Marketing Naturism Episode Transcript

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Stéphane D:  On this episode of the Naturist Living Show,
Marketing Naturism.

Female:         This episode of the Naturist Living
Show is brought to you by Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park.  At Bare Oaks, we offer traditional naturist
value in a modern setting.  Free your
body.  Free your mind.  www.BareOaks.ca.

Stéphane D:  Welcome dear listener to this episode of the
Naturist Living Show.  My name is
Stéphane Deschênes and I’m your host for this podcast and the owner of Bare
Oaks Family Naturist Park.  On this show,
we are going to talk about just one thing, marketing naturism.  Marketing your naturist club, marketing the
naturist movement and it’s going to be a pretty long show.  I have a lot of material to cover and to
discuss.  I think this is going to be the
longest show yet.

                        We’re going to for sure
exceed an hour so settle down.  Listen to
it in a few sections if you want, but it is an important topic that a lot of
people have asked about and that they want to hear about and they’ve asked for
advice on.  I am going to go through the
whole thing.  It’s like condensed
marketing course in one and a bit hours.

                        I thought we’d start
with our now regular contributor, Felicity from YNA, and I asked her to talk a
little bit about her views about marketing naturism.  So here you go.

Felicity:          Hi.
It’s Felicity of Young Naturist America back for my monthly
segment.  First, I thought I’d share my
thoughts and Stéphane’s topic this month about advertising and marketing naturist
clubs.  I’m going to be blunt.  Most naturist clubs in the US are really bad
at this.  They are particularly bad at
using the Internet for advertising and marketing.  It’s not the first time I’m saying this
because as YNA, we’ve been very vocal about the lack of marketing savvy in the naturist
world.

                        Anyway, the first step
is recognizing that there is a deficiency.
Obviously, clubs use advertising because they want to attract new
members and do business, but they should also know that good marketing and
online presence will especially attract more young people.  I will now share what we consider to be the
most essential bits of advice on how clubs can improve in this area.  First of all, most nudist club websites are
poorly designed and while the information may be up to date, they still like
they haven’t changed since 1997.  Many
people, especially younger people, will quickly leave a cumbersome, outdated
website.

                        What clubs should know
is that a website should not be treated like a business card.  It’s not just a page to just dump some
information.  It’s the foundation of any
business that wants to have a place in the future.  It should be used to engage visitors to
network and even create a community among club owners.

                        It will cost some money
to revamp a website, but a club really can’t survive without a decent
functioning site.

                        Secondly, it seems like
a lot of clubs and resorts are still investing money in print advertising.  Print advertising is becoming obsolete with
not enough return on investment to justify the cost.  Online advertising is much cheaper and will
allow you to reach a much broader audience.
Plus, it has the potential to remain permanent by existing virtually
online forever.  Thirdly, many clubs are
not using social media.  The two big ones
are Facebook and Twitter.  These are both
free and pretty easy to use.  So why
aren’t more clubs using them?  I’d really
like to know.

                        I think maybe it’s
because the owners and management don’t know how to use them or maybe they
don’t think it’s important or maybe they don’t have a person or volunteer to
take care of it.  It is important and
clubs should appoint someone to manage a Facebook page and Twitter
account.  I recommend that privately
owned businesses hire a social media manager.
That’s what tons of mainstream businesses are doing these days because
it’s become so big.  If you did hire
someone, they could create a lot more accounts and even write a blog for your
club, which is a very beneficial edition to a naturist club’s website.  Also keep in mind that social media should be
updated regularly with good quality posts.
That means writing about more than potluck dinners and skinny dips.  Not that those aren’t fun, but there’s more
to it than that.  That’s why a person
should be given the task of managing it.

                        By the way, some months
ago we actually created a group for a nudist club and resort owners on Facebook
called “Nudist Business Owners.”
We created this group to try and lend support to club owners and for
them to have a place to share ideas and strategies with each other.  The group has, unfortunately, been dead, but
we still welcome new people to join, to post questions and to discuss what I
have talked about in this segment.  It’s
a totally secret group so you can send me a message in [inaudible 00:05:34] at
Facebook.com/felicitynaturist if you want to be added to the group.

                        This is all very basic
advice, but the naturist world is so far behind in marketing.

                        I hope this podcast
episode will inspire club owners to make changes to their websites and start
updating their strategies to join us tech-savvy people in the 21st
century.  I have one last thing to share
for YNA News.  I just wanted to announce
that our YNA upstate New York chapter will be having their very first event on
June 29.  It’s a weekend long retreat on
a farm in Ithaca and there will be a cooking workshop with a chef, some wine
tasting, naked yoga and more.

                        So visit our website to
check it out at NudistnaturistAmerica.org.
That’s all for this month so back to Stéphane.

Stéphane D:  Thank you Felicity.  I totally agree.  There’s definitely a lack of marketing
amongst a lot of naturist clubs out there.
That’s too bad because if somebody owns a naturist club or if they run a
naturist club, if it’s a club somebody has to be appointed or elected to run
the club, they’re in the business of marketing.
They may not be an expert in all those areas, but hopefully they have a
good sense of what marketing is about.
Yes, sadly, it does seem to be lacking in a lot of clubs.  We’re going to be going a little further than
Felicity.  She gave some very good
specific advice and she’s very right about it.
The Internet is the place to market.

                        It’s such a boon for
naturism because naturism is such a niche market and before the Internet, it was
so hard to reach people, so expensive, so difficult to get the
information.  Now with the Internet it’s
actually simple.  People who are
interested can find it and you can target people so easily.  You can do it very, very cheaply, in many
cases for free.  It just takes time and
understanding what you’re doing.

                        We’re going to talk for
the rest of this show and it’s going to be me mostly talking.  We’re going to talk about marketing.  Usually, you don’t listen to me, you listen
to one of the guests that I bring into the show, but in this case, I think I’m
fairly qualified to talk about this.  I
spent a lot of years working for advertising agencies.  Also, I’ve taken a club, which was
essentially inactive with only a little over 100 members to well over 500 in
six years and actually took less than six years to get there.  Last summer we had over 2200 visits by
nonmembers, many, many of those being people who had never been, had never
tried naturism before.  The rest being
people for whatever reasons chose to visit a few times, but not take out a
membership, but that’s Okay, too.  As
you’ve heard at previous shows, we’ve had no problems attracting young people
and that’s all marketing.

                        I’m going to be talking
to you about my views of how to successfully market.

                        The fact you are
listening to me right now suggest that I’ve managed to get enough people’s
attention that we now get regularly 50,000, 70,000 in previous some months, as
I’ve said before, over 100,000 listeners to the show so that’s marketing,
too.  That’s one of the first things that
I want to talk about, the difference between marketing and advertising.  A lot of people use the two terms
interchangeably, but marketing is much broader.
Advertising is communicating your marketing message.  It’s getting people to learn about what you
have and it’s very important, but it, by itself, is not marketing.

                        Marketing by the
traditional textbook definition is made up of five different items.  First, the right product or service and I
think in the case of naturism, you’ve decided on the service or product ahead
of time.  Is it the right one?

                        It depends on who you’re
targeting.  Even within that, there’s a
lot of deciding what you are selling.
The biggest misnomer in what naturist parks are selling is camp sites or
swimming pools.  Naturism, as we’ve
discussed to death in the show, is a lifestyle, a philosophy, a movement.  It’s full of ethical and moral consideration.  You’re selling an idea.  You’re selling something much more than
facilities.

                        Otherwise, you are
competing against regular campgrounds.
You’re just a campground or a country club with a dress code or
different test code or a little more tolerance of nudity.  That’s not very powerful, particularly when
you’re trying to convince people to do something very difficult which is to be
nude in front of others.  That’s
hard.  That’s very hard and for reasons
we’ve discussed in several other shows as well.
You have to have something that is powerful enough that makes people
want to get over this phobia, this gymnophobia they have.  You have to sell them a service that means
something.  That’s the right product or
service.  We can spend a lot of time
talking about that, in fact, we have in other shows.  So I won’t belabor that point any further.

                        The second point in
traditional textbook marketing is the right price.  What’s the right price?  I don’t think the right price personally is
the cheapest price.  I’ve heard many
people say, “In naturism, you can always stay in a naturist park cheaper.”  That’s wrong.
It shouldn’t be cheaper in my opinion if it’s cheaper, why?  Is it cheaper because it’s less?  Well then in a lot of cases it is less, but
that’s a whole other discussion.  Pricing
is key and important and that’s a whole discussion.  You have to take into consideration
competitive factors, what people can afford, what they expect.  I always compare myself to a round of golf in
the area and we’re a lot cheaper than a round of golf and I think we provide
more,

                        so that’s the right price.

                        Number three in
traditional marketing are the right quantities.
Not really relevant here, although in the case of Bare Oaks we are out
of campsites for people who wanted to keep their trailer there the whole
season, the whole year.  In fact, there
is about a ten year waiting list right now.
By the way, there was probably of two thirds of them were empty when we
bought the park six years ago, but now there is such a demand that we’re out of
sites and that’s a bad thing.  That’s an
operational issue and we don’t have the money at this point to invest to build
the sites.  It takes a lot of money and
time so we won’t worry about that, but that’s the number three, not that
important for marketing discussion here.

                        The right place, that is
in traditional package of goods marketing, the right place as a marketing idea
is that you put it on the shelf or you sell it in the right store, but in the
case of our service or our product, you have to be in the right location.  If you are too far from where people live,
then you have a different business.

                        If your business then
is, for example, if you are in San Martin and you have beautiful resort called
on Orient Beach called “Club Orient,” then you are selling
vacations.  You are probably not making
your business on day-users, as we do at Bare Oak.  We’re 65% of our members are day-users
because they can drive less than an hour and spend a day at the club.  They don’t need to stay overnight.

                        If you are club
oriented, then you are selling, in that case towards an overnight.  So the right place in that case because it is
a destination is going to be even more incredible so you have the ocean and the
beach and the place to stay that make it a fabulous place.  The same thing with Montalivet where we’re
going in July for our group trip that we have organized.  They are in the dunes and they have a
beautiful ocean and views and nature so because they’re a destination.  That’s the right place in that case.

                        Finally, the fifth
element in traditional textbook marketing definition is the right time which
means that you’re presumably, it’s like telling naturism in the middle of
winter and not in the summer.  Although,
you actually want to start selling it in the spring when people are starting to
think about it because this is a high involvement decision to try for the first
time.  I never market to existing
naturist.  I’m always trying to find new
naturist because otherwise, that’s why we talk about a shrinking market and a
shrinking business in naturism.  We are
always trying to market ahead of time to give people time to think.  In fact, it could take years to get there.

                        When you have all those
elements of marketing figured out in terms of what you are selling, then you
have to decide who you’re selling it to?
That’s the target group.  To a
certain extent, that’s going to define the pricing, the place, the time, the
product, even that you’re offering.  Who
is your target group?  Who are you
selling your naturist service to?  We
talked about how different groups have different expectations.  If you want to attract young people, they
have less budget.  They’re busier.  They have certain consideration.  People with children have certain
consideration.  People who are retired
and have different consideration.

                        Fundamentally, you can
target in two ways.  You can target your
existing group.  You look at who’s at the
club right now or at your resort and you say, “This is my target
group,” because these are the people that like us now.  That’s very valid.  You’re using targeting your current
strengths, you’re strong with a certain group.
The problem with most of these clubs are out there that are complaining
about shrinking is that they are older and so they are targeting only to older
clubs and older people and they’re providing services that appeal to older
people.

                        The other option is to
target desired groups that you don’t currently have.

                        Now there you’re
marketing to your weakness.  So why are
you weak?  There’s two options.  You are weak in that area because your product
or services does not appeal to that group or you are weak in that area because
you’ve never successfully convinced them to come buy your product, buy your
service.  With young people, I think it’s
very clear that young people can be convinced to try naturism, do enjoy
naturism if you are offering the right product, the right service and you’re
reaching them and convincing them to try it.

                        It definitely can be
done, but you have to be careful because it’s very tempting to only market to
your strength.  It’s Okay.  It’s strong.
You know you’re good at targeting the group you currently have.  That’s Okay.
Certainly, that can be the low hanging fruit, the easiest people to
market to because you understand them and when they come, they’re going to see
people that are like them and they’ll enjoying being there.  But it can be a trap because you can convince
yourself that’s the only marketing you can do.
You can convince yourself that young people aren’t interested if you
have a club full of older people.  You
can convince yourself that children and parents aren’t the right target in the
naturism.

                        There’s a club that I
was talking to the owner and they had taken out their playground.  Why?
“Because it was unsafe,” they said.  “Are you not replacing it?”  “No, we have no children
here.”  Of course, if you have no
children and you take out the playground, you will never have children or
you’re certainly not making yourself children-friendly.  The rationale for them was that the older
people have more money and more time to spend in the club and therefore, spend
more money and that’s probably true.

                        My point of view is, we
have older people as well, so I’m not against marketing to older people or
selling naturism to older people, but younger people, if you get them when they
are in their 30s and they are just starting their family and they raise their
children there, they are going to be there much longer than the older
people.  Therefore, over the lifetime
they will spend more money and you will create a continuous circular flow over
a century, if you will, of people from young to old and there will always be a
mix.

                        With children, if you
keep the children happy and the children love to be there, then the parents are
happy because when you have parents, you’re trying to keep your children happy
and have a good time because you love your children and sometimes you’re
looking for a little peace and if they’re happy, they don’t bug you.  The beach, the playground, the toys, the
activities, these are the kind of things that parents are looking for and if
you want to target younger people that’s what you have to consider.

                        The important part and
the most important part where every, I think, loses focus in the target group
is remember, we’re not Coca-Cola.  What
do I mean by that is we don’t need to reach everybody.  If you look at companies like Coca-Cola, they
have to sell to almost every single person on the planet in order to keep
growing and in order to keep their market share.  It’s a product that is supposed to appeal to
almost every single person, the lowest common denominator, very generic
advertising.  They have to spend a lot of
money just on branding, reaching the whole world.  It’s very expensive.

                        With naturism, you’re
not trying to reach everyone.  You’re
trying to reach a very small percentage are interested and if you can get 1%
that’s probably pretty good.  It’s like
the assumption that all young people want to party all the time.

                        I know lots of young
people who don’t want to party all the time.
I know young people who don’t like to use Facebook.  I know young people who don’t like to use
their cell phone.  There is no one type
of young person that you can define.
There is no one type of person becomes a naturist either.

                        In the example of Bare
Oaks in our example, we have about 6 million people within one hour’s drive of
us.  If I got 1% that would be 60,000
people, well that’s way too much.  I’m
not looking for 1% because I couldn’t handle 6000, never mind 60,000.  You have to keep your expectations in
check.  You have to focus and realize
that you are not going for 50% or even 20% or 10% of the population.  You are looking for maybe, it’s probably
less, but maybe 1% of the population that is, shall we say is smart enough,
open-minded enough, educated enough to understand that naturism is a better
way.  That naturism is a better life and
a life philosophy that could make the world a better place.  For now, maybe in a long time from now, we’ll
be able to talking about much bigger target groups, but for now and anywhere in
North America and most of the world for that matter, 1% would be
incredible.  Other than the few European
countries that would be a huge impact on the population in terms of the influence
of naturism.

                        When you pick your
target, you have to try to decide what do you want?  What do you need?  What do you want to reach?  There’s no point, of course, in going after a
difficult target and again, back to that 1%.
For example, there’s no point in trying to target fundamentalist Muslims
because we know they have issues with covering up themselves.  We know that’s a much harder sell.  I’m sure we could convince some of them.  I’m sure that’s doable.  There’s always people that can be convinced
in any group, but try to discover within your targeting, who you want to reach
and what they have in common.  Look again
at the future, not just the short term.

                        One of the things I’ve
discovered is people focus very much on demographics, age and we’ve talked
about young people.  They talk about
income and they talk about things.  Those
are called demographics, income, age, education.  What is far more important in the naturism is
cycle graphics.  In cycle graphics is how
you’re thinking, your emotional state, what you like, what you dislike.  These are harder to measure, but they are far
more indicative of what people are looking for and what’s going to make them go
there.

                        For example, I’m sure
you understand that people who are into alternative medicines or into certain
spiritualities and things like that are probably more open to naturism than
your traditional blue-collar worker who works a very steady 9-to-5 job and just
believes, likes the standard football and standard all things that you expect
in your typical profile.  Which is
probably the mass of the population, this is probably the core of the
population.  In that target, what are
your cycle graphics?  How do you
determine them?

