ChatGP wrote my bio, and I love it
Like many people I have been playing around with ChatGP to learn more about how it works, what it can do, and if it is capable of writing with emotion, and reflecting a brands personality.
Today I asked ChatGP to write my bio, and I'm impressed with the result. It's a great start, and has saved me significant thinking time.
Bio written by ChatCPT - Alison McDowell, Director Roadmap Strategy
Alison McDowell is a strategic marketer and proven brand builder with a passion for creating strong, meaningful and lasting relationships between organisations and their customers.
Prior to founding her own business, Roadmap Strategy, she had a successful career in marketing, sales and strategy at organisations such as BIG4 Holiday Parks, RACV and Zoos Victoria.
Her expertise in brand building, customer engagement, strategic planning and business development has seen her recognised as a judge of the Victorian Tourism Awards, and appointed as a non-executive director of The Otis Foundation.
In addition, she is the founder of Live Love Work Port Phillip, an initiative that works to connect and support local businesses in the Port Phillip area.
Alison is an experienced and successful leader with a track record in developing and executing strategies that result in growth and success for her clients. She is passionate about helping businesses to understand their customers, build strong relationships and develop strategies that deliver real value.
Alison is an enthusiastic advocate for small businesses and the potential they have to make a real difference in the community. She is committed to helping businesses to grow and thrive in a competitive market, and her passion and enthusiasm for the success of her clients is evident in her work.
Brief provided to ChatGP
Who is Alison McDowell - write an article please
- Strategic marketer
- Passionate about building brands
- Judge - Victorian Tourism Awards
- Founder - Live Love Work Port Phillip
- Director - Roadmap Strategy
- Non-Executive Director - The Otis Foundation
Leverage our experience
Sometimes you need a sounding board for your thoughts, and have access to someone with experience to help gain a different perspective and grow your skills.
Roadmap Strategy offer marketing mentoring to CEO’s, marketing leaders and marketing teams to help build your strategic marketing muscle, provide guidance help build your internal marketing and marketing management skills, and give guidance rather than learning through trial and error.
We offer one off, three month marketing mentoring packages, and tailored programs to suit your business, and your needs.
About Alison McDowell
A marketing leader passionate about building brands and developing and executing marketing strategies that connect with target audience and deliver on business goals and objectives.
Alison is an experienced and multi-talented marketer across private, franchise, mutual and not for profit industries that include tourism, travel, accommodation, membership, events, agriculture and engineering with the likes of RACV, Hertz, BIG4 Holiday Parks, Zoos Victoria, Swinburne University of Technology, SKM and PGG Wrightson Seeds.
Her corporate career has involved Director of Marketing, Communication and Digital Strategy for Zoos Victoria and National Marketing Manager for BIG4 Holiday Parks, giving me a strong background in complex brand strategy, target marketing and membership strategy, stakeholder engagement, and innovation and technology driven performance improvement.
I have earned a Masters of Commerce (Marketing) and a Graduate Certificate in Competitive Systems and Practices (LEAN), is a Judge for the RACV Victorian Tourism Awards, Co-Founder of Live Love Work Port Phillip, and a past Industry Board Member and Acting Chair for Business Without Borders for Swinburne University of Technology.
CLIENT INDUSTRIES INCLUDE:
Travel, Tourism, Accommodation, Membership, Agriculture, Building, Education, Early Childhood Learning, Couture
ROADMAP STRATEGY CLIENTS INCLUDE:
Belgravia Leisure, Hepburn Bathhouse and Spa, Wai Ariki Hot Springs and Spa, Caravan Industry Association of Australia, Kalparrin Incredible Kids, ViPAC Engineers, VTIC (Victorian Tourism Industry Council), Marysville Jazz and Blues Weekend.
To discuss your needs and how we can help, give Ali McDowell, our Founder a call on 0411 135 317 or email alison@roadmapstrategy.com.au
What is cause related marketing?
Cause-related marketing is a mutually beneficial collaboration between a for-profit and a non-profit designed to promote the for-profit sales and the non-profit cause.
A great example of cause-related marketing is the relationship between Qantas and UNICEF Australia. Twenty three years ago, these organisations created their highly successful Change for Good partnership. The partnership invited Qantas passengers to off load unwanted foreign currency after travelling on an international flight, and has collected in-excess of $28 million to support UNICEF’s global child health, child protection and education programs.
Successful cause related marketing starts with selecting the right partner.
For-profits need to understand their customers values and what’s important them. When selecting your non-profit partner consider the relevance to your business ie industry, geographic connection, size, shared values and vision.
Choosing the right partner with a natural fit will improve engagement with your customers and brand association value and deliver better return for all parties.
