Branding Travel, Pertra Personal Travel

By Bruno De Nicola, Senior Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO – There are many ways to promote a product or a brand, many companies often go for the conventional ones, however a few corporations have lately come to understand that exceptional experiences are undoubtedly among the best way to reach specific targets.

Brand experience tourism appears to be the ultimate solution for those customer relationship managers who look for a special, unforgettable promotion tool and Pertra Personal Traveler is on the Brazilian market offering its services to that specific target.

Pertra, Personal Traveler is a young company from São Paulo, that used to be a marketing agency but in 2005, after working on a tourism project called Cool Cat Travel, it became a very special corporate travel tour operator.

Petra’s General Manager, Fernando Russo explains, “People at Pertra combine a strong marketing know-how with a very articulate web of touristic options. They analyze a company’s brand communication and commercial needs, and translate them into an itinerary or a travel experience.”

Corporate travel tour operating services are usually just for the B-to-B market and they are oriented towards two specific situations. If a company wishes to strengthen a brand’s value or increase a product sale, through a custom made business trip, it could offer to its clients or work-force a corporate promotion built on the premises of cultural context.

Another approach is if customer relationship managers desire to strengthen contact with key clients and suppliers or reward employees, an incentive trip with the company’s brand values could represent the tool they were missing to increase the effectiveness of their relationship actions.

Pertra’s marketing department plans “Brand Experiences” that work in three different ways: first of all, they increase brand awareness, clients who are not familiar with a brand or a company, get to know it deeply; then they strengthen brand memory – tying deep emotions to a brand is the best way to assure its permanence in a customer’s mind; and last by not least, they have a strong push on corporate culture promotion.

Just as it happened in a Microsoft Brand Experience that Pertra organized for a computer program brand design contest. According to Mr. Russo “the US software company wished to organize a journey to Europe which could inspire the creativity of the designer who won the contest”.

Petra’s travel program in this case, ended up having a strong educational outcome too. Mr. Russo personally accompanied the designer to Madrid, Paris and London, where they visited art galleries and museums along with very important design schools. A sure injection of inspiration for the young designer.

“It was a very specific cultural journey, especially designed for our client’s needs. We matched the right cultural experiences with Microsoft’s branding plans”, concluded Mr Russo.

In Rio, Pertra recently organized a trip for ten winners of a sweepstakes sponsored by Petrobras in Superinteressante magazine. Readers had to send essays about what they would do to make better use of water resources in Brazil.

The authors of the ten best essays won a trip to Rio where Pertra designed a complete ecological and cultural experience of the city, reinforcing the work that Petrobras does sponsoring “green” projects. Besides visiting Petrobras laboratories and facilities in the city, winners went hiking in Floresta da Tijuca and Prainha, along with a complete agenda of restaurants and entertainment in the Cidade Maravilhosa.