                        I’m not going to tell
you what mine are.  It doesn’t matter
because different areas are different.
You might decide you want to target a different group.  How I do it is whenever there’s new people, I
go talk to them.  “Why did you come
here?  How did you find us?  What made you decide?”  I love to have those chats with people.  That’s how I get the insight about what to do
next.  What’s working, what’s not
working.  Not just as one or two
questions, a real in-depth discussion.
You know I buy them a beer.  We
sit down.  We chat.  Most people love to talk about it.  This is new.
They are excited.  They love why
they are there.  So they love to talk
about it, too, and I get an incredible amount of insight.

                        Sometimes you might want
to look at the people you don’t want and find out why they are there as
well.  We have people who are too
loud.  Who come there just to party.  Who are not really interested in naturism,
they just were looking for a place in that particular situation to have their
party and not be disturbed.  They didn’t
want to take their clothes off.  I’m
trying to understand where they came from and why they found us is important as
well.

                        I will give you one
warning with regards to listening to people.
People don’t always know what they want.
For example, if you ask people, “Would you like to pay more for the
same service?”  The answer is always
no.  In fact, most people would like to
pay less and get more.  That’s normal so
do I.  You can’t always ask some of these
questions.  In terms of pricing, some of
it is a bit of an experimentation in trying to understand what you’re trying to
influence.  For example, we raised our
day-visit last year, significantly about over 20%.  The reason for that is a lot of people were
not taking out memberships and because it was cheaper to just pay by the day
and then you didn’t risk paying when the weather was bad.  We needed to make it so they paid more than
their fair share of the operations and of the cost of maintaining the
place.  We raised the price
significantly.  I knew this was a problem
for a few years, but I did not want to discourage new people and if the price
is too high, I thought I might discourage new people.

                        What we offer now is in
the month of June, we’re offering a free day-visit and we will give people who
come for their first time often a 50% off coupon if they return.  So we are encouraging trial by offering
something now of even more value because a day-visit is even higher than it
used to be.  We are encouraging the ones
who were regulars and love the place to take out a membership and we’ve had no
resistance.  Going from about $40 to
almost $60, a little less than $60, $50 did not cause as much backlash I even
expected.  That’s how you have to figure
out.  If I had asked people, “Do you
want me to raise the rate?”

                        The answer would be
no.  We saw that there is in what economists
call “price elasticity” that there was some room to grow that pricing
in there.

                        Also when you ask
people, Apple knows very well.  Apple
knows that people don’t always know what they want because they have never seen
it before.

                        The Apple, the iPhone, I
have an iPhone.  I have an Apple
computer.  When Steve Jobs decided to
revamp Apple and decided to make candy colored computers, I can tell you there
was no research that said that people wanted computers that were fuchsia and
lime green and all these other colors he came out with.  Yet those were incredibly popular and
successful because of his insight and understanding that a lot of the existing
Mac users and the people who were passionate about that brand were design
people and they were interested in looks and what it said about them, as much
as anything else.

                        Similarly, when Apple
came out with the iPad, I had an iPhone and I had a computer.  Somehow, I didn’t think I needed a third
device and yet, Apple convinced me that yes I needed to buy a third device that
was neither a phone nor a computer and it was somewhere in between.  Yet, I probably still needed the other two
items.  So now I have three Apple items.  That’s what considering that your target
market, your consumer does not always know what they want.  In the services you offer within your club,
your park, your resort, your camp that’s something you have to think
about.  That’s where you have to do trial
and error to try to understand what things drive people and what things don’t.  What programs attract them?

                        It might be an
event.  People don’t always know which
events they are looking for.  You try an
event and one successful and one is not.
We didn’t know how much demand there was for yoga, but yoga has become
quite popular.  A lot of the people who
were taking yoga, I know were not the ones who were looking for that program,
but it was there so they were interested in it.
If you want to target youth, I won’t talk about that anymore here, we
have two podcasts, which I’ll reference in the show notes, where we talk about
youth and youth talk about youth where we discussed what is the way to target
them and the key to reaching them.  This
is about the marketing themselves.

                        No matter what you do
don’t blame the customer.  That’s in your
target market and you are deciding what they want, the biggest trap I see
people get into is blaming their customers for not wanting what you think they
should want.  You know what?  Naturism is not the way it used to be.  If that bothers you that much that you can’t
adjust to it, then you should stop being in the business.  Pass it to someone else or sell off or close
the door.  The days of people, for
example, volunteering all the time, unfortunately they’re gone.  We get a lot of volunteers at Bare Oaks.  I’m not saying that.  There was a time where people had a lot more
time to volunteer.  Now people are
willing to pay.

                        Now people, when they
come, expect to have a restaurant because they don’t want to make food or a
picnic at a time.  It’s too much work to
make food ahead of time for people.
Their lives are too busy or they’re not used to it.  They’re not in the habit or maybe, they’re
even too lazy.  Lazy’s a judgment.  I’m not here to judge them.  I’m here to provide a service that fits with
what they want and that’s what they pay for.
Then, in terms of your pricing, you were not selling the cheapest,
you’re not selling the least expensive, which is a terrible business to be in.  You’re selling what they want at a value and
a price that they are willing to pay.
That’s how you become successful.

                        The next part I’m going
to talk about branding.  Branding is a
very, very important part of marketing.
The branding of naturism has suffered.
The brand that is naturism is viewed by a lot of people now as old, fat,
lazy, sitting around drinking beer.  It’s
not the image of naturism from 100 years ago when it was all about health and
thickness and sunshine and a better way to be.
Some of that imagery from the 100 years ago or even the 60s or 70s was
driven by the exploitative naturist press and media that was showing only young
people.  It is true though that the
beginning of this philosophy, it meant a lot more than it does now.  There are lots of clubs where it is still a
true philosophy of health and a better way of life.

                        Unfortunately, there’s
also a lot of clubs that make it into the news that are nothing.  That are just places where you can be naked
and mean nothing and you may even have some swinging happening or lingerie
parties or things that don’t seem to be consistent with any kind of naturist
philosophy about rejecting clothes as a way of putting yourself above others or
adding status or using clothes for sexualities.
If all of that gets mixed up, the public sees these stories, they see
the reports and it confuses the brand of naturism.  Unfortunately, we can’t control the
brand.  We cannot control the brand of
naturism, but you can control the brand of your club, park, resort, whatever it
is because that is your name.  Bare Oaks
Family Naturist Park is the brand that we have been developing and it stands
for something quite intentionally.  The
brand is far more than the logo.  People
often think of the brand as in branding as in a castle branding as just a logo,
but the logo is simply the representation of the brand.

                        I think the person who
said it best is Michael Eisner.  He was
the CEO of Disney for a long time and he said, “A brand is a living entity
and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand
small gestures.”  There’s a lot in
that sentence.  There’s a lot and it is
very important.  “Enriched or
undermined,” that’s the thing.
That’s what we talked about.
Naturism as a brand has been undermined over time.  It takes time.  Time’s key.
You cannot build a brand in a month or with one ad.

                        You cannot destroy it
either, but whichever direction you go in, you build momentum and to reverse
that momentum in case of negative brand attributes or negative brand
experiences is a very difficult thing to do.
It’s a train and it’s hard to stop it.
It’s a living entity because it is very much like a living entity.  I’m going to play this clip describing BMW as
a brand.  Everybody knows BMW cars as a
brand, but let’s listen to them explaining their brand.

Male:              Welcome back to Detroit here in
the BMW stand.  Today’s guest is Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes
Senior Vice President Marketing BMW.  Torsten,
what is it that makes the BMW brand so special?

Torsten:         That there are many things around which
makes BMW special, but take a look at our stand here in Detroit.  You see it’s again very typical BMW.  It’s modern.
It’s exclusive, innovative and also highly emotional.  As an example of how we define emotion, just
take a look at the Z-4 Roadster Coupe concept here in Detroit that we are
showing for the first time in the US here in Detroit.  Another example of the variety of our M-cars,
the M-5, the M-6, but also of course, the M-3, perfect examples for the highly
emotional substance of BMW.

