Transcript
Speaker: So we tried to do something where we did the opposite of what everybody else is doing in marketing. We didn't put our product, which is the country of Austria, in a window and said, hello, look what we have here. We did the opposite. We hide all our beautiful landscapes and um hidden gems. Welcome to Friction Reloaded, the podcast.
Speaker: I'm Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist, and this is where we cut through the noise. Because everyone is talking about trends, but most of it is noise. In this podcast, I sit down with industry leaders, marketers, and strategists.
Speaker: And together, we don't just talk about what's coming. We uncover what it means and what you can do with it. It's all about real perspectives and actionable insights. No fluff.
Speaker: So let's dive in. My guest today is Sandra Stichauer. She's the chief marketing officer at the Austrian National Tourist Organization, leading global marketing across more than 30 international markets.
Speaker: With over 15 years of experience in brand and tourism marketing, she stands for modern brand leadership at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and growth. Previously, she held senior marketing roles at BIPA and the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, where she drove brand positioning and transformation in highly competitive markets.
Speaker: Her focus lies on bold leadership, international growth, and building impactful brands that combine creative innovation with measurable performance. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Sandra. Thank you for having me. So when I first published my trend report, Friction Reloaded, in January, I already had quite some good examples of the four shifts.
Speaker: But then I became aware that you and your company, the Austrian National Tourist Organization, actually created the perfect example for the overall theme of friction, which was your NDA campaign. So can you walk us through the campaign and what it was all about?
Speaker: We started the campaign actually over one and a half years ago. We started like we always start. We started from a brand and target audience view. We always go into the brand. We go into the target audience, human insights, and try to figure out what they want to see, what they want to hear, they work. What kind of messages and communication styles do you react and communicate with? And as a brand, we stand for quality, culture, nature, food. That's all topics we need to cover. And at the same time, we had the opportunity to do something for the topic of over-tourism or balanced tourism. So that both of the angles, we try to figure out what kind of campaign we want to do next. And our target audience, they're not looking for mainstream communication. They kind of like modern, innovative style, trend-oriented. They are well-educated couriers and they also like to have smart communication where they have to think about it and not like in-your-face communication. So we tried to do something where we did the opposite of what everybody else is doing marketing. We didn't put our product, which is the country of Austria. We didn't put it in the window and said, hello, look what we have here. We didn't use our three seconds where we have to show it all and have to get the attention. We did the opposite. We hide all our beautiful landscapes and hidden gems. And we figured out that was kind of a way to go to that was... a new thing we did in marketing and it was also something which attracted a lot of people like okay they tried to tell me something but don't show me what it is so they were curious about it so we did spots where we showed the country we told them the hidden gems but we didn't show actually what we had to show So we learned all the landscapes, we peeped all the hidden gems we talked about, and then we guided the audience to a landing page where they had the opportunity to sign an NDA. So they had to actually really sign an NDA. It's not like a real NDA. It's legal binding, yeah. But it looked like a real NDA and it was written kind of funny way. So you could guess it's not legally binding. It was an easy way to get the hidden gems. And once they signed the NDA, they got all the hidden gems. We had over 120 hidden gems on the website from real Austrians and real hidden gems in Austria. And they were also pinned to Google Maps, so it was quite easy to find them. And the campaign, it was published in three countries, and we had visits from over 120 countries to the landing page. So we invested just in three countries, and we had visits from over 120 countries all over the world.
Speaker: especially from um countries like Spain or countries like China and Korea, where over-tourism is quite a big thing in these countries. So they reacted quite well to the campaign, which also helped us to understand how good campaigning works. It's not just about the idea or just about the marketing technique you use. It's always about using a relevant subject which people can relate to, which is a hot topic and connected with a smart marketing technique we use. So worked quite well for us. It's so fascinating because basically what you did is something very counterintuitive in marketing. Usually you want everybody to see everything at first glance. And what you did is you produced these spots and these images, and then something was blurred and then people had to do something to actually see the full ad.
Speaker: And people don't want to see ads per se. So people needed really to invest more effort. They had this friction barrier to make the experience then also more memorable.
Speaker: So you already told me about the numbers. So I would be curious, was it hard to convince everyone in the organization to actually implement that additional layer of friction or was everybody sold from the very beginning? Not everybody was sold from the beginning. They talked about it and they, of course, asked, is it too long to get the conversion to show what we have to show? People are quite curious about how we invest the money and how we communicate with Austria or holidays in Austria. Our job is to stand out. And I think tourism marketing or marketing in in general, it's it's not about being, do what everybody else is doing or being beautiful or being perfect or being polished. It's more about everything. standing out and do something which people are not used to see or not used to get yeah to to actually see or to discover and i think they're so used to always see the picture perfect landscape the blue earth sky it's when we when we go to holidays it never rains of course it never rains but yeah it actually does rain and it There are clouds in ah in the sky and it's not always the perfect slope. We try to show also that side of of tourism to be authentic, to be real, to be relevant as well. And with the NDA campaign, I don't want to have a a quick conversion. and We wanted to do something which stays in your head, which keeps remembered.
