A Business beyond Marketing and Advertising

Fun Is Imminent

Over the July 4 weekend, I took my kids to a place they have been to at least a dozen times. I spent hundreds of dollars, drove about seven hours round trip, and did loads of stuff we have done, well, many times. I am likely to do it again in a few months, if not sooner. When we do this again, the kids will call their friends to see who can go with us, and try to find someone that has not been with us on this trip yet, because they love to tell new people about it as much as I do.

What I am talking about is Knoebels, a family-run and operated amusement park that is in its 89^th year of operation in central Pennsylvania. It is the largest amusement park of its kind in America, in that admission is – get this – free. So is parking. Admission to rides are by tickets or armbands, with rides ranging, on the most part, from $1 to $3.

What are the rides like? Start with world-class wooden roller coasters. The Phoenix gets raves for “air time”, which is when you float along with the coaster, rather than stay in the seat. I’m also a fan of the hardcore workout and force of the Twister, the park’s highest and fastest ride. There is also a new retro-cool Flying Kites ride that runs without a track.

Going beyond coasters, I’m a big fan of the old-school bumper cars with true punch. Some prefer the well-done dark haunted house, or appreciate the huge section with smaller-scale rides for little kids. There is also a great big pool and waterslide area, an ancient carousel where you grab brass rings for a prize, a Ferris Wheel, old-time trains and cars, and more, more, more.

Every year brings new rides, because the management is constantly on the lookout to add ride assets from the open market. (This year, it is a metal looping roller coaster. I am not a fan of upside down, so you will have to ask someone else how good it is.)

Knoebels has a social media feed, though it almost seems sacrilege. They have also done some local spot TV advertising, and I am sure there is some channel and affiliate marketing done. But all of that seems besides the point, because to my eyes, Knoebels is a business that is done so well, it doesn’t need marketing or advertising.

What it needs is word of mouth, which is good, because it is plainly phenomenal at generating it.

There is, honestly, nothing that I want to change about this place. You can bring your own food, and even your own dog, if you like. If you buy food, it is great quality and fairly priced. You can actually win prizes in the arcades without unnatural skill or costly persistence. The mix of food for sale is downright amazing, with everything from the usual carnival fare (meat on a stick, ice cream, cotton candy, etc.) to an impressive array of healthier options.

Wait times for rides rarely get long enough to negatively impact your day, and even if they do, you aren’t as stressed as you are in big admission parks, because you aren’t trying to make sure you are getting your fair ration of fun per dollar. That also means that everyone in the park is in a better mood, and there is no horrible class system of fast pass privilege to help generate meltdowns.  It is as safe as houses, to the point where you find yourself giving your kids the green light to go off and have their own adventures. Try this place once, and you may never get your kids to go to the big name places again.

Even on my toughest day at this park – a day where multiple children brought flu with them that then got worst at the park, which meant I had to cut the visit short and drive them home with a car filled with nausea – everyone involved has thanked me, profusely, for taking them, and wanted to come back soon. That is because Knoebels runs their business to encourage true evangelism from their guests, and long-term, repeat business. That is why they are free to enter, free to park, and free to enjoy, at any activity level. They want to be the amusement park that you call home.

At this point, you might be wondering where the catch is, or if Knoebels is one of my agency’s clients. There are no catches, and my only interest in Knoebels is as a fan, and as someone who wants to make sure the place is around for future generations.

They do not need my agency’s services, because their product sells itself. It also markets itself, too. Such is the power of transcendent customer service.

May it always be so!

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Speaking of making customers happy, I would like to ask you to like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP box at the top right of this page.  We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

Confessions of a Smartphone Hater

Filled arms, empty minds

Today, I gave up the ghost of my badly aging smartphone and upgraded. I was well past my contract past due date, the device was losing integrity on battery life and performance, and my work requires an effective mobile device. 

Joining me in the exercise was the CTO of my small business, AKA my wife, a gadget enthusiast who knows tons more about these things than I do. The agency’s shareholders (AKA my kids) were also very happy about the purchase. To be fair, they have put up with my growing frustration over the old device’s performance, particularly while using the mapping feature in my cab duties for their social lives.

As for me? I had so little enthusiasm for the transaction that the clerk at my local phone store felt moved to beg for a good survey result. She may have also given me more than expected on the trade-in value just because I seemed so nonplussed by the experience.