Stéphane D:  You see it’s about our human
relationships.  It’s about, we have a
relationship with a brand that we like, the same way we do with a person.  The logo is like the face that you recognize
the person, but the person is a lot more than their face and their
picture.  It is their personality.  It is the experiences you’ve had with that
person.  With a brand it’s exactly the
same thing.  The more positive
experiences you have with a brand, the more you begin to trust that brand.

                        If you heard in the BMW
clip, they talk about emotions.  They
talk about feelings about the brand.  So
trust is a feeling.  It’s really
ridiculous.

                        People say they trust
one car company versus another.  I trust
Chevy trucks over Ford trucks.  General
Motors is this massive company with tens of thousands of employees and one
truck is designed by a completely different team probably than the other team
and it’s built by subcontractors.  It’s
almost ridiculous when I think about logically to trust a large corporation and
yet we do.  We do based on our
experiences.  If we have bad experiences
with a Chevy truck and we have more problems and we have bad experiences with a
dealer, which is scary for GM because they are very dependent on the faces of
the dealerships.  If you have a bad
experience with a dealership, then you will hold that against Chevrolet if
that’s the brand you are dealing with.

                        The components of the
brand is things that make them like a person that gives them a persona, yet
they are not a person.  They are things
like trust, loyalty and connection that you make with a brand the way you do
with a person.  When you find a person
you like because of their style, their personality, then they become your
friend and brands in some ways, you can connect to them.  People are very loyal to brands.  Coke versus Pepsi or certain beers because
they also identify with them.  It becomes
part of who they are.  It’s very
powerful.  The components of a brand are,
of course, the product or service that you are providing and that’s fairly
obvious in the case of naturism as well.

                        It’s also the target
market or the customers.  It’s who’s
there and that’s where we get into the issue if all you see are older people
and you are trying to target younger people, but it’s also who you are talking
to.  In all the messages you are sending
out there in your online presence, as Felicity was talking about, and in your
website and on Facebook and your advertising and your marketing in general, who
you are talking to is creating an aura or an image around your brand and your
target market, your customer.  It’s
obviously the communication is what you say, but most importantly, it’s the
experience.

                        The experience is
everything and people forget that.  It’s
what it’s like in the washroom.  It’s the
invoice you get in the mail.  What does
it say?  How does it look?  How does it make you feel?  Every time you get an invoice it makes you
feel bad?  Then you start to feel bad
about the brand or the brand has to make up for that in more and other things.  You have to consider all these issues as you
do your marketing and as you are planning your brand.  There is no detail that’s too small.  Let me just played this clip here from
Michael Eisner again.

M. Eisner:      Our willingness to be leaders and ignore
what the competition was doing extended to every level, even to the bathrooms
of our ships and hotels.  I’m sure many
of you travel extensively and have taken showers, only to be greeted by
something like this.  Your hair is
wet.  You rated poor on the shampoo, but
the words on that little shampoo are so small and even with your glasses on
and,

                        of course, they’re
sitting across the room, you cannot read what it says.  Is it shampoo?  Is it conditioner?  Is it poison?
What is in that bottle?

                        Now if you stay in a
Disney resort, a cruise ship or any of our hotels, these amenities, which even
are farsighted guests will be able to decipher, they can be seen.  When you get in the bed, I insisted that
there be lights that are actually bright enough to read, unlike the 25 W bulbs
that some hotels seem to favor and it is annoying you all admit.  Let me make it clear, while I advocate this
micromanagement.  I’m not suggesting that
one person should decide at a big institution all the ideas.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Although, I am pretty proud of those shampoo
labels and reading lights.

                        The key is to act on an
idea, to see something that’s not right and to say something to somebody to do
something about it, whether it says big as they knew, business venture or as
tiny as a shampoo label.  When one of
these great movies comes out everybody says, “I had that idea.  I had the same idea.  It was my idea.  I’ll sue you,” but the movie got made
because one person, not that  person, had
the idea and then actually made it happen, knew how to function in a
organization that could take a good idea and nurture it to completion.  It’s fundamentally about keeping your eyes
open.

Stéphane D:  I love Disney World for that.  At Disney, no detail is too small.  At Bare Oaks, Disney World is my model for
Bare Oaks.  Not because I want to be an
amusement park, but because I want to reach the same level of attention to
detail because that’s what makes Disney World.
There is no detail that is too small.
You heard Michael Eisner talking about their shampoo bottles and things
like that and that’s the thing.  You have
to experience your club and your park from the eyes of people who are going
there for the first time, which can be very difficult.  Because we are so mired on the day-to-day
basis with the pump that’s broken or the toilet that’s overflowing or the
misbehaving guest in the back or whatever it is.  We forget to step back and as part of our
marketing and our planning to look at our park and see what are we missing?

                        Just today I was at the
park and I was at my trailer and I had some dishes to do and I didn’t have any
dishwashing soap.  I needed dishwashing
soap.  I thought I’ll get some from the
store.  We don’t carry dishwashing
soap.  We should.  We’re going to.  Tomorrow I’m going to buy some stock of
dishwashing soap because the stuff that people are looking for that’s part of
your experience.  Look, they have what I
need.  Our store is very well-stocked,
not because we make a huge amount of money on this stuff, but because it’s part
of the experience.  When people are
having a negative experience because they forgot something, their razor, their
comb, whatever it is if we can fix that, we are improving their experience.  We are solving their problem.

                        When I was in the
Disney, I will go through Disney World.
I’ve been going to Disney World since I was a child and I would go
through Disney World looking at it totally differently.  It could be Disneyland as well, but
California is a little too far for me.
When I go to Disney World in Florida, I walk through it and I can just
enjoy looking at how everything is put together.  The cast members, as they call them, the
staff there just appear.  You don’t see
them going back and forth from work or having a break.  You don’t see garbage bags because they all
disappear into the middle of the night.
They have these underground passage ways to maintain the experience that
the magic of being there.

                        If you look at the
details, in Adventure Land, the garbage cans look a certain way and Frontier
Land they look a different way, in Epcot they look at different way.  They are designed, painted to fit into the
environment so they don’t break the experience.
They don’t break the fantasy that is being built, the show that is being
put on.  I was in one of the restaurants
in, I think it was in Frontier Land and it was a naughtically-themed restaurant
and everything was ship-oriented and they were serving fish.  As I’m sitting there eating my meal, I’m
looking around and I look on the wall and up on the wall is the emergency
light.  Every building has to have
emergency lights.  If you go by an
emergency light and most anywhere they come in one color, beige.  They’re all beige.  A base emergency light, especially tucked way
up in the corner would have looked just fine, nice, clean, new, no
problem.

                        Except, this beige
emergency light was not beige.  It had
been beige, but somebody made it look like wood.  So I went to look at it closely and there is
no other way to do this.  It was hand
painted with a wood finish to fit with the wood paneling on the wall.  That’s an awful lot of detail.  Somebody said, “We can’t just put a
beige light up there.”  Then they
decided to get somebody to paint it.
They had to find somebody who had the talent to paint wood grain on
beige light.  They had to get the paint
and they had to get it done.  That was
probably expensive, but that’s the kind of attention that Disney has.  That means that your entire experience is
reinforcing the brand.  They avoid all
these little things.

                        It’s the little details
that can break that fantasy of or experience or that you are in.

                        I want to do the same
thing.  I am nowhere near that, but you
never stop.

                        You should never be
happy.  I don’t know how you could ever
be satisfied that everything’s perfect.
There’s no such thing.  It doesn’t
mean you’re always mad at people or yelling at anybody or trying, pushing
people.  It means that you are paying
attention as the leader, as the marketer to always finding ways to improve the
experience, improve the environment so that your guests have a better and
better experience because that’s what selling and that’s what your brand is.

                        There’s an individual
called Terry O’Reilly that I used to work with.
When I worked in the advertising agency world, he had a company.  I think it was called Pirate Radio even at
that time and they did radio commercials.
Mazda was my account and we did a lot of work with him.  He’s a brilliant radio audio advertising
guy.  A few years ago he started creating
a radio show for CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, on
advertising.  It was called “The Age
of Persuasion.”  If you want to keep
thinking about how to market and how to speak to people and how others do it
and get your brand going, this is a great show to listen to.  I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can
go and listen to the archives because there’s a lot of really great stuff
there.  He, of course, talks about
branding.  I want to play this little
clip.

