In his recent column on Times Online, UK celebrity car journalist and Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson delves into the brand attribute of Johannesburg: “Every city needs a snappy one-word handle to pull in the tourists and the investors. Rome has its architecture. Sydney has its bridge. Venice has its sewage and Johannesburg has its crime. Yup, Jo'burg - the subject of this morning's missive - is where you go if you want to be carjacked, shot, stabbed, killed and eaten.
“You could tell your mother you were going on a package holiday to Kabul, with a stopover in Haiti and Detroit, and she wouldn't bat an eyelid. But tell her you're going to Jo'burg and she'll be absolutely convinced that you'll come home with no wallet, no watch and no head.”
Clarkson, whose show Top Gear has become the most popular show on BBC2, amid calls for him to be made prime minister, has visited Johannesburg many times over the past three years and co-hosted a number of Top Gear shows from the City of Gold.
In his weekly Times column, he points out the brand gap Johannesburg is suffering between perception and reality: “Jo'burg has a fearsome global reputation for being utterly terrifying, a lawless Wild West frontier town paralysed by corruption and disease. But I've spent quite a bit of time there over the past three years and I can reveal that it's all nonsense. Look Jo'burg up on Wikipedia and it tells you it's now one of the most violent cities in the world... but it adds in brackets “citation needed”. That's like saying Gordon Brown is a two-eyed British genius (citation needed).”
Further down in his column, Clarkson shares some of his personal experiences from recent trips to the city: “Johannesburg is Milton Keynes with thunderstorms. You go out. You have a lovely ostrich. You drink some delicious wine and you walk back to your hotel, all warm and comfy. It's the least frightening place on earth. So why does every single person there wrap themselves up in razor wire and fit their cars with flame-throwers and speak of how many times they've been killed that day? What are they trying to prove?”
Clarkson then turns his attention to 2010 and how brand perceptions may affect visitor numbers: “Next year South Africa will play host to the football World Cup. The opening and closing matches will be played in Jo'burg, and no one's going to go if they think they will be stabbed. The locals even seem to accept this, as at the new airport terminal only six passport booths have been set aside for non-South African residents.”
As always, Clarkson - whose show is followed every week by a quarter of a million of motoring enthusiasts - is outspoken in his assessment of Joburg's brand image: “At first it's baffling. Why ruin the reputation of your city and risk the success of the footballing World Cup to fuel a story that plainly isn't true? There is no litter and no graffiti. I've sauntered through Soweto on a number of occasions now, swinging a Nikon round my head, with no effect. You stand more chance of being mugged in Monte Carlo.”
Concludes Clarkson: “And so, if you are thinking about going to the World Cup next year, don't hesitate. The exchange rate's good, the food is superb, the weather's lovely and, thanks to some serious economic self-sacrifice, Kruger is still full of animals. The word, then, I'd choose to describe Jo'burg is ‘tranquil'”.
Interestingly, the majority of South African resident readers seems to agree with Clarkson's analysis. Says Kendal Watt from Johannesburg: “I have lived in both London and Johannesburg. In my experience it is required to snub South Africa if you have handed in your passport and moved to other lands. Personally I have been more affected by crime in the streets of London than those of Johannesburg.”
Co-Joburger Willem Ras agrees: ”It's nice to hear some positive stuff coming out of the UK about Jozi. I had an absolutely fabulous weekend, which involved drinking great red wine, brilliant rugby at Ellis Park and an awesome walk through a beautiful suburb with superb views. Johannesburg is what you make of it.”
More than ever, now is the time to engage brand ambassadors for Joburg, like Mr Clarkson and his Jozi cohabitants, and tell the other stories about how 98% of visitor experiences of Johannesburg are positive and crime-free and why Joburg should be the first port of call for 2010 visitors and not just a fleeting encounter en route to the coast.
After all, the first law in destination branding states that charity starts at home, and as so many other mega sporting events have demonstrated, it is ultimately the personal visitor experience, such as Clarkson's, that has the ability to shift global perceptions.
For more:
