The re­cent­ly streamed clash be­tween Ja­maican dance­hall MC’s Ben­nie Man and Boun­ty Killer called Verzuz, has ar­guably re­sult­ed in greater glob­al in­flu­ence of Ja­maican cul­ture - but it has al­so giv­en rise to dis­cus­sions about T&T’s plan and fu­ture for mar­ket­ing its cul­ture and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

This is the con­tention of Car­la Par­ris, en­ter­tain­ment/sports lawyer and CEO pro­duc­er of The Busi­ness of Car­ni­val You Tube Se­ries .

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by the Busi­ness Guardian (BG), Par­ris said: “The re­cent bat­tle has caused many dis­cus­sions in T&T’s mu­sic in­dus­try. Many of whom are fo­cused on the strength of our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty and de­bates about the strength of our own Caribbean mar­ket­ing plat­forms.”

She con­tin­ued: “Most im­por­tant­ly it should cause our gov­ern­ment agen­cies to think about the strength and weak­ness­es of brand T&T.”

Verzuz, where mu­sic artistes go against each oth­er on a week­ly In­sta­gram Live in a head-to-head bat­tle, was cre­at­ed by mu­sic pro­duc­ers Swizz Beatz and Tim­ba­land.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the re­cent on­line event that pit­ted Ben­nie Man and Boun­ty Killer against each oth­er al­so drew the likes of in­ter­na­tion­al celebri­ties like Did­dy, DJ Khaled, Ashan­ti and many more. The Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness al­so tweet­ed on his of­fi­cial Twit­ter page dur­ing the event, “Ja­maica’s cul­ture is glob­al.”

Weigh­ing in on the mat­ter was Com­man­der in Chief of Cae­sar’s Army, Jules So­bion who said that a sim­i­lar type of event can be used to pro­mote T&T and the Caribbean, but not in the same for­mat as was used by the artistes in Verzuz.

So­bion said: “We have that at­trac­tion too, we have that star pow­er but I feel like we can’t do a clash; we have to do some­thing in­no­v­a­tive.”

Ac­cord­ing to So­bion, Ja­maican en­ter­tain­ment cul­ture, his­tor­i­cal­ly, has al­ways been a “clash cul­ture” where one artiste would be pit­ted against an­oth­er. He not­ed that T&T is dif­fer­ent in that the cul­ture is one about hap­pi­ness and uni­ty rather than op­po­si­tion.

So­bion said that there are al­so a lot of in­ter­na­tion­al in­flu­encers who come to T&T Car­ni­val, who would be in­ter­est­ed in see­ing some­thing that is show­cas­ing the coun­try’s cul­ture.

He re­marked: “You could look at what your Caribbean counter part is do­ing and you can say yes, good job Ja­maica, but I think that if we are go­ing to em­bark on an ex­pe­ri­ence like that or a show­cas­ing or a high­light, we have to think a lit­tle more in terms of - what is re­al­ly go­ing to cre­ate that sort of glob­al at­trac­tion.”

The BG, sub­se­quent­ly wrote the Ja­maican Tourist Board for com­ment - it asked two ques­tions:

1. How much of Ja­maica’s tourism mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing is geared to­wards the pro­mo­tion of the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment cul­ture? (ie. Bob Mar­ley and oth­ers.)

2. As more artistes emerged from Ja­maica and gained glob­al promi­nence was there an up-tick in tourist ar­rivals?

The Tourist board said that it “con­sid­ers cul­ture an in­te­gral part of our per­sona and our tourism prod­uct.”

It not­ed how­ev­er, that en­ter­tain­ment is on­ly one el­e­ment of its cul­ture which fea­tures in its mar­ket­ing tool kit. The Board said that food is an­oth­er im­por­tant as­pect of its cul­ture which is fea­tured.