T. O’Reilly:     Starbucks is another great experienced
marketer.  Joseph Pine, co-author of
“The Experience Economy,” puts it this way.  “A cup of coffee is only worth a few
cents, but when packaged and sold at a supermarket, it is now worth $.25.  If it’s brewed and served by a wager, it’s
worth two dollars.  But if you were
allowed to design your own coffee, it is brewed in front of your eyes and you
can enjoy it in the setting of a Starbucks café, it easily sells for five
dollars.  The experience of Starbucks,
the coffee theater of Starbucks makes a product worth more to the customer who
is willing to pay a premium.  Experienced
marketing creates word of mouth.  It’s
someone saying to you ‘You have to experience this yourself.  You have got to go.'”

Stéphane D:  So you see when you are selling coffee or
whatever it is, but when you are selling something beyond just a product,
beyond the basics of a commodity, you realize that you are selling and
experience.  As human beings that’s what
we enjoy.  We enjoy an experience and is
there any more powerful things than naturism for being an experience?  We don’t just like shake people up by
changing their environment of their vacation.
We shatter what they didn’t know.
We do change how they look at things, their bodies, themselves,
others.  It’s an incredibly powerful
experience.  It’s so much more than just
selling water hookups or electricity or dances on Friday night.  We are selling something that is massive and
we have to remember that in our marketing.

                        At Bare Oaks, customer
service and staff is one of the most important things.  We have a great staff, but we spend a lot of
time doing customer service.  Anybody
who’s listening right now who runs a club, whether you are the owner or the
operator or the manager it doesn’t matter.
How much time do you spend with your staff teaching them how to handle
customers?  When you bring the summer
staff in, when you have people behind the front desk, how much training?  You may not be qualified to do it.  That’s Okay.
You can find some.  There’s
customer service training, the interaction, it’s the first people they deal
with when they come into your place is going to set the tone.

                        I said in the “Why
Clothing Optional Doesn’t Work” if the first person they see in a naturist
club is a dressed person, you are setting an interesting tone.  In our club at Bare Oaks, the first person
you see at the front desk is nude because that’s what we believe in and that’s
what makes them both uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time.  What I mean by that is it makes them
uncomfortable because they are dressed and it makes them comfortable taking
their clothes off which is why they came in the first place.  If they came there to Bare Oaks to keep their
clothes on, they should leave because that’s not what we are about.  Why the hell are they coming to our place for
that?  I mean it’s crazy.  I keep saying that.  People say, “Can I keep my clothes
on?”  Why would you want to?  99.9% of this world you can keep your clothes
on.  Why are you coming to our place to
keep your clothes on, just to challenge us?
That’s rare.  That’s not what most
people want to do.

                        Terry O’Reilly,
obviously agrees with me in terms of Disney because in one of his most recent
radio show, which is also a podcast, the newest show you had to I think four
years of the Asia Persuasion he starred in a new show called “Under the
Influence” which is a very similar theme, but a little broader in the
terms of marketing discussions.  One of
the more recent ones, he had “Tales of Customer Service,” and I want
to play one clip from that.

T. O’Reilly:     The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World is a
model of customer service.  This
attention to details comes, not surprisingly, from the founder.  Walt Disney’s mantra was “Give the
public everything you can give them.”
From that simple statement, everyone at Disney strives to exceed
customer expectations every day.
MSNBC.com did an interesting article on Disney World titled “What
Time is the 3:00 Parade?”  I’ll
explain that title momentarily.  Customer
service at the Magic Kingdom is both an art and a science.  For example, Disney houses its lockers and
wheelchairs to the right of the park’s entrance because they have long observed
that the majority of visitors go to the right when they come through the
gates.  A Disney study showed that people
who bought hard candy with a rapper took about 27 steps before tossing the
wrapper on the ground.  So Disney put a
garbage can every 25 steps.

                        Another of their key
philosophies is “It’s not my fault, but it’s my problem,” which means
even though visitors may approach a Disney employee with a random question or a
predicament, the employee is taught to own the problem and stay with the
customer until it’s solved.  When
visitors ask, “What time is the 3:00 Parade,” Disney employees are
never sarcastic, but answer, instead by saying …

Female:         “The parade starts at 3pm at
Frontier Land, but it will be at Main Street USA by about 3:20.  You can wait here in the shade if you
like.”

T. O’Reilly:     Every ride, show and train at Disney runs
right on time.  If the train is a second
late leaving the station, the conductor gets on the speaker and explains why
the training is delayed and how long it will be before the train gets
going.  Disney staff are trained to be
assertively friendly.  In other words,
they are encouraged to seek contact with visitors.  For example, they will actively approach
someone who looks confused, instead of waiting to be asked for directions.  Disney’s grasp of customer service was so
exemplary, their customer satisfaction rating so high that other companies
began approaching Disney for instruction.

                        In 1986, the Disney
Institute was born.  It’s a Florida based
division of the Walt Disney Company that teaches other companies how to exceed
customer expectations.  Those companies
have included Delta Airlines, IBM, General Motors, Chrysler and even the
IRS.  The basic message at the Disney
Institute is something that Walt Disney, himself, discovered decades ago that
people remember people, not products.
The key is to encourage employees to be consistently attentive without
seeming overly rehearsed or robotic.  For
example, the Miami International Airport came to the Disney Institute for
help.  Surveys ranked its customer
service among the nation’s worst.  Now
you might think that an airport and Disney World don’t have anything in common,
but when you think about it, both companies have millions of people waiting in
line for a ride every day.  400 Miami
airport staff learned to put “It’s not my fault, but it’s my
problem,” into action.

                        The Disney Institute’s
lessons are transferable to any industry.
For example, a Chevy dealership in Massachusetts watched as their
customer satisfaction levels jumped to 90% after studying with Disney.  A staffing service company took the course
and saw their revenues double in one year’s time.  A hospital in rural Wisconsin took Disney’s
customer service lessons to heart and its customer satisfaction scores soared to
90% and employee turnover dropped by half.

                        By implementing Disney’s
best practices, the Orlando Magic basketball organization introduced a new
service oriented culture to its staff and its customer satisfaction levels
jumped above the 90th percentile.  The list
is endless, when customer service source so does profit.

Stéphane D:  If you don’t know how to do customer service
and you haven’t trained your staff and you should obviously because it’s such
an important part of the experience that people have, not just their first
experience, but their entire visit, you can go to the Disney Institute.  The Disney Institute is several thousand
dollars per person.  It is for three,
four, five days or you can do what I did.
You can spend $20, I think it was about $20, and buy a book called
“Be our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service.”  I’ll put a link.  You can buy it on Amazon.  I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can
go and buy it yourself.  In that is the
same material that they teach in the Disney Institute for several thousand
dollars.  The thing is here is you have
to be disciplined enough to spend the time reading it, making notes and making
your training plan based on that.  It’s
an easy read and it’s a fun read.  So if
you want to learn a bit more about customer service, it’s easy.  Just go buy the book.

                        What do we do in our
training, at Bare Oaks that is?  First,
the very, very first thing that we do is we talk about and this is with every
staff member, not just the front desk, but every staff member that the folks who
mow the lawn, the folks who are out there.
They are dealing with customers all the time and their job is just as
important from a customer service standpoint as the front desk staff and that’s
what you see at Disney as well.

                        I was once at Disney and
I rented a bike because as I have said, I like to look around and I rented a
bike and I’m biking around areas where guests don’t normally go on bikes that
often.  I’m going on a bit on the outside
in the fringes.  There was no sign saying
I couldn’t be there.  It just was not
typical.  As I’m passing underneath the
monorail, I stop and say, “I’m going to take a picture of the monorail as
it goes over me.”  I’m not there
five minutes that a little Disney security van shows up.  Obviously, they’ve got surveillance equipment
and I’m going, “This is going to be interesting.”

                        Out comes a guy, Disney
security guy and I got to tell you.  It’s
hard to be tough when you’ve got a name badge that has ears on it, but he
wasn’t trying to be tough.  He was friendly.  He said, “How you doing?”  I said, “I’m good.  Thanks.”
He goes, “You know …”
This was just after September 11.
He said, “You know with all the problems in the world, we have to
be a little bit more careful and concerned.”  He goes, “This is a little unusual to see
a person here.  What are you doing
here?”  I was like, “Just
taking a picture.”  “Yes, no
problem.  We love you taking pictures, no
problem, but we just got to check you out and make sure you’re supposed to be
here.”  I said, “Yes, no
problem.”  “So where are you
staying?”  So I tell him.  Show him my card and he just goes,
“Okay.  I just confirmed that.”

