A NEW METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LOCATING USP IN PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS OF ISLANDS: THE CASE OF THE CROATIAN ISLANDS

In tourism advertisements and promotional videos of destinations, visual representations of sites, people, and scenery are among the most effective ways to draw the attention of a potential target audience. However, it seems that there has been very little research analysis of visual representations related to tourism. A significant starting point could be an analysis of the marketer's point of view as expressed through the building of a destination's unique selling proposition (USP) and its marketing visual representations. Dealing with a destination's USP is very important in the case of destinations that are perceived as being similar to each other or located in the same geographical area and competing for the same target audience, such as a group of islands located in the same area. In this study we used visual semiotic analysis tools that we developed in order to study official YouTube videos of the Croatian islands and to examine the various narratives used to create their USPs. The method of analyzing promotional videos by isolating and grouping the video frames into concrete themes was used in order to locate the USP (or lack thereof) in each video. Our findings suggest that even though there is not a clear USP for each one of the Croatian islands, there is an attempt to differentiate the whole of the Croatian islands as a unique experience for a specific target audience. This experience is characterized differently from the common 'sea and sun' traditional product.