CMO.com Interview: Tom Garzilli, CMO, Brand USA

As CMO of Brand USA, the international marketing tourism arm of the United States of America, Tom Garzilli is tasked with selling the whole country to the whole world.

As CMO of Brand USA, the international marketing tourism arm of the United States of America, Tom Garzilli is tasked with selling the whole country to the whole world.

More specifically, Garzilli’s job is to increase incremental international visitation to the U.S., and drive tourism dollars to communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five territories. Since joining Brand USA in 2013, Garzilli has been an integral part of the leadership team driving the company’s storytelling, content-driven platforms, and an increased focus on digital marketing.

For a travel lover like Garzilli, the position is a dream come true. Raised in the tourism industry—starting in high school, he worked for his family’s wholesale travel business, Flyfaire Vacations—he gets to experience all the wonder that is his home country as well.

“In this kind of industry, once you get into it and really become part of it, it’s one you stay in for a long time,” said Garzilli, who took some time from his travels to talk with CMO.com about his career and love of the USA.

CMO.com: You have been involved in destination marketing for close to 35 years. So why Brand USA?

Garzilli: The opportunity to do this for the USA was one that was so compelling, and prior to Brand USA existing there really has never been a public/private partnership developed to promote the USA worldwide. So it was really the first opportunity for people to be in this business, and I was honored to have the opportunity to do it.

CMO.com: What are the chief responsibilities of the job? How is your role defined?

Garzilli: They fall into two areas. First of all, our funding model is very unique in that we are funded in a public/private way. My role is a financial one to develop partner programs and drive value so that we can bring in contributions and support so that we can unlock our full funding. Then on the marketing side, it is both talking to consumers at all levels of the tourism cycle—from dreaming and considering to traveling to booking. Additionally, [I’m involved in] the travel-agent side and tour-operator side of being out in the marketplace educating people on the country and getting products developed and delivered.

CMO.com: What are the challenges in marketing the U.S. and all it has to offer?

Garzilli: It’s a wonderful job, and it’s easy in terms of telling a story because we have so many great stories to tell, but it’s challenging because, of course, a key part of our mission is driving travelers through and beyond gateways to experience and explore different parts of the country. As you know, the country is big and diverse. It’s got a broad choice of experiences, and we’re marketing to dozens of countries around the world, each of which is very different in its own right. The personas of the consumer and what’s interesting to the consumer is different from country to country. Their economics are different. The exchange rates are different, so on and so forth. It’s a lot of marrying the right experiences to the right marketplace and the right messages to the right marketplace and finding those collective stories that can be the most inspiring and most fulfilling for our mission.

CMO.com: When targeting to different markets, I’m guessing you must have different campaigns. How do you separate the different messages, and are there different teams working on different regions?

Garzilli: It’s a combination of things. We have offices in 12 countries around the world that represent about 16 to 18 places. We market in about 30 countries all together. We do a pretty significant amount of research country by country. We look at what messages are overlapping and develop as many different approaches as we can to reach as many audiences as we can. Plus, we’re doing it in many different languages. It’s a lot, and that’s the essence of our challenge really—getting it all done.

CMO.com: The National Park Service turned 100 this year, and you had a big campaign around that. Talk about getting that initiative off the ground.

Garzilli: That really was kind of the most recent iteration of what’s been a three-year great outdoors strategy. We believe in very deep and integrated storytelling, and we looked at the great outdoors as a platform for us to be able to talk to many different countries about the various experiences we offer across the country—whether that’s road trips or multicity trips or outdoor adventure. We’ve done a lot of social, digital campaigns, multichannel programs, as well as a television series last year called “America the Beautiful” that explored the great outdoors, [featuring] experiences of specific states and regions. We also did a lot of long-form vignette type content with ESPN and BBC and other networks.

The capping effort was our giant screen film, “National Parks Adventure,” which debuted in February of this year and is showing around the world in multiple languages. It’s narrated by Robert Redford in English, but it’s also been translated already into 12 languages and showing in museums, science centers, and other giant-screen theaters around the world. All of that together represents one of our main pillars, and it’s been a lot of fun. The film itself has been a real innovation in terms of how we’ve used it and how we’ve been able to get that message across around the world. Eighty-one percent of the international viewers who see the film say that they’re much more likely or more likely to visit the U.S. as a result of seeing it.

CMO.com: That’s an impressive number. How do you use analytics and data to know what’s working? Is there another example of that you can give?

Garzilli: Every program we do we measure in some way—traditional ways of likes to social media or rates in online. Additionally, we do a very significant ROI study every year, which takes a look at just what kind of incremental visitation we’ve created. Over the past three years, we’ve generated more than 3 million incremental visitors, which has resulted in $9.5 billion of spending and supports about 50,000 incremental jobs every year. Then, of course, as we do each main component or ad campaign, we always do analytics around that.

CMO.com: How important is digital to growing your message?

Garzilli: It’s a very dynamic way to reach a lot of people, and, of course, as you go into certain countries, they are almost all mobile. They’re all digital, and we like it because that’s a very efficient way to take good content and push it out in many different languages across many platforms. We’re starting to take advantage of that influencer platform and finding really interesting people from around the world who love the USA and who want to come and tell their stories. The digital space is moving fast, and the tools are changing rapidly.

CMO.com: You’ve been involved in some great partnerships as well. Detail some of your most successful initiatives to date.

Garzilli: We’ve done a lot. We did the World Baseball Classic a few years back with Major League Baseball. That was very interesting and different. We work with the NFL on their games in the U.K. We do a lot with ESPN. One of the things we did that we enjoyed as part of launching our great outdoors initiative is with National Geographic called “Digital Nomad.” For the initiative we had a guy travel the length of Route 66, blogging daily and pushing out messaging. It worked out very well and led us to expanding the program. We also do a lot of television with partners like Travel Channel, where we develop shows with them, some of which you’ll see and not realize our efforts because again it’s really about the content and not about us. The content is the message.

CMO.com: How much traveling do you do in your position?

Garzilli: A great deal, but there’s a good size group of us who are based here in Washington, D.C., who travel, and then, of course, we have a lot of offices abroad. I actually just returned from our U.S. China Leadership Summit a few weeks ago. There’s nothing like getting in the market … and talking to people. We’re constantly on the road, and we’re constantly in our markets learning as much as we can.

One of the things I always say about the work of Brand USA and the work of global destination marketing is it brings the people of the world closer together. I experience that every trip I take. Sometimes there’s a language barrier, but in spite of that people simply want to have a conversation, get to know you, share their world with you, and that’s what we want to do with them. It’s one of the really special things about travel—there’s nothing like being in a destination and truly experiencing it.

CMO.com: What can you preview about your marketing plans for the years ahead?

Garzilli: We’re going to be doing more and more in places like China, India, and South Korea as we move further out to drive interest. We’re continuing our efforts around our film “National Parks Adventure” to grow the audience. We’re also working on completing another platform around culture, including urban culture, pop culture, and music, and we’re planning for another giant screen film, which we’re expecting to launch in early 2018. This new film will tell the story of the United States and how music and culture shape each other across the country. It’ll be really interesting. Stay tuned.