                        He radios in and while
he’s waiting for a response he says, “Where are you from?”  I go, “I’m from Toronto.” He goes,
“Yes, yes.  I have a friend who
lives in … What is that called?
Missisaga …?”  I go, ”
Mississauga.”  He goes, “Yes
that’s it.  That’s it,” and he
starts chatting.  I’m realizing after a
few minutes that he’s interrogating me in a way that is incredibly friendly and
fun and comfortable, unless of course, I’m a bad guy.  Of which case I would be nervous, but I
wasn’t.  After a few minutes, he is
satisfied.  He gets the answer he
wants.  He says, “I hope you get a
good picture and enjoy your day.”

                        That kind of training, I
wish all law enforcement people would learn that kind of training because I
think it’s far more effective because you let your guard down and you might say
something you’re not supposed to.  That’s
what I mean.  Everybody gets trained for
customer service and everybody gets trained about we’re about and what we’re
selling.  Back to my first point, we tell
every staff member, it’s part of the staff manual that they get and they have
to read it when they first start that there are three objectives at Bare Oaks,
three business objectives that is.

                        Objective number one is
the promotion of naturist values.  That’s
what we’re here for.  That’s what we’re
in business for.  Number two is ensuring
a delightful experience for our members and visitors, which is what we’ve
talked about.

                        The experience that’s
what the brands about.  Number three is
profitability because we’re a business and we have to make money.  Then I emphasize that it’s in that order and
why is it in that order?  If, a guest as
we said before, wants to come and keep their clothes on, we won’t allow that
because our first objective is a promotion of naturist values.  Why?
We have to maintain an environment.
People come to us, the vast majority, because we are a naturist
environment.

                        If we allow people to
keep their clothes on and do things that are inconsistent with naturist values
and philosophy, then of course, that breaks the experience, that breaks the
fantasy, if you will, of being in a naturist only world.  You’re shattering the glass.  We’re trying to create this quite truly
abnormal environment, abnormal because it’s not at all like the real
world.  People are coming to us because
they want to break from that.  The whole world
was naturist and open and we didn’t have to worry about it, then there would be
no reason to do this.  But we are
creating in a place like Bare Oaks and this is true of any naturist
environment, you are creating something special, something different.  So it is a bit of a fantasy because it is not
real.  The real world is what they are
trying to escape.  That’s why we’ve
created this environment.  If you don’t
fight to maintain that environment, then you are shattering the experience you
are breaking it and it’s not as positive or powerful of an experience and it
hurts your brand.

                        To ensure the delightful
experience for our members-visitors does not take precedence over the fact that
first and foremost, we are doing the promotion of naturist value.  Similarly, profitability is not always the first
consideration and an example for that is we do things inefficiently.  If we are halfway through a project and the
day is over, we put everything away and we close things as much as possible,
which just means in the morning we have to bring everything back out again and
open things back up.  Why?  If we were Disney, you wouldn’t even see it
because we could somehow hide it in the backstage.  We don’t have that luxury.  We still try to maintain when the guests are
there during the day the perfect environment.
They don’t want to know about our having to fix the septic system.  They don’t want to have to see the things
apart and bits and pieces everywhere.  As
much as possible, we put things back together and take them apart again.  It’s not efficient.

                        When we do garbage, we
don’t just leave garbage bags everywhere.
The garbage bags get tucked in one corner and then when they have all
been assembled, then they all get taking out to the bin.  We don’t leave garbage bags laying around
while we wait for something to be picked up.
We try to hide that practical stuff as much as possible.  It’s not profitable.  It would be more profitable to do it an
efficient way, but that would take away from the experience.  That’s why they are in that order.

                        They are not
extremes.  They are not black and white
or absolutes I guess is the right word here.
Obviously, everybody would have a much more delightful experience if I
provided a Butler at every single campsite, but that would not be cost
effective.  People wouldn’t want to be
paying for that.  There is obviously some
give and take and some adjustments.
There’s a limit to everything.
It’s important for people to understand, for your staff to understand
when they make decisions, do I do my job the most efficiently or do I make sure
that this customer has a good time?
Hopefully, after our training and understanding our priorities, they
will ensure the customers has a good time, even if it slows them down a little
bit during the day.

                        The power of all of this
is the emotional connection so that they get loyalty, loyalty to your brand and
to your club.  If you do, the power is
they will forgive mistakes and you will become very hard, if not impossible, to
compete with.  The true emotional brands
have no competitors.  The inverse, of
course, is a negative image at which is challenging to overcome.  Unfortunately, we have that, as I said
earlier, with naturism and its image.  At
Bare Oaks we are building an image of naturism the Bare Oaks way, if you
will.  Like the Naturist Living Show is
part of that.  We have an idea.  We are trying to reinforce it.  That’s what we talk about it in Naturist
Living Show and that’s why we created the show.

                        We’re trying to be more
than just a park.  We’re building a
strong brand.  Most people now have heard
probably if they’re into naturism about Bare Oaks, at least in the English
world.  The word’s gone out.  That’s because we’ve had articles
everywhere.  We’ve been in
magazines.  We’re on the Internet.  We’re everywhere.  It’s part of the marketing communications,
the advertising.  We’re going to get to
that later.

                        You have to ensure a
consistency of your message in your branding.
If your brand is naturism, as it is with us, we ensure that everything
fits.  So we don’t have lingerie dances.  I don’t know why people want to have lingerie
dances in naturist clubs.  I’m sure it’s
a lot of fun, but the imagery goes against them.  We had some members from the previous club,
the previous to Bare Oaks club, the one that we bought, who they used to have a
leather and lace dance.  The first thing
I did was say, “No, that’s not happening anymore.”  They said, “Nothing happens.  There’s no sex or anything.  It’s just fun.  It’s like dress up for kids, except for
adults.”  I said, “I’m sure it
is.”  I believed them.  There was no reason not to believe them.  I’m sure it’s a lot of fun, but that’s not
what we are about.  We’re a naturist club
and the image from the outsider is terrible because they will assume something
is happening.

                        Secondly, it just
doesn’t fit.  It doesn’t fit with the
brand.  It doesn’t fit with the
image.  It doesn’t fit with what we are
doing.  People can go and have a leather
and lace dance at their house or they can go and haul somewhere else.  It’s just not consistent with what they
are.  Just like swinging, I have no
problem with people who want to do that.
I don’t get it myself, but if that’s what people want to do that’s
fine.  But you can’t connect it to
naturism because it’s not naturism.  The
two have nothing to do with each other.
In fact, if they often do get connected unfortunately, and that just
reinforces the general public’s belief that you can’t just be nude without
sex.  You’ve got to keep those things
separate.

                        Single women come to
Bare Oaks.  I had one just a couple weeks
ago.  I think I told the story in a
previous podcast.  They come and they
stay because they’re comfortable.  They
come because they read on our website and they hear on our podcast and they’ve
seen videos what we are like and it gives them a sense of comfort.  When they are there, they are very
comfortable because we truly have naturist values and we are truly about
respecting ourselves and others.  It’s
something that people want.  There’s a
whole episode on the show on women and naturism and I won’t belabor that point.

                        Only by building a
strong brand and a strong philosophy around who we are are we able to do that
as well as we do.  Don’t let your
business operation hurt your brand, remember that.  Don’t let it hurt you, either.  Remember that you are not in business to
operate water plants or pools or septic system.
You are in business for naturism or whatever.  Perhaps you are listening to this and you are
not even in this business, but market is the same for everybody.  Remember what you are in business for.  Sometimes the small problems just drive you
nuts and it makes you crazy.

                        One of the examples is
have you ever been to some place and there’s a sign that says, “Keep this
area clean?”  Whoever put that up
has lost.  They lost because their experience,
the customer experience is being driven by the operations.

                        It won’t work.  The people who make a mess, they don’t care
about your sign.  The people who care
about the sign, they didn’t need the sign in the first place because they
already probably kept the place clean.
Everybody knows you are trying to keep the place clean.  The sign is just pollution.  It’s a little insulting to the user and it
takes away from the experience.  It
suggests that there is a problem with cleanliness in the area or with people
being unclean.