I am old enough to (a) remember when this tech was beyond the dreams of James Bond directors, and (b) really, truly enjoy the limited amount of time when I do not have the device on me. (Mostly during workouts and yard work. But I digress.)

It seems incredibly ungrateful to complain about the failures of any smartphone. Even on its worst day, the phone that I gave up today was a marvel of technology, received information from space, and made me more productive. If it only had continued to work as well as the day when I got it, I would still be using it.

I’m also enough of an environmentalist and fair trade capitalist to consider the incredibly short lifespan of these devices to be a true scandal, and feel complicit in multiple crimes by making a purchase, let alone being a customer.

The ambivalence goes deeper still. This is my fourth smartphone in the past 15 years, and it is the first with a virtual keyboard, rather than a real key QWERTY machine. Sure, I could have stuck to my guns and kept the feature, and the amount of typos and auto-correct fails might drive me to distraction, but you have to make too many other compromises to justify it. As a marketer, I need to be in the mainstream.

My first smartphone was a Blackberry in a holster, with quick-draw email speed and the expectation that the device was for work first, with all that implies in terms of time off meaning time away. The fact that these are now so ubiquitous, with the majority of Web traffic coming on the platform (admit it, you are reading this on one, aren’t you?) Does not fill me with joy.

But when I dig down deep enough, what’s the real objection?

It is one thing to know, intellectually, that the world is moving away from text to images. That ship sailed in the monochrome monitor age.

It is quite another point to get a reminder of that, emotionally, every time I look at the screen. A screen that I will look at more than any other, over the lifespan of the device.

And finally, something else entirely to know that as an advertising and marketing pro, I can either learn to love this screen, or fail to keep pace with the prime demographic that most of my clients want to reach.

No one ever said progress was easy, right?  

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Speaking of reaching a moving target, I would like to ask you to like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or visit my agency’s site. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

Saving Privacy For, Well, No One

Privacy Warriors

Remember, you are fighting for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she ever did. – Rufus T. Firefly (aka, Groucho Marx in “Duck Soup”)

Let us wrap up the first half of 2015 with a quick word about my favorite online advertising and marketing straw man… privacy. It has said to be growing an importance as a problem that needs solving, what with the explosion of mobile, cloud and Internet of Things computing. For the fearful, there is an ever-growing amount of coverage about identity theft and malware-controlled machines to drive impression fraud, along with services to cover the problem. Programmatic and remarketing spends makes all of this more obvious and wearable… well, yeah, I cannot even finish the set-up.

Privacy concerns are nearly as old as the Web, and what has been true all along is that the younger you are, the less you seem to care about this, and willing to trade it off for any kind of personal benefit. I have worked at start-ups that made software that served ads based on clickstream, which any number of people would pule against… but it did not stop nine figures of downloads over a short span of years, for the simple trade of free software. Once that concern went sideways, the same basic trade-off was achieved, but with cookie files and without apps, and that’s more or less the industry standard now.

What happens next? More intrusive technology, with greater targeting capabilities, and cross-platform learning cycles. Fevered reactions about how some brands are cyber-stalking individual consumers, and some consumer categories getting special attention from ad exchanges, because they will be deemed as too over-the-top or out of bounds. Then, the Internet of Things, which will multiply the pace of all this by a factor of ten.

How? Well, wearable tech really is a game changer, especially when it has cross-device information. Monitoring health features for fitness is just the first moments of a very long game, with greater iterations doing more to establish a baseline of health to prevent for seizures, strokes and other significant issues. It’s not all going to come from your watch or your phone, of course – your car will also monitor your body for performance issues, and maybe even your mattress, toothbrush, eyeglasses and so on.

That is not controversial at all, really. The idea that wearable tech might be able to save your life, or in the case of an automobile, others, is a product that sells itself. However, when it turns into ads for products that seem delicate for a shared screen or too far down into the bloodstream of the individual user… well, that is where the privacy problem falls away really. Screens are just too ubiquitous, and there is no reason for a screen to be shared by anyone, especially to younger demographics. Combine this with the willingness to trade private information for any sort of gain, and it is, once again, a virtue that will not be fought for.

Finally, this. We presume that ads that are “too targeted” violate privacy… but what if such ads are rare, beneficial, and even of a high value due to aggressive offers and price? If you are willing to share your photos with social media, your preferences with publishers and e-commerce sites, and your email address near and far… well, why would you have a line for anything else?

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Speaking of a targeting with value, I would like to ask you to like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or make an RFP at the top right box.  We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.