It not­ed: “It would be dif­fi­cult to dis­til the por­tion of the mar­ket­ing bud­get aimed at pro­mot­ing en­ter­tain­ment. While we al­so rec­og­nize that our mu­si­cal artiste con­tin­ue to draw at­ten­tion to the des­ti­na­tion, there is cur­rent­ly no link be­tween emerg­ing artists and tourism ar­rivals.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion, Ja­maica saw an 8.5 per cent in­crease in tourist vis­its in 2019, where 2.68 mil­lion vis­i­tors came to the is­land. Al­though its cruise ship pas­sen­ger ar­rivals de­clined by 15.9 per cent, the is­land still saw 1.55 mil­lion of those types of guests.

This is com­pared to the 388,576 vis­i­tors that came to T&T in 2019 and its 91,423 cruise pas­sen­ger vis­its.

Mean­while, Par­ris said that the re­cent bat­tle was very ef­fec­tive as a mar­ket­ing tool for the Caribbean is­land.

She said: “Has this bat­tle caused many over­seas to re­gain an in­ter­est in Ja­maica? I think that it cer­tain­ly has.”

Par­ris in­di­cat­ed that pri­or to the Bee­nie & Boun­ty clash, the Verzuz TV plat­form had 500k fol­low­ers, ac­cord­ing to re­ports in the me­dia, with­in a day or two af­ter the, the plat­form grew to 1.1 mil­lion fol­low­ers.

While she not­ed that dur­ing the bat­tle, the view­er­ship at its peak was around half of a mil­lion peo­ple from all over the globe, Par­ris said that “these num­bers of course can­not speak to per­sons like my­self who would have watched the bat­tle from one cell phone with a few per­sons look­ing on.”

The afore­men­tioned num­bers alone, ac­cord­ing to Par­ris, point to not on­ly the deep in­ter­est in Dance­hall mu­sic and the brand, Ja­maica.

Par­ris con­tin­ued: “I’ve al­so read that Dance­hall artiste Shag­gy has kick -start­ed a pe­ti­tion for Bee­nie & Boun­ty to have their Unit­ed States visas re­in­stat­ed from the view point that their abil­i­ty to trav­el to per­form is es­sen­tial to the eco­nom­ic growth of Ja­maica.”

Re­gard­ing the mar­ket­ing of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment and artistes out­side of T&T Car­ni­val, So­bion said it is crit­i­cal to tourism.

Al­though T&T Car­ni­val at­tracts a mas­sive amount of tourists, the dif­fi­cul­ty is that this pulling at­trac­tion re­volves around one par­tic­u­lar sea­son. Where­as, the re­cent show­case of Ja­maican cul­ture in the on­line clash can po­ten­tial­ly draw vis­i­tors to the coun­try re­gard­less of the time or sea­son.

So­bion agreed that find­ing events and pro­mot­ing en­ter­tain­ment out­side of the Car­ni­val sea­son is im­por­tant in break­ing out of at­tract­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of the na­tion’s tourists for on­ly one sea­son.

He said: “T&T needs to un­der­stand how im­por­tant the cul­ture is to the world.” So­bion high­light­ed that T&T Car­ni­val is a fes­ti­val of glob­al pro­por­tions and is recog­nised as one of the best “fes­ti­vals of the world. He dis­cussed, how­ev­er, that the coun­try has not gone be­yond that.

“It is like, Car­ni­val is all that we could do, and there’s noth­ing else,” quipped So­bion. He said: “Let’s just say for the year of T&T, you need to look at ways of up­lift­ing the cul­ture through dif­fer­ent means so that they would al­ways have a rea­son to come T&T.”

So­bion not­ed that the cre­ation of events out­side of Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day would have giv­en pa­trons of the fes­ti­val op­tions, as he not­ed that the cost of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the two day event is high. He added that ho­tels are nor­mal­ly packed to ca­pac­i­ty as well.

The event strate­gist ar­tic­u­lat­ed: “We need to find new ways of get­ting peo­ple here.”