Examples of industry collaboration ideas include:
- Camping industry - supporting dark sky conservation
- Accommodation industry – supporting OTIS Foundation
- Supermarket – supporting food charity
- Family fun experience – supporting Humour Foundation
Aligned values is critical to successful long term partnerships. Shared organisation values, supported by strong relationships between their people become the glue that build strong lasting partnership, that campion and celebrate each other’s businesses for the benefit of both organisations.
With consumers increasingly defining themselves with the brands they use, it is no surprise they are prepared to pay more for products and brands that that reflect their personal values.
So choose carefully, the benefits and value for all parties can be immense driving for-profit sales, promoting the non-profit cause, and stronger customer relationships.
Roadmap Strategy is a niche marketing agency based in South Melbourne. We welcome the opportunity to work with you to explore and develop for-profit and non-profit cause related business partnerships.
Successful Christmas campaigns build brands by tapping into our emotions.
John Lewis is famous for their Christmas campaigns. The essence and value of these campaigns is in their ability to build an emotional connection with their audience to ensure the brand is in the audience consideration set when choosing a Christmas shopping retailer.
With a big brand approach, John Lewis develops a deep emotional connection integrated across tv, outdoor and print, and supported instore, merchandise, social, and public relations.
Roadmap Strategy’s favourite John Lewis Christmas Campaign remains the 2014 classic, Monty the Penguin.
Monty won hearts around the globe with a story of friendship, giving and of course love. The campaign performance metrics were off the charts, with over 350m social media views, soundtrack reached #3 on iTunes charts, 89% of tv audience had seen the ad at least once, and the campaign delivering GDP 141 incremental income for John Lewis.
However the 2014 John Lewis Monty the Penguin campaign, had an additional layer that made a real difference. Partnering with two charities, John Lewis promoted WWF’s Adopt a Penguin scheme to help support their work in conserving penguin habitat. In addition John Lewis donated a portion of every Monty the Penguin book sold to children’s charity Barnados’.
WWF reported a 350% increase in Penguin Adoptions, as a direct result of the campaign, and indirect value returned though awareness of the plight of penguin habitat, and knowledge of their broader adoption program.
John Lewis 2014 Christmas campaign is unquestionably one of the best they have delivered. It strengthened their brand, ensured they were in the consumers Christmas retailer consideration set and supported causes close to the audience’s heart.
Authenticity and connecting with your customers in an emotional way is where the magic happens. And this is never more pronounced and import as Christmas.
Roadmap Strategy is a niche marketing agency based in South Melbourne. We welcome the opportunity to develop your next campaign and get the rubber hitting the road, and helping you achieve your business goals.
Purposeful thinking is repositioning Toyota
Toyota is undertaking a once in a century profound transformation. “Moving forward, Toyota will provide a diverse range of mobility services and transport solutions to people around the world as we transform Toyota into a mobility company” says Toyota President Akio Toyoda.
As the global ‘mobility partner’ of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, Toyota has been working with Australian para-athletes to refine their equipment to ensure they can perform at their best.
Engaging the community in their journey as they transform into a mobility company is critical for Toyota’s success. Toyota engaged Saatchi & Saatchi to create a campaign to showcase their ‘mobility for all’ philosophy.
This ad is the centre piece of the campaign. It immediately captures the audience’s attention, sharing the brutal reality of wheelchair rugby, giving the audience insights into the strength, skills and determination of our incredible athletes......and the demands on their equipment.
The audience will see leadership, innovation, purposeful thinking and start repositioning Toyota in their mind from being a vehicle manufacturer to a mobility company bringing the ‘joy and freedom of movement to all’.
We hope you enjoy the Toyota ad, and meeting Riley Batt, OAM, Australian wheelchair rugby player and duel gold and silver medallist at four Paralympic Games.
We’d love to know how this ad made you feel. Please share your thoughts with us at hello@roadmapstrategy.com.au
Why entering awards is good for business
Entering awards are good for your business, your brand, and your people. This article explores the benefits of entering awards and how to get the most value for your business.
Awards give your business a story of excellence, build your industry profile, and recognise the hard work and achievements of your team.
While winning is great, and is often rewarded with a trophy, press interviews and bragging rights, but don’t underestimate the value and promotional opportunities of entering and not taking home the gold.
This is why you should enter awards and thoughts on how to leverage your entry, and how to step it up when you win.
Brand differentiation
Becoming an award-winning business is a great way to set yourself apart from your competition. It also aligns your business with the best of industry, giving your customers another reason to select you over another business in your sector.