                        I bet you, if you
actually did a survey, whatever the problem is, but let’s say the problem is in
the washroom that 99% of people are not a problem.  Usually, it takes just one.  One person, but because as operators, as
managers, as people who deal with this stuff all day, day in and day out
because we only see the problem, sometimes we start to see everybody as being
the problem.  We have to always remind
ourselves, the problem is not everybody.
The problem is a very minute percentage and we’re handling them so that
for the majority, they don’t have to deal with the problem, so that the
majority has a delightful experience.

                        I think I will bring
Terry O’Reilly one more time to give, what I think is a perfect summary of what
branding is all about.

T. O’Reilly:     In this world of abbreviated marketing
messages and campaigns designed to last weeks, rather than years, advertising
and marketing have shifted from long-term relationships to a series of the
speed dates.  While I do believe that in
the era of the MTV effect, audiences can take in a lot of imagery in
nanoseconds, but that’s not the same as persuasion.  Persuasion takes time.  As ads get faster and as people are handed
more ad-avoidance technology, I think marketing that involves experience is
good, in that it slows the process down.
It invites people to engage and interact with multiple touch points to
multiple senses.

                        It’s a lesson taken from
the experiential brand giants: theater, the movie industry, novelists, the
tourism sector and one of the mightiest among them, Walt Disney, who turned
amusement parks into branded adventures.
Brand experience creates impact, giving people a memory that can be
stored and retrieved.  When you think of
a brand, the feeling of a great experience washing over you that is marketing
nirvana.  The time may be coming when you
no longer buy groceries, instead you experience them in the age of persuasion.

Stéphane D:  Now let’s talk about advertising.  As I said at the beginning of this show, advertising
and marketing are often confused.
Marketing, we’ve talked a lot about now, we’re going to talk about
advertising.  Advertising is how once
you’ve determined all of your marketing components and you know who you are
that’s how you get your message out.
John Wanamaker is credited with this quote.

                        He was a US department
store merchant from 1838-1922.  According
to the lore anyway, he said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is
wasted.  The trouble is I don’t know which
half.”  That’s very true.  In order to succeed in advertising, you have
to keep trying.  You have to see what
works.  It’s obvious when it works
because you are getting more people.
Thomas Watson, who started IBM said, “If you want to succeed,
double your failure rate,” because if you don’t try, in other words, you
are never going to succeed.  You’re not
going to get anywhere.  You’re never
going to invent and discover what works.

                        Advertising is all about
getting an appealing message to the right person.  As I said here, there’s two components in
what I’m saying.  There’s the message,
what we’re going to say and there’s the right person that’s the target
group.  I’m not going to go back there
because we talked about that extensively earlier in this show.  We understand what target group is.  We’ve determined who our target group
is.  Now, what is the message to
them?  Presumably, we understand our
target group so now our message is going to be tailored to them.

                        With the message, with
the advertising, there are two key components: reach and frequency.  Reach means that you get your message to
them.  You reach them, but just reaching
them once is not enough.  You need
frequency.  You need to reach them many
times.  Marketing, advertising, it’s a
marathon.  It’s not a sprint.  You have to take time.  People who don’t understand, often say,

                        “I placed an
ad.  I didn’t get any
response.”  Well, one ad doesn’t do
it.  In the case of Bare Oaks, almost
everybody says they come to us because of the Internet.

                        I’m sure the Internet’s
probably near the end, but here’s how it probably works.  They might drive.  We have signs on the highway and they might
drive by to and from work and they see the sign on the highway.  They just see the Bare Oaks name.  Then they see a listing in a directory they
picked up.  Maybe one of those booklets
where Orinda talks about things you can do on the weekends or campgrounds in
the area and they remember that’s the place I’ve seen on the highway.  Then one day as they are driving back and
forth to work, they are listening to the radio and they hear an interview about
Bare Oaks because we do a lot of PR and a lot of media.

                        Finally, they say,
“I’m going to look into that because I keep seeing their signs on the
highway.”  They go to the web and
they find it and they learn more about it, but they still don’t do anything
because, as we said earlier, this is a very high involvement decision.  It’s not something you make very easily, at
least most people.  Then, suddenly,
because you went on the web and maybe you signed up to be on the mailing list
or you decided that you favored it to Facebook page, you find out there’s a
promo or a special events on a weekend, volleyball tournament.  Something to give the person the excuse to
come, so then you visit, right?

                        It’s the combination of
many, many different touches, many different points to build the
awareness.  It’s to reach and the
frequency.  In that message, always
strive to sell the benefits and not the features.  The benefits of naturism, they are everywhere.  People are not coming to Bare Oaks because we
have a pool.  The pool is nice.  That’s why they stay.  That’s why they enjoy themselves, but they
are coming for far more than that.  Even
if you were just a regular camp ground or park, you still wouldn’t sell the
pool.  You would sell the experience, the
relaxation, the fun, the pleasure that you have when you visit the place.

                        You want an evocative
message.  That means something that stirs
emotion.  Fortunately, for naturism
that’s incredibly powerful.  You can talk
about the mess that the world is making.
You can talk about how you can get away from the over sexualization of
the human body, the objectification, the incredible reliance on fashion and
rank and style, the impersonal nature of the world and that’s the negative
side.  You want to focus on the
positive.  Naturism solves these
problems.  Naturism gives you a positive
experience.

                        Let’s talk about
medium.  The medium is now that we’ve
talked about the message, where are you going to put them?  You have the traditional ones.  You have print.  You have broadcast.  You have outdoor.  Some of it, you still need to do.  You still need brochures.  People like to take things away.  We get visitors all the time, “Can we
take some away?”  They pick things
up if we leave them in places.  Most of
us can’t afford to be doing television advertising or outdoor billboards or any
of that.  You can’t just buy one ad.  You can’t buy one billboard for one
week.  You can’t buy one television
spot.  You need frequency.  That’s not a practical one.

                        Starts with your
basics.  Start it with the easiest
stuff.  Make sure you have nice brochures
that people can take away that explain who you are.  Make sure you have nice business cards.  Make sure you have your basics, your website
and all that stuff.  Start with the easy
stuff.  Consider then using promotions as
well.  Do added value offers.  We talked about how we offer free first time,
first trials.  You can try
discounts.  You can try contests.  What’s your objective in a promotion?  What are you trying to do?

                        We’re offering
high-value cash prizes this year because for the top volleyball team because
we’re trying to bring higher talent.  A
high cash prize is not going to attract the novice people because they know
they don’t have a chance.  By having
higher talent and better volleyball to watch in between, it gets the younger
ones, the more novice players all excited about the sport and maybe they
learned something and it adds more energy.
To attract everybody, we offer that if you organize a team, the
organizer plays free.  We try to
encourage people to put a team together so don’t just get one, get six or
seven.

                        By far, though, the most
effective tool is PR and I don’t understand why clubs don’t use it more.  They do it such basic press releases.  We have an open house.  There’s so much stuff to do.  The press picks up three different types of
stories:  news, controversy and human
interest.  It’s so easy to come up stuff
for this.  Last year we had a heat wave
so I sent out a press release that we had free visits for first timers to get
away from the heat.  The best way to beat
the heat is not have to wear any clothes.
Did a press release about the fact that most people in society suffer
from fear of nudity, gymnophobia.  We did
a clothing drive.  We did a press release
about that.  They don’t all get picked up
massively, but every year one of those gets pick up every massively and every
release gets picked up at one point or another.
It’s free advertising and it’s more effective than advertising because
people listen and pay attention to the editorial content far more than they do
the advertising.

                        The downside is you
don’t control the message as much, but if you are good at the interviews and
that’s something you can practice or you can find somebody who’s good at it, if
you are good at interviews then you can manage that message and you can make
sure it’s done.  As I always say though
is I do all media interviews.  I don’t
care who calls.  I don’t care how
negative they’re planning on being because if I don’t do the interview, then
they will still do the story without me.
At least if I do the interview, I have a chance to win the reporter to
my side, make sure they understand my point and a chance to say what I have to
say.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but
I would never say no because saying no doesn’t get you anywhere for sure.  It’s guaranteed.

