Oh, Say Can You Sell … The USA?

As chief marketing officer of Brand USA, the international marketing tourism arm of the United States of America, Tom Garzilli is tasked with talking to the whole world and selling the whole country at the same time.

As chief marketing officer of Brand USA, the international marketing tourism arm of the United States of America, Tom Garzilli is tasked with talking to the whole world and selling the whole country at the same time. His 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.

The position is a natural fit. Raised in the tourism industry by working for his family’s wholesale travel business, Flyfaire Vacations, Garzilli has long had an adventurous spirit and interest in the world around him. Since joining Brand USA in 2013, Garzilli has been an integral part of the leadership team, driving the company’s storytelling and content-driven platforms, with an increased focus on digital marketing. To boot, Garzilli not only gets to visit different places around the globe, but also gets to experience all the wonder that is his home country as well.

Prior to joining Brand USA, Garzilli was managing partner of Custom Marketing Group, a destination marketing and custom publishing company he co-founded in 1992.

Recently, Garzilli took some time from his travels to talk with CMO.com about his career and—what else?—the good ol’ USA.

CMO.com: You have been involved in destination marketing for close to 35 years. What made you pursue this segment of marketing?

Garzilli: My father was in the hotel and tour operator business, and I have been working in the business ever since I was in high school. 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.

CMO.com: Why Brand USA? What was intriguing to you about tourism and leading the efforts to bring people to the United States?

Garzilli: The opportunity to do this for the USA was so compelling. Prior to Brand USA existing, there really has never been a public/private partnership developed to promote the USA worldwide.

CMO.com: What are the chief responsibilities of the job?

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 to 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 booking and traveling—and 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: One would think marketing the U.S. and all it has to offer would be an easy story to tell, but what challenges do you face?

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: How do you separate the different messages? 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 altogether. 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: You had a big campaign around the National Park Service turning 100 last year. 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 in 2015 called “America the Beautiful” that explored the great-outdoor experiences of specific states and regions. We also did a lot of long-form vignette-type content with ESPN, BBC, and other networks.

The capping effort was our giant screen film, “National Parks Adventure,” which debuted last February 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. … The film has been a real innovation in terms of how we’ve used it and how we’ve been able to get that message across the world. Eighty-one percent of the international viewers who see the film say 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. Along those lines, how do you use analytics and data to know what’s working?

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 last 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 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 that 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. There’s nothing like getting in the market, seeing and feeling it and talking to people.

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.

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.