Marketing: Are we ok, or do we need help?

[Eric Sedletzky]

We need shows with underwater knife fights, movies with divers getting trapped in caves and rescued WITHOUT g#dda^ned exploding scooters, men and women who look like real people - not metrosexual models (hell Lloyd Bridges looked like he could be your dad if you saw him on the street) not some big movie star, and story lines need to be believable.

A smart person could make a movie out of Edd Sorenson's last two years and would not have to sensationalize a damn thing to make SCUBA look like something worth getting good training for! But they won't. Because you need to have monsters, a zombie or two, drugs, and the main agencies they'd likely go to would do their very best to downplay the need for comprehensive training. "We know you need special training to go into caves but if you scare people too bad we won't even be able to get them to take a manatee wrangler specialty, so tone down the danger aspect of diving."

Seeing Jessica Alba in warm water gear is nice but I honestly believe if you made a realistic show or movie about NE or Great Lakes wreck divers and how they really look you'd get the average person watching and thinking that "hey I can do that!" But again they won't. Because TV execs are morons. Movie execs think you need Tom Cruise or the new AARP cover boy (Brad Pitt for those who missed it) to get people to come.

Even if it was just a little underwater action once in a while like they used to have on CSI Miami when Eric was sent underwater to collect evidence. At least there was something for us dive addicts to get our fix. How do we beat it into those TV executive idiots that scuba diving and underwater suspense and action is cool and will sell again!? Knife fights, people getting speared, hoses cut, all that stuff would be great. They show people getting shot all the time on land, what's the difference? Just like CSI shows, throw in a few hot chicks and you have it.
They could do a show about an underwater patrol unit off the coast that protects against drug runners and terrorist attacks. They could even have an episode about busting a huge game poaching ring. It could be brilliant!
They (the execs) don't need to know that it would help scuba, all they need to know is how it will put money in their pockets.

 

[RJP]

To put it another way, mountain bikes sell better where there are mountains. Mountain bikes won't sell well in the middle of Kansas.

Mountain bikes actually do sell better in Colorado than Kansas, but topography has nothing to do with it. The reason that mountain bikes sell better in Colorado than Kansas is that the median household income in Colorado is $58,000 vs $51,000 for Kansas (US median is $51k) and there is also a greater psycho-social skew towards outdoor-type activities in Colorado than in Kansas. But did you know that the breakdown of bike sales by type, varies little from state to state? Mountain bikes made up ~25% of unit sales in the US in FY2012 - ranging from 23-26%.) With that in mind, do you know what state(s) buys more bikes per capita than any other in the US? (And by extension, mountain bikes since the proportion of bikes by type doesn't vary appreciably by state.) Again, topography has nothing to do with it... Maryland, Massachusetts, and NJ. Wanna know why? Because those states have the highest median family income for families of four or more which are the highest purchasers of bikes.

But the point here is not about WHO buys mountain bikes, but rather WHY people by mountain bikes... or anything else for that matter.

People purchases products and services in direct proportion to the degree to which that product or service meets a need that person has. No one - other than commercial divers and scuba instructors - actually NEEDS to scuba dive. But people still engage in diving... so by definition scuba diving must meet some need to that some people have. The issue is that there are multiple, disparate needs that different segments of people are meeting through their consumption of scuba diving.

What needs are met by scuba diving? Is there one, single "need" that scuba diving in general meets for all divers? Before you answer that question, ask yourself if, for example, the automotive industry meets one single need for all customers.

 

[SeaHorse81]

Nothing is going to change until diving is put right back in peoples' faces like it was in the 50's and 60's through TV shows and movies.
Taking up scuba is not just going to magically pop into peoples' minds out of thin air, there needs to be a trigger.
And once you get those people, keeping them in scuba is a whole different battle.

I think that's pretty much it. Well summarized.

I honestly believe if you made a realistic show or movie about NE or Great Lakes wreck divers and how they really look you'd get the average person watching and thinking that "hey I can do that!"

If something like Ice Road Truckers (I mean, they're driving -- wow) could be kept alive for multiple seasons, you'd think a show featuring commercial divers, public safety divers, marine biologists, etc. would do just fine. Get diving into pop culture and it's a whole new ballgame.

 

[RJP]

A smart person could make a movie out of Edd Sorenson's last two years...

A smart person probably COULD make such a movie... but a smart person WOULDN'T, because just about no one would go see it. Unless Tom Cruise played Edd, and someone wrote in Jessica Alba as love interest. And an robot, a dinosaur, a hobbit, and a meteor hurtling towards the earth.

Take a guess what proportion of households in the US with a household income of $100,000 or more report that at least one member of the household engaged in scuba diving in 2012. Take a guess at those of $200,000.