                        As part of PR, don’t
forget your community relations.  You
have a lot of people in the area.  You
hire the locals, join a local chamber of commerce.  Part of that is to get business, but part of
that is to make business easier because we are well known in our
community.  We are great supporters of
our community because that’s how we get along.
That’s how we ensure that there’s no concerns.  If they don’t know, if we are a very
secretive society, they’ll make up their own stories and they will be a little
bit leery about anything we need.  So
when you need to expand, when you need to get an authorization, when you need
to do stuff, the stories will get out and you might not get what you want.  It’s no longer a world where they’ll tell you
to your face because we’re far more subtle about it, but it’s the fact that
things just don’t happen the way you want them to.

                        I also joined all kinds
of associations.  Not just naturist
associations, although I believe that everyone should support a naturist
organization and association somewhere.
I’ve said this before.  These
folks are often volunteers who are promoting our brand, who are promoting
naturism.  If we don’t support them,
nobody will.  You may not agree with
everything they do, but at least they are trying and if you support them, then
you get to have a say and hopefully, influence them a bit.

                        Other association, we’re
part of the camping association.  We’re
part of a bunch of tourism association, local business associations.  Not only do we learn and meet people, but we
help promote naturism in areas that aren’t traditional naturist clubs.  I’m not trying to, again, market to existing
naturists.  I’m trying to market to
people who will be interested in naturism but are not there yet and there are
tons of those.  Our surveys suggest that
and our success proves it.

                        Events, I think events
are also very important because they help encourage trial.  People need an excuse.  They may be planning on coming to your club
and they’ve been planning for two years.
They just need an excuse to come.
Some people have success by doing open houses, free-days.  Sometimes it’s a tournament lot, like we’re
doing a volleyball tournament, it’s a great trial opportunity for people to try
and come in.  It can help with PR as well
because when you do an interesting event, you can do a press release.  They add value to your customers.

                        You were talking about
places being boring and nothing happening, if you have events, you do special
contest and festivals and tournaments then that adds interest and value to your
customer.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  It can be a horseshoe tournament.  It can be a mini golf tournament.  You can make something out of almost
anything.  Even a kids’ weekend doesn’t
have to be complicated.  Kids like simple
games.  Parents like it when you make
their children happy.

                        Finally, I’m leaving the
most important say to last because online is where you have to be.  We’re right back to the beginning in what
Felicity said.  You need to be online.  You must have an excellent website.  Not one that just shows your basic features,
but really talks about who you are because people, again, are not trying
naturism because of your swimming pool.
They want to know what you stand for.
They are slightly suspicious because they’ve heard it really is just
about sex and so you have to repeat that it isn’t.  Remember, everyone who comes for the first
time is new.  They’re learning.  You may have said it a thousand times, but
that first timer has not heard it.  So
you have to say on your website.

                        There are endless free
directories out there.  Want to list them
yourself?

                        You just go and you sign
up and you list yourself.  I do something
online, I do something every week.  I add
myself somewhere.  I do an improvement
somewhere.  I do a little something every
single week and I’ve been doing it for six and a half years.  It builds up.
It’s like putting a dollar in a jar every day.

                        At the end of a year you
have $365.  It builds up.  One doesn’t make a big difference.  Every directory helps with your Google
rankings.  With Google, I could do a
whole show about Google.  There are so
many features, so many different things they are offering.

                        In fact, very shortly
you’re going to see that you can take a street view tour of Bare Oaks on Google
Street View.  That was a service I
contracted this year because I think it will make people more comfortable.  They’ll be able to see where they are going
before they get there.  It’s not because
that’s really the problem.  It’s because
when people are nervous about trying naturism, because they are nervous about
taking their clothes off because it’s been beaten in their head that it’s wrong
to take their clothes off and emotionally they just can’t do it.  Sometimes they need to have all the other
concerns that are simple handled.  It’s a
nice-looking place.  It’s a clean looking
place.  Okay, I can go and I can bring my
spouse so it’s not a problem.  They need
to see that, we need to address these things.
We need to talk to them nicely and know they won’t have a bad
experience.  Really, the issue is the
nudity, but the excuses come from everywhere else and you have to help address
them and I think Google Street View will help with that.

                        There is all these other
Google features.  Our blog is through
Google.  The Naturist Living Show website
is done through Google, blogger site as well with a custom URL.  It’s endless.
If you search for Bare Oaks though now after all these directories,
after all the things I’ve done.  For
example, did you claim your listing in Google?
You know you can have a free place listing?  It’s free.
There’s no charge.  You just
confirm you are the owner or the manager.
They do it through a phone card or they email you a postcard for free
and then you are confirmed and then you have the power to control what’s on
there.  Then they allow you to put pictures
and videos and all kind of information and pricing all free.  When you do that, of course, you show up on
the map and that improves your ranking.

                        All that social
marketing as well that I do through Facebook and Pinterest and just look on the
bottom of the page of the Bare Oaks’ website.
You’ll see all the places that we’re involved in.  All that combines, especially after six years
of doing it, to give us incredibly high rankings.  So if anybody types in the words naturism in
Toronto because we’re near the city of Toronto, nudism in Toronto, nudist,
naturist or Ontario, we are in the top three listing every single time, top
three.  I didn’t pay anybody to do
that.  We did that through a lot of
effort over time.  You as a listeners
helped because many of you have shared and commented and you keep listening to
downloads, to links, to clicks.  It all
adds up.

                        Social marketing as
Felicity said, you’ve got to do it.  It’s
very important.  You may not understand
it.  That’s Okay.  Find somebody who does, who by the way is not
necessarily your teenage son.  Your
teenagers are users of the technology.
That does not make them marketers.
Just because they wear running shoes doesn’t mean they know how to build
one.  To be an expert in marketing and an
expert in social media is a skilled in itself and it’s not necessarily a young
person.  So make sure you find people who
actually understand social marketing in order to do it.  It’s not about technology and it’s not about
being a user.

                        You’ll note that I have
talked mostly in this episode about branding and about the target group.  Then that’s because if you understand the
person that you are trying to reach and influence and remember we are a niche
so we are not trying to reach everybody.
You need to understand that small group that is key to who we are.  That small group that is so passionate or
will become so passionate about naturism that you’ll never lose them.  That’s a very powerful business
advantage.  Never mind that we’re trying
to promote a philosophy here.  You have
to succeed in this world because it takes money to survive and it takes money
to keep going.  So you have to have a
successful business.  If you understand
your target group and if you’ve developed a strong brand, if people come to
your club or your resort or your park and have an incredible experience, then
selling it will be obvious because the marketing of it is all about creating
the service in this case and targeting it to the right people.  The message in your advertising will flow out
of that, unless, of course, you want to make sure that when they finally come,
they are not disappointed and they have a fantastic experience while they are
there.  If you understand your brand, if
you develop a strong brand, if you develop an incredible experience and you
know who you are talking to, the message will be obvious.

                        This was a long show, a
lot of points, a lot of discussions about marketing and advertising.  For today, that’s more than enough for this
episode of the Naturist Living Show.
Thank you for listening.  Thank
you for sticking to the end of this particular episode.  My name once again is Stéphane Deschênes and
I’m your host for this podcast and the owner of Bare Oaks Family Naturist
Park.  You can find links to all the items
we talked about in the show in the show notes on the website at
Naturistliving.bareoaks.ca.  That is
B-A-R-E, Bare Oaks, O-A-K-S.ca because we are in Canada.  Keep sending your suggestions and your
comments.

                        I received a number of
suggestions of things I wanted to include in the show, but I decided because it
was going to be this long, I will save it to the next show.  This one is strictly marketing and
advertising and that’s it.  Some of these
other things that you guys have sent me, we’ll make into a future shows coming
up in the next month or two.  I really
appreciate getting them so keep sending them.

                        The show’s email address
is Naturistliving@bareoaks.  That’s again
that’s B-A-R-E again, BareOaks.ca.  Join
us again in about a month for the next episode of the Naturist Living Show.

Female:         This episode of the Naturist Living
Show was brought to you by Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park.  Traditional naturist values in a modern
setting it traditional values means that naturism is more than taking your
clothes off.  It is a life philosophy
with physical, psychological, environmental, social and moral benefits.  Bare Oaks Family Naturist Park strives to
promote those naturist values in a modern setting that provides the amenities
and services that our members and visitors expect.  Free your body.  Free your mind.  Learn more at www.BareOaks.ca.