Speaker: remembered i I always say like if if no one remembers what you do, it actually didn't happen. Yeah. That's what we tried to do with NDA and also worked out well for us. Yeah, totally. And and you also won quite a few awards already with this campaign, didn't you? Yes.
Speaker: i'm not I don't like to talk too much about awards because sometimes it's and it comes up like self-fulfilling. It's just about awards. It's not just about awards, um of course. But if you win awards, you can be happy and proud about it. And yeah, we did win quite a few. We're especially very happy about the Webby. We won the Webby couple of ah weeks ago and it was the best Webby for Austria in six years. So we're quite happy that we brought it back to Austria and it was just, we we competed only with US campaigns like and new York City or the Met Gala. So I think that's quite ah it's so quite a competitive field to win an award. Yeah, that's quite something.
Speaker: You touched upon another topic, which was how to identify those insights. Yes. I think for me, that is also a little bit connected to the big shift of something that I call the algorithmic escape in the trend report. So users choosing to opt out of social and algorithmic media and turning more to smaller communities like Reddit or Substack. Yeah.
Speaker: How do you deal with this both in your marketing research and also in your outreach? Are you also using Reddit or smaller platforms? We did actually use Reddit in NDA because it was about giving recommendations about hidden gems. And we thought Reddit is actually the perfect channel to go to if you talk about hidden gems and wanted to have like community recommendations, not just like not for my organization or a travel um company to say, yeah, you have to go there, but about real people, give you real recommendations. And we use Reddit. um We try to do that quite a lot because we think that's the way to go for big brands. It's not about being the perfect, always Polish, nice and and big brand, but to be something to have like an attitude and to get into the community, to get in touch with them, to be relevant for them. And if you want to be relevant with them, you have to talk to them. You have to be inside the community, not just talk about them, but get into the community and get in touch with them. I think it's such a good move to actually go there and not be 100% always focused on the big platforms, even though Reddit is also big right now.
Speaker: We also used Twitch the first time for NDA. It worked well as well. We didn't actually have a lot of media budget for this campaign. it was We had production budget. It was a good one. But we didn't have a lot of media budget because we always figured the campaign is so good. It doesn't need ah that much media budget. And yeah, it actually worked out. So we used Twitch, we used Reddit, and um it was it's still quite a good value for what you get in those platforms.
Speaker: Yes. And I think especially because not everyone is there, that was the same in the beginning of social media, Instagram meta, when not all the brands were there. It was yeah very much easier than it is right now to really get attention. yeah Another big shift that we see is that people increasingly choose destinations,
Speaker: more on what experience it provides for them yeah beyond just leisure. We see it both in the in real life activities and also like a search for meaning.
Speaker: And you have this emotional positioning called Lebensgefühl. Mm-hmm. which is very hard to translate to English, but it means something like the feeling that you have while living. It's also something intangible.
Speaker: So I would be curious, how do you actually get this Lebensgefühl across in your marketing? um You said it's very hard to translate into English. Yeah, it is. ah That's why we don't translate it. It's Lebensgefühl all over the world. We work with 30 markets and in all of the 30 markets we don't translate Lebensgefühl. It's always Lebensgefühl. We try to be the, maybe in the future, did the new Deutsche Witte for Austria. Yeah, okay.
Speaker: um That's our goal. And when we came up with the idea, we said, okay, it's an emotion. It's not like a usual claim you have with other brands. It's just one word and it's only in German. So it might be hard to to get to the understanding and into the heads of people. But it actually worked quite well. when we talk about the Lebensgefühl, it's about...
Speaker: being differentiated to to other countries because other countries have beautiful mountains, beautiful lakes, beautiful um landscapes um and um slopes and and experiences as well. But in Austria, we say the the the people who live in the country, they make the difference. So it's all about the Lebensgefühl. It's about the feeling that in Austria we don't take things too seriously.
Speaker: yeah we have a very good hospitality. We have a very good, we call it the Austrian Schmee. We have a good sense of humor. um And we don't take things too seriously. Sometimes things work out. If they don't work out, yeah, it's fine as well. So we find another solution. And that's the Austrian way of of living and um getting, that's a feeling you only get when you experience the country and and not just when you visit the country and um see sights.
