Warning lights are flickering for the upcoming Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives whose shockingly bad and misguided PR has once again taken a terrible turn for the worse after the dramatic improvement of the previous season, Tropika Island of Treasure Seychelles, that was on SABC3 in 2017.
After the much better and much improved 7th season of the advertiser-funded production (AFP) in April 2017, the upcoming 8th season of the Clover SA brand reality competition show set in the Maldives, seems as if it is crossing back to trash as far as its publicity and actual show exposure in the press are concerned.
While Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives is supposed to start on 5 Feburary at 19:30 on SABC3, there's hardly been any publicity around the show or the contestants like last year for the 7th season.
Likewise the so-called "announcements" of the celebrity and other contestants got basically no exposure in the general media - and there's a reason for that.
The lack of broad exposure is because Clover and Tropika and its designated publicists went back to trash with a wrong approach of not releasing basic contestant information to all press and TV critics covering a show like this, but weirdly divvying up individuals to select, and oddly chosen, media outlets on a one-by-one basis. Some were not even the target audience of the show.
Unfortunately if you shout in a soundproof room, nobody will hear you and that's what Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives decided to basically do. Weird.
Furthermore the consumer-contestants were announced in an oddly staggered approach as "exclusives" for just one media outlet.
Lo and behold, on Tuesday Clover and Tropika had the audacity of lying and saying "contestants revealed for Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives" when a press release got sent to the media, making as if the contestants are being revealed now.
The problem of course is that they had already been revealed, with the media that got sent lukewarm, half-baked leftovers that were reheated as if the press is in the business of rerunning old news.
Its happening because Clover and Tropika's PR people - supposedly paid to communicate with the press and for strategies that get the press engaged but failing to do that properly - didn't want to give that information out to all press, properly, at the same time.
The result is that the majority of media outlets now won't touch Tropika Island of Treasure with a pole. Neither are a lot of them going to bother to feature and name contestants after they've been named in other media outlets before as dished up "exclusives" from what is supposed to be general-issue show information.
The 8th season of Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives was filmed at the end of 2017 in and around the Adaaran resort in the Maldives with Katlego Maboe from SABC3's morning show Expresso as the new presenter for this season.
“Each season of Tropika Island of Treasure has something new and exciting for fans – and Tropika Island of Treasure 8 will be no different," says Miantha Padayachee, Tropika brand group manager, in a statement. for Tropika.
"We have an incredibly diverse mix of celebrities and contestants who will compete in all new and awesome challenges on one of the most beautiful islands on earth. Will there be excitement? Yes. Drama? Most likely. Plot twists? Without a doubt."
Without a doubt the PR and publicity of Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives is back to being way worse than the uptick before and during the 7th season.
This season, again, Tropika didn't bother to take any press to the actual island in the way that M-Net does for Survivor South Africa for actual on-set, on-location interviews and coverage.
Likewise the so-far misguided contestant reveal strategy for the upcoming season has already backfired.
Will there be a media launch event for Tropika Island of Treasure Maldives? Will Tropika issue a screener or show the media the first episode?
Will there be some kind of face-to-face media engagement with actual members of the press like for the previous season?
Will there be actual programmatic publicity and show information going out to all media at the same time, treating all media outlets equally, when it comes to the basic dissemination of show info going forward?
Tropika Island of Treasure Seychelles did all the right things for the 7th season PR wise but is now once again, sadly, shipwrecking the show.
