Campaign is a ‘curious yet well-meaning work in progress’

Anything that promotes Scotland is a good thing. We’re a great country that’s done wonderful things and the scotland.org website rightly reflects that.

But it’s a bit hard to work out who it is aimed at. Who are the customers here? It’s a website that aims to talk

to the world about Scotland – but is only in English as far as I can see.

It talks about coming to Scotland but doesn’t provide links to things like Skyscanner, which would seem like an easy win in helping users come to Scotland while highlighting one of our best businesses.

It’s also very curious to see what’s not mentioned – there’s no mention of Dundee’s world-leading efforts in cyber security. It’s a very gentrified view of the country with few mentions of the challenges we face.

There’s also no mention of global events like the Feis Ile (Islay’s whisky festival) which already brings people from across the globe.

It’s a very curious bag. On the one hand you have the site linking to a fantastic AR style app developed by Whitespace – which is a great Scottish success story. But there’s next to nothing about football, despite the fact the beautiful game brings in a fortune to the country’s economy and the fans – at club and national level – are one of our main groups of ambassadors abroad.

It’s a curious, yet wellmeaning, view of Scotland and I wish it well.

But clearly, like Scotland and the people in it, it’s a continual work in progress and I hope it lands well with the intended audiences. I’d love to know what will define success in this campaign as Scotland is well-known.

I’d like to think that in 2018 we’re tracking business metrics in a more sophisticated way than the number of times a hashtag is mentioned.