Speaker: Of course, you can do that as well. But we feel if you come to Austria, you have to get into the culture and like experience what Austria really is about. And if you experience it, and if you get in touch with people and talk with them, and it's just about like being in a restaurant, talk to the host, talk to the to the the service, to talk to the sommelier. Just get that feeling how they react with you, how they interact with you. And Austrian people are very, um they're heartful, they're very warmly, welcoming.
Speaker: that's a feeling you get in Austria. And if you really dive into it, um you probably take it home with you and can't get enough and hopefully come back. So marketing is a lot about feelings, as you mentioned. Is it then warmth that you want to get across? Or what would be the the couple of feelings that you want to get across when people see an ad from about Austria as a tourist destination? good question i don't think it's what it's this one feeling it's the it's a lebensgefühl which is connected with with a couple of feelings because a lot of diversity in austria and it's not just about one feeling but it's about the feeling not to be too serious not to be to trick yourself and just like do what do you feel like you want to do we don't tell you what you have to do when you come to austria there's a lot of things you can do but if you're here just get into the culture and and
Speaker: get a deep dive of what Austrian life is about and it's about not to be not not to be too serious not to be too strict with yourself just go with the flow and um experience what whatever you feel like you don't have to be active on your holidays people always feel like when they go on holidays that you have to do things in Austria you don't if you feel like coming for a week and just sleep we have perfectly you fine beds it's quiet do whatever you if feel like Yeah, and that also links to what we discussed before we hit record on the podcast. This going to a place for a second time can be so relaxing because then you don't need to go to all the things and you can just be and rest. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And that's what holidays in Austria is all about. It's not about... You have to do something. You can. You always can. And we have a lot to offer. There's a lot of things you can do and a lot of experience. And we actually come from an insight where we say um there are more experiences than you can ever tell about. Because once you experience something in in in your holidays, I think everybody can relate. So it's you experience something and you're very proud about it. But when you tell somebody about it, It makes you even prouder and it makes you even prouder if someone takes a recommendation and experience the experience himself or herself.
Speaker: So yeah, it's about just be and feel like if you want to do something, if you want to be active, be active. If you want just want to relax, relax. If you just come for the food, come for the food. It's fine as well. We have all the things and it's a very good overall experience you can get. And in the end, it's about the feeling and not not about look what I have done. It's about the feeling.
Speaker: Yeah, I so much agree with you. and And I think the challenge that I have with a lot of ads that I see out there is that they don't evoke any kind of feeling inside of me. And they're just information.
Speaker: And it's nicely designed, it's well written, but I don't feel anything. And I deeply believe that in the end, we're all emotional beings. And the only way how we change behavior is if we feel something.
Speaker: yeah Otherwise, like just because of information, there's so much information out there, nobody changes something about themselves or their behavior. Yeah, absolutely true. I agree as well. And that's why I think brands have to be relevant and they have to get in touch with their communities and their target audiences because it's not just about being beautiful, being perfect. It's not just what we learned about marketing. Be present, be aware. Of course, you have to be seen. We have to be seen to get relevant. But I think if you talk about stories and tell stories and and hit topics which are
Speaker: not but Maybe sometimes not easy, more controversial, more like i'm having an attitude about it. You get a a deeper level in communications and you actually really reach people and get into their head and not just like be seen.
Speaker: mean Everybody can can be seen. Now, we talked a lot about trends and shifts in behavior. i would be curious, is there another thing from the marketing world right now that you think...
Speaker: is on the brink of becoming something bigger or that most people of the industry are underreacting to any other shifts that you've observed? In the last 10 years, it was all about online communication. You have to get into the digital channels. You have to be present on all the platforms. Of course, you have to do this as well, but you have to connect it with real life experiences as well. If you have an online campaign, NDA was an online campaign, but we also activated it in the markets.
Speaker: So um we try to always translate our storytelling, which we tell in, of course, clips and videos and social campaigns, which also try to put it into real life experiences. For NDA, for example, we worked with one of our tourism partners in the Netherlands and we did a vernissage where we had like a secret um hidden vernissage and all the journalists had to... give up the phone when they entered the venousage and everything was hidden and pixeled and then we kind of curated the storytelling about the hidden gems so I think that's quite important to be in real life as well and I think we experienced that for example I think a very good example um recently was Coachella and the Justin Bieber performance because what he actually it was a real life experience but he sat on the stage and and traveled through his past via online videos and talked about it. And I think that's quite a good example how you can very emotionally connect the digital world with a real life experience. Did you see what Pinterest did at Coachella? No.
Speaker: So they had an area and it was a whole experience. And if you wanted to enter, you had to give away your phone first. Oh, yeah. So Pinterest, always beautiful things to look at and you couldn't take a photo.
Speaker: yeah And yet still everybody was talking about it afterwards because it was such an amazing experience and people got real tangible things. Like they got a book where they could gather stamps of the experiences inside. So they left with something, but it wasn't a photo yeah and it wasn't a tag, but it was something real and tangible, which is also a nice translation of this in real life activities.
Speaker: that I think just make us humans more at ease in a world where everything is digital, yeah that we really can experience something. And I, for example, yesterday I had this revelation. I was walking to the university to pick up my girlfriend and i was walking there with my earplugs, of course, in, and I was listening to music. And then I just put...
Speaker: the earphones out and I was just listening to a what's happening out there. And I was listening to bits and pieces of conversations of people walking next to me. And I felt so much calmer than just being on a screen or being connected to something all the time.
Speaker: And I really feel there's a need of more and more people to just experience stuff again and just feel. That's what we say as well. Our current campaign, did the Austrian synapse, it's all about like if you experience something deep or something really real which connects ah you with the experience, it's scientifically proven that synapses grow within your body.
Speaker: So we say when you come to Austria, there are so many intense experiences. Of course, for sure, you leave with an Austrian synapse. That's why we always think like it's holidays is always about real life experiences. We we used to do the last 10 years. um The Internet was the escape of the real world. And it was highly welcome because we were so tired of the real world because it was hard and it's still hard. But now we spend so much time in all the channels.
Speaker: Everybody knows, like everybody can relate to that. If you go into TikTok, if you go into Instagram, there's an hour, um and an hour flies by and you you don't even notice it. And that's why I think nowadays, and you also say that in your trend report, that nowadays people want to escape to real life because the internet is so overwhelming and there's so much information in it.
Speaker: We want to have a real connection with real people, like a real talk, deep talk. i that's I don't want to be always like on the surface. I want to get deeper and see what people really are talk about and feel about and what they're bothered with. And yeah, I think that's also something brands need to consider for them. It's not just about like between you and me. It's always about between, it can it can be between a brand and a target audience as well if you do it right. I love that. Almost a perfect sentence to end it But I have one more thing that I would like to ask you, which is, do you have any questions for me? Yes.
Speaker: What do you think jewelry iconic brands, what differentiate them from not so iconic brands and what do they have to do in the future to become more successful and more relevant to what they want to reach or reach their goals? Yeah.
Speaker: That's a very good question. I think first, the truly iconic brands have figured out what need they are really serving for their customers. Whenever I teach at university, I always ask students, so what need does a Rolex actually serve?
Speaker: and here And then they realize it's about status. So Rolex is not selling a watch, they are selling status. And then there is this amazing tv campaign from Snickers 10, 15 years ago, where they first introduced that you are not you when you are hungry yeah claim.
Speaker: So they are not selling a chocolate bar, but they are selling you a tool that keeps you from getting hangry and it keeps you energized. So I believe the really successful brands and love brands have figured out what need they are really serving instead of just the product or the service that they are selling.
Speaker: That's number one. And number two, I feel like those brands keep it really simple. Yes. As we just discussed, there is just so much happening out there in the world.
Speaker: And nobody actually cares about brands. One of my best friends, I just had a chat with him yesterday. He is the head of brand and creative at Too Good To Go. We know each other from my past and he lives in Denmark, in Copenhagen.
Speaker: And in one of our calls, he said, you know what? Nobody wakes up at 7 a.m. m in the morning and decides they want to save a food from going to waste with Too Good To Go today. Yes.
Speaker: And hearing that from him, being the person responsible to make people actually think that was such a revelation for me because yes, nobody cares about brands. What people want is they want to have a good life, a simple life, an easy life, a life that fulfills them.
Speaker: And brands in the best case, and that's where it's linked again to the first point, serve a need for them. So I believe as a brand, you need to actually be in service more than selling.
Speaker: And then the selling should come from that service that you're providing. Yes, I also think that's always connected with an emotion because people want, like you said, they want to feel good about themselves. They want to feel you have and like an easy life. So I think it's not just about being a love brand.
Speaker: You say that absolutely right. People don't care about brands. They don't care about if they love the brand. They care about the feeling when they use the brand. That's what they care about. And if it makes their life easier or not. So I think we have a shift coming from love brands to like life brands, being relevant in your life, being relevant in the life of our target audience. I like that. That's an even better ah way to close the conversation. i like that you like that.
Speaker: I have way more questions for you, but we're running out of time, so we'll have to continue that another time. Thank you, Sandra, so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It was really nice talking with you. Yeah, I also very much enjoyed the conversation and I hope our listeners do too. And I look forward to our next in real life meeting.
Speaker: Yeah, me too. Thank you. See you soon. See you. And that's it for today. If something here made you think, send it to someone who could use it. You can find me on LinkedIn or through my newsletter called Future Strategies on Substack for More.
Speaker: And if you're ready to move your marketing from insight to action, reach out. That's what I do. Until next time.