Promotion - celebrate your entry and your result
Being associated with an industry or business award is an excellent PR opportunity before, during and after the event. As soon as you have entered, start sharing your story, pride at entering and aligning your brand with the award brand which is likely to include; excellence, leadership and prestige.
In the lead up to and during the event share your journey with your audience; build your story of excellence, share your teams excitement leading up to attending the awards, and pride at attending the ceremony.
Building Relationships
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and building connections with other entrants cannot be under-estimated.
Win, loose or draw, be gracious and promote, celebrate and support all entries in your category with a post on social media and phone call to personally congratulate fellow entrants. Not only is it good manners, it aligns your brand with the best in class and that’s always a good thing.
Take a step back from your business
Preparing your entry forces you to step back and look at your business from a different perspective. You will identify your strengths, weaknesses, achievements, uncover new opportunities and interrogate and refine your business and marketing strategy.
The process will uncover opportunities for improvement, and that’s got to be good for business.
Boosts team morale
Awards remind your team of the great work that has been done, why they should be proud of their effort, and give everyone an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate their achievements.
Regardless of winning, entering or being a finalist, awards are a very public way of recognising everyone’s hard work and commitment.
Build your credibility
When awards are judge by industry-leaders and experts, winning builds recognition of your teams work, and certifies your place within the industry. Feedback on your entry from industry experts is invaluable resource you may not normally have access to.
Attracting talent and investment
Businesses who enter and win awards are recognised as being or inspiring to be best in class. This positioning helps attract and retain the best employees, and opens doors and dialog with partners, alliances and potential investors.
Entering awards are good for your business, your brand and your people, giving you a story of excellence and commitment to share with your audience to build your business profile, and recognise the hard work and achievements of your team.
Nominations for the Victorian Tourism Awards close on 30th June
We encourage our tourism colleagues to nominate and enter the 2021 Victorian Tourism Awards.
Now is the time to celebrate your business, tourism in Victoria, and share your story of resilience and excellence with your loyal supporters and potential visitors.
Our founder, Alison McDowell is a six year veteran Victorian Tourism Awards Judge. If you need to be convinced how important entering the awards are for your business and your town, give Ali a call on 0411 135 317 or email alison@roadmapstrategy.com.au
Find out more
About the 2021 Victorian Tourism Awards
Smart brands don't go dark
When the people couldn’t visit the little penguins at Phillip Island, Phillip Island took the penguins into lounge rooms across the globe - 25 million times.
Madeline Blaer, Monash University uncovered a number of insights from this virtual initiative that included; watching the penguins became a ritual for people, helped people cope during lockdown, built communities, audiences built relationships with Rangers wanting to visit to meet them, conservation messages connected and the audience took action, and the initiative positively influenced future visitation from intrastate, interstate and overseas.
Phillip Island Penguin Parade did not go dark. They built stronger relationships with existing visitors, amplified their voice globally when competitor brands fell silent, and built their brand awareness and knowledge.
Phillip Island Nature Park grew their share of voice in a mostly silent market, as a result the little penguins and Phillip Island have entered the consideration set of a higher proportion of consumers.
Congratulations Phillip Island Nature Park on an exceptional industry leading marketing initiative.
If you need a hand developing with your marketing or brand strategy, or next marketing campaign, give Alison McDowell a call to discuss how Roadmap Strategy help you get the rubber hitting the road and your business achieving their marketing and business goals.
Destination Canada - a campaign on point
Destination Canada’s ‘Heartbeat of Canada’ campaign has been developed to inspire Canadians to travel locally, and it is brilliant.
An integrated campaign that launched on 23rd May with National Tourism Week, it was supported by a tourism anthem video, locals sending postcards to their friends, and now regions strengthening the campaign with local messaging.
Our article takes a quick look at each aspect of the campaign, and explores how this campaign is connecting with the people and how it will make a real difference.
Launching with National Tourism Week, the industry came together to demonstrate the enormous value tourism brings to the life of Canadians. While they acknowledged the incredible difficulties of the past year, they showed their industry is strong, and ready to welcome back visitors when the time is right.
National Tourism Week was marked with the launch of their new Tourism Anthem. Set to the timing of our beating hearts, it highlights the makers, business owners, performers and people that make up Canada’s tourism sector. It showcases the richness of diversity, heartbeat of their country, and spiritual connection to place. I dare you not to be moved watching this video.
With 39% of Canadians expecting their first trip to be visiting friends and relatives, Destination Canada’s local postcards initiative connects and inspires and VFR travel. Canadian’s simply enter the web portal, select a postcard with a message such as ‘Miss You, Come Visit’, type a personal message and recipients address, and Destination Canada print and mail the postcard at no cost to the sender.
