by Steve Cony
The most important target audiences for your marketing campaign are,
of course, prospective campers and their families. Beyond this, however,
it is critically important to consider your own camp staff as a target
audience. Your directors, counselors, and specialists must be thoroughly
familiar with the materials you distribute, and the story that these materials
convey, for the following reasons:
- Your marketing message assuredly includes significant references to
the qualities and the uniqueness of your staff.
- Thus, contacts between staff and campers — and between staff and families
— must support the message you have already delivered.
- Staff should have an understanding that the vitality and longevity
of the camp depends on marketing.
Why?
First, you probably refer to your staff and its quality somewhere within
the marketing message. It is therefore imperative that your staff members
know how they are being described and pictured. This adds definition to
your expectations of them while it also helps them understand their importance
to the camp experience. At the same time, seeing the emphasis you place
on staff can be very complimentary to them.
If you position your staff as being loving and nurturing, the descriptions
you use in your marketing materials can help to motivate individual staffers’
behaviors. As an alternative example, if you position your staff as being
humorous, fun loving, and full of surprises, this too can help to reinforce
the desired job description. When employees realize that description or
promise of a certain kind is preceding their performance, it can act as
a motivator.
Several camp directors report that during staffing interviews they make
primary references to the brochure, the Web site and/or clips from the
promotional video. When prospective counselors find your Web site, there
should — of course — be a dedicated section for staff and job opportunities.
However, applicants should be encouraged to browse the entire site for
the sake of learning all about the camp.
Once hired, new staffers should be carefully taught the role of marketing
in the successful operation of your camp. They should understand why you
are so fastidious in picking up stray pieces of paper throughout your
grounds. They should appreciate the role that firsthand impressions play
in people’s decision making and thus why you emphasize the importance
of camp tours and/or visiting day. One of your best opportunities to share
this information is during orientation.
When photographers or videographers are at camp on their assignments
for you, staff members should be strongly encouraged to treat them in
a welcoming manner rather than a disdainful manner. You should emphasize
that you have engaged these people’s valuable services for the sake of
continuing the camp and its traditions. Rather than considering such efforts
as “ too Hollywood” or “too Broadway,” counselors and specialists should
be helped to understand the important role that the photographer’s and
videographer’s finished products will play. If staff can share this appreciation,
the positive spirit will show up on their faces in photos and during their
video interviews.
Beyond what happens on a photo or video shoot day, you should endeavor
to bring the topic of marketing closer to the staff. However, this must
be done carefully, because you don’t want to make the marketing decision
process universally democratic throughout camp. This has to do with both
timing and the review process.
Timing is Everything
In reference to timing, a brief case study: A resident camp chose to
create a new, modernized, and more strategically appropriate camp logo.
The directors decided to “unveil” the new logo for the staff only during
the camp session. The result was near mutiny. Staff decried the new logo
as “unnecessary, because — after all — we love the old logo!” Of course,
they loved the old logo. They had grown up with it. They had worn it on
their shirts, their caps, and their jackets. In fact, many of them were
wearing the old logo while previewing the new one. However, a smart business
decision had been previously made — it was time for a new logo. But midway
through a camp session was not the time to unfurl the new banner for its
first showing. The camp directors spent the next few days in hastily scheduled
staff meetings, trying to calm everyone down. Introducing the new logo
to staffers was intended as one more way to show them how important they
are, but the unveiling became an honest mistake. In this case, the better
alternative may have been a group e-mail with an attachment, sent shortly
after Labor Day.
Marketing Decisions — Who and Why?
Likewise, not every member of the staff should participate fully in the
marketing decision making process. Some staffers have the ability to make
valuable contributions toward furthering the camp’s image by improving
the camp’s message. But, more often, everyone has an opinion about marketing,
and few of these are significantly valuable. Marketing decision making
must be reserved for those who can understand the goals of the marketing
decisions.
Finally, your staff must understand the role that marketing plays in
securing the continuity and the longevity of your camp operation. If your
camp fills before the printer’s ink is dry on the application forms, then
marketing is of lesser importance. If, however, your camp must actively
seek prospects and then work to turn prospects into enrollments, the staff
need to appreciate this. Counselors and specialists need to understand
the degree to which the marketing program helps to secure their summer
employment. They must not be allowed to perceive the marketing effort
as something that is uncharacteristically slick for a “back-to-nature”
institution such as camp.
If you can build an appreciation among your staff for the promotional
program, your marketing will then serve multiple roles — motivator of
prospective families, reinforcement for current families, standard of
excellence for your entire staff, and a tool to motivate positive interactions
between counselors and campers.
Originally published in the 2002 March/April
issue of Camping Magazine. |
