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by Steve Cony
There is much about the total camp experience that creates an ambience
of informality — summer, warmth, blue skies, school vacation, recreational
dress codes, and experiential learning versus academic learning. Camp
professionals often want to extend this air of informality throughout
the camp’s total interaction with parents and children. Please don’t.
There is a potential pitfall here that must be scrupulously avoided.
Never confuse natural informality with a license for laxity.
Your marketing program represents you at a point when prospective enrollees
and their parents do not yet know much about your camp. They are examining
your messages — and often comparing them to the messages of your
competitors — for any and every cue to help them form an opinion
of you and your practices.
Many of us have fond remembrances of our school years and such scenes
as: When we would begin math or science tests that included essay questions,
some student would inevitably ask, “Does spelling count?” The
questioning student figured that since the test was not about English
or social studies, correct spelling should be irrelevant. Some teachers
would say yes; others no. It is apparent years later that the permissive
teachers were not doing the students any kind of favor. Instead, they
were reinforcing an acceptance of carelessness.
Shift to today. Camp marketing materials are too often filled with spelling
errors, typos, and grammatical horrors. Why? Who really knows? Perhaps
there is some feeling that camp is “natural” and “back-to-basics”
and that exacting disciplines like proper use of the English language
are irrelevant. On the other hand, the people who are creating the messages
may simply not be relying on effective backstops to check their copy before
it is distributed.
Seen from a different perspective, however, this situation is a mine
field. The different perspective mentioned here is that of the educated
parent. To such a reader or viewer, little things like “effect”
or “affect” and “council” or “counsel” and
those apostrophes to the left or to the right of the ending letter “s”
do indeed get noticed — but only when they are used wrongly. Haphazard
use of English — particularly in a printed piece — simply communicates
carelessness on the part of the author. And carelessness is not a desirable
attribute for an institution which is entrusted with children.
Add to this the fact that many camps boast senior staffs made up largely
of educators, and you have a real credibility problem when your first
opportunities to interface with the target audience — your marketing
package — contain errors.
Our newest medium of camp marketing communications probably sports the
most flagrant offenses. We are speaking hear of your Web site. The Web
site presents itself as an ideal place to be current. Unlike a brochure
that gets printed once every three to five years, the photos and text
on a Web site can be changed constantly. Unfortunately, Web sites get
activated, and then are far too often ignored. As a result, dates remain
unchanged. Rates remain posted throughout the active year then remain
on the site past the camp season, when they no longer apply. Asked why
the old rates are there, camp directors are known to reply that the rates
for the coming year have yet to be finalized. Fine, but you must delete
the now outdated rates and temporarily refer to “watch this space.”
Every camp publishes it’s rates and dates yearly. For some, this
is the entire brochure; for others, it is an insert for the more permanent
marketing materials. In either case, this piece deserves careful scrutiny
before printing. The last place anyone would want to find a mistake is
on the very instrument used for specifying payment and other terms of
enrollment and participation.
The only place where the “reality” of spelling and grammatical
errors can be considered acceptable is a newsletter format which includes
submissions by campers. Young children’s spelling and grammar can
have a certain charm. However, this leniency should not be extended to
staff members. Even first-year counselors should be perceived as sufficiently
caring and careful to be willing and able to write correctly.
Here are some suggestions to help you ensure a positive image:
- All printed materials — including Web site content — should
be proofread by three different people before being made public.
- If all three proofreaders agree on needed corrections, you are done.
If two out of three agree on a particular correction and the third does
not, it is necessary to go to a next confirming step. Do not simply
figure that “majority rules.”
- Understand up-front that commas and apostrophes are the trickiest
— and deserve special attention.
- The Web site should be reviewed thoroughly during the week following
the camp season, and then should receive a page-by-page once-over at
least monthly throughout the year. This maintenance check should include
not only the accuracy of all copy, but also the functionality and navigability
of the site.
That last point brings us so the issue of organization. You have a lot
of information to impart and this should be done in the most orderly and
accessible format possible. Experienced Web surfers have come to expect
a certain general pattern for wending their way through a site. Said differently,
certain types of information and various levels of detail are expected
to be in certain places and to require certain established paths of navigation.
Take a look at popular Web sites and learn from the experts.
Brochures should feature the general information at the beginning and
the more detailed data next, all clearly labled for easy skimming and
access. If you place your materials in a pocket folder, consider an alternative
to stuffing a stack of eleven-inch high single sheets. That alternative
could be a series of cards, graduated in height. The card at the back
of the stack is the expected eleven inches, and then each preceding card
is slightly shorter. The top of each card shows a header band, labeling
the information that will be found there.
The rise of the DVD format has made it possible to restructure and divide
your camp promotional video into chapters — like a sequence of notable
scenes in a movie. In most cases, however, you will want to think carefully
before doing this. Your promotional video is your selling story. It should
have a beginning and an ending — with a logical progression of topics
and feature/benefit descriptions in between. Dividing your DDV into click-able
chapters could have the ultimate result of putting your viewer in charge,
thus taking control of your selling story away from you. An example —
soccer is just one offering at your camp. If you chapter-divide your video
and then label soccer as chapter sixteen, avid soccer players may skip
right to that point, watch it over and over again, and evaluate your camp
based solely on their most favorite sport. This is clearly not the usage
you intended for your exciting, multi-faceted, and comprehensive video
presentation of the total camp.
The time and effort you put into meticulous proofreading and careful
organization of your marketing package will reward you with marketplace
perceptions of your camp as professional, well-run, and trustworthy. In
short, these perceptions support an overall feeling of confidence in you.
Now turn immediately to page 58 for a final important note about this
column.
Originally published in the 2003 May/June issue
of Camping Magazine. |