Destinations across Canada are now releasing their own campaigns to build on the Heartbeat of Canada campaign. Destination Toronto has just released their Love Letter to Toronto. Another exceptional production, the video that connects the audience with Toronto Ambassadors who offer their diverse perspectives on the city they love and call home.
Heartbeat of Canada is an integrated campaign at its best. Powerful, emotional, spiritual and most importantly authentic, the campaign connects its audience with the place, the industry, their friends, its cities, and its people.
It's like an orchestra, with each piece adding to the brilliance and power of the performance. An exceptional campaign, that shows that when we work together, and all sing from the same hymn book we are more likely to be heard.
I cannot wait to watch this campaign continue to build, grow, and roar.
If you need a hand developing your destination marketing campaign, give Alison McDowell a call to discuss how Roadmap Strategy can work with you to create a campaign to build your destination brand and achieve your business goals.
How to choose the right advertising channels
Consumers are served over 10,000 advertisements every day.
Understanding how to develop and execute an advertising strategy that will cut through the noise, and achieve your desired advertising goals is more important than ever.
Success relies on a number of factors including; your brand, your target market, your creative, getting the media mix right, and of course your budget.
It’s about constructing integrated messaging across the right media, that seamlessly engages the target audience. And when you get this right, your audience responds, and you achieve the desired goals for your company.
Here are some tips to consider
Budget - Be clear on your budget. This will help you prioritize the channels that will give you the best return, and achieve your campaign goals.
Know your audience – Have a deep understanding of your target market, know who they are, where they are, how they consume media, understand their values and how to speak to them.
Good creative and messaging will make your campaign – work with the best agency you can afford. Develop a solid brand and creative platform and stick with it – remember you’ll get tired of you creative before your consumers have even caught on to it.
Know your competitors – Know what they are doing, where they are advertising and if it is working. Don’t be obsessed, but learn, listen and leverage.
Be clear on your advertising objectives - Prepare a cracking brief – the best briefs return the rockstar status work. And ensure your product, brand, and value proposition are clearly defined.
Be brave– your media choice will be informed by your brief, budget, product and brand. At all times keep the customer at the centre of your media decision making, and think beyond social media and digital - traditional media will often deliver better cut through in a less cluttered market . And be brave, test and trial new media .
Measure, measure, measure – Measuring and monitoring the performance of your advertising is critical to allow you to adjust your advertising strategy to continually improve performance
When you reach the right person, at the right time with the right message you will achieve your goals.
If you need a hand developing your advertising plan, creative and messaging, give Alison McDowell a call to and let Roadmap Strategy help take away the pain and get the rubber hitting the road.
Celebrating Victoria's Top Tourism Towns
Top Tourism Town Awards recognise and celebrate towns that offer amazing visitor experiences.
This year is the first time Victoria has participated in the Top Tourism Towns Awards, and we are thrilled that 22 towns across Victoria chose to enter.
These awards are an opportunity to showcase the value of tourism to towns and communities across Australia and celebrate the diversity and outstanding regional destinations Australia has to offer.
For the first time the Top Tourism Town Awards will also be included in the Australian Tourism Awards. So not only will towns be competing at a state level, the Gold winner in each state will judged at a national level and recognised as the Top Tourism Town in Australia.
The Top Tourism Town Awards recognise and reward towns that:
- Demonstrate a strong commitment and encourage tourism and increased visitation to their destination
- Offer an excellent visitor experience, and
- Exhibit collaboration between tourism operators, local businesses and the community as they work together to make their town the best destination it can be
Submissions from entrants have been through a judging process, and are now open to public voting. The judges score and the consumer vote will then be combined to determine the winners.
Public voting is an ENORMOUS opportunity for entrants to encourage their community, their visitors and their followers to VOTE for them.
Towns who actively promote voting are not only increasing their chances of winning the award, they promoting and reminding their locals, their visitors and potential visitors what a great place their town is to visit – and that can only be good for their visitor economy.
Congratulations to the following towns who are finalist in the Victorian Top Tourism Town Awards (VOTE NOW):
- Aireys Inlet
- Apollo Bay
- Avoca
- Ballarat
- Beaufort
- Bendigo
- Dromana
- Dunkeld
- Fingal
- Frankston
- Great Western
- Halls Gap
- Heathcote
- Jamieson
- Lakes Entrance
- Mallacoota
- Nagambie
- Paynesville
- Port Fairy
- San Remo
- Swan Hill
- Timboon
All the very best to all entrants in the 2021 Top Tourism Town Awards.
Our founder, Alison McDowell has been a judge for the Victorian Tourism Awards since 2015, and a judge for the Victorian Top Tourism Town Awards since 2021.