moving into the mind of the visitor is a big challenge. This is not surprising: your own taste and preferences are very difficult to put aside. However, if you do not focus on the preferences, wishes and uses of the visitor, this will stand in the way of optimally reaching and serving the visitor. Both in marketing, as well as in the presentation of content and offering experiences. One reads a paper, the other looks at content on social media. One likes an audio tour, the other wants to be able to look at an object in peace.
Sounds logical right? But in practice this turns out to be more difficult! Striking examples from the projects: "I never listen to podcasts, so I don't believe in them" or "it has to be of really high quality, not too much entertainment, I don't like that".
Collaboration code
Cooperation should not be an end in itself, believe me, it will not work: on the one hand, determine why you are going to work together. Are the parties equal in this respect and if not, where is the possible inequality? How do you deal with that?
On the other hand, it is advisable to define clearly what you are going to collaborate on and to look critically at whether you can make this happen. Do you mainly focus on marketing or is the collaboration broader, for example also with a joint strategy, supply development, data and research, et cetera?
Necessity is a necessity
Finally, as a tip: find out what urgency there is or what you can create. Without urgency it is (more) difficult to generate energy for a specific theme, collaboration or project. A good example of this is the renovation of Paleis Het Loo: this should give Apeldoorn an enormous impulse to focus on the theme in terms of content, programming and marketing. Impressive to see how this has been taken up and implemented by the various parties in the region.
Want to know more about the experiences on this? Get in touch!