By comparison, what percent of households over $100k/$200k do you think engaged in downhill snow-skiing in 2012. How about golf?

 

[Akimbo]

…If something like Ice Road Truckers (they're driving -- wow) could be kept alive for multiple seasons, you'd think a show featuring commercial divers, public safety divers, marine biologists, etc. would do just fine. Get diving into pop culture and it's a whole new ballgame.

There is one: Bering Sea Gold : Discovery Channel

Unfortunately, it has exactly the opposite effect of making people want to dive… ever!

 

[SeaHorse81]

There is one: Bering Sea Gold : Discovery Channel

Unfortunately, it has exactly the opposite effect of making people want to dive… ever!

Well okay, if the diving was not taking place in one of the nastiest underwater environments on earth, then maybe...

 

[Trace Malinowski]

I am learning open wheel racing this summer. Why? Because the movie, "Rush," reminded me that I wanted to race formula cars as a kid. The F-3 racing school at Pocono told me classes are filling faster than ever. An instructor told me, "We've been rushed by 'Rush'."

The film is based upon the Niki Lauda and James Hunt rivalry in the 1970's. Niki Lauda had a crash in which he suffered disfiguring facial burns, but returned to racing. The guy burned up in his car and yet we still want to race!

We've spent too much effort trying to play down the risks of diving and make sure children, women, the elderly and minority groups didn't feel so left out. The sport lost its true demographic - young men, who finding out how freaking cool it is to be a diver, get their girlfriends, sisters, parents, and others to try it too. Most people just want to try diving. Some want lifelong adventure.

We need guys like Jake Speed.

Jake Speed: We were gonna fight our way through enemy territory. Scale the highest mountain in this ********* place. Traverse a bridge that was about to collapse. And then if we were lucky, I mean really lucky, we were gonna fight our way through two thousand extremely poisonous snakes.
Margaret Winston: There are thousands of snakes around here?
Jake Speed: There's gotta be if you look hard enough!

 

[drrich2]

People often lament that there aren't more people diving, but out of curiousity, how many people should be diving by your reckoning? If the goal is getting more business into ailing LDS's, if we doubled the # of active divers, would the businesses get double the money, or would more open up so we'd have double the narrow-margin LDS businesses competing?

As for making diving a daring, cool adventure sport, isn't that over-confident risk-taking macho mentality something more seasoned divers try to oppose? It seems to me conscientious, responsible routine gear maintenance, respect for NDL limits & planned gas reserve limits, calling dives if 'something doesn't feel right,' not pushing your comfort envelope too fast & too far, avoid environments not trained for (e.g.: cave, wreck penetration, etc...) and ideally rigorous adherence to good buddy practices (if not solo diving) are pushed on the forum. And in accident threads where we example dive reports after somebody dies, there's a tendency to 'call a fool a fool' and condemn incautious practices that raised the risk level.

Then I read this upthread:

Being a scuba diver was once thought of as a prestigious accomplishment like being accepted into Harvard or Yale. Ivy League schools don't need to advertise the same way as community colleges. DEMA, training agencies, and dive shops have all followed marketing campaigns that give the message anyone can do it. Diving is no longer publicly perceived as a great adventure fraught with danger, mystery and intrigue. With that, diving has lost its sex-appeal. The sport no longer has a face as it did with Jacques Cousteau. There are no heroes in posters in dive shops like you will find in sports like mountain climbing. Participants are often middle-aged, obese, and highly critical of one another rather than young, fit and impressed by talent like in the sport of surfing.

Do we want the scuba community to become a click of highly competitive dare-devil narcissistic alpha males? Aren't these people often derided as fools on the forum?

Would the car industry sell more cars if only NASCAR wannabes were issued driver's licenses?

Richard.

 

[RJP]

I think that's pretty much it. Well summarized.



If something like Ice Road Truckers (I mean, they're driving -- wow) could be kept alive for multiple seasons, you'd think a show featuring commercial divers, public safety divers, marine biologists, etc. would do just fine. Get diving into pop culture and it's a whole new ballgame.

Di you think that Ice Road Truckers and other shows of that type would have any appeal if there wasn't a high propensity for an accident/crash/death? Suppose the truckers just drove back and forth between two cities without incident or drama - the show would have been cancelled halfway through the first episode. So, by extension, a show about diving would have to have danger, drama, tension, etc to be of interest. Do you think a TV show about divers getting bent, injured, lost at sea, etc will do much to INCREASE the allure of diving?

 

[flots am]

Hello Industry Friends,

I'm working on starting a marketing agency for the scuba industry. I'm curious to see if anyone has feedback for me.

You need to fix diver retention. This means training them well enough initially that they can go out and dive locally and think "Wow, that was awesome!" not "That really blew! What the hell was I thinking?"

The first group will dive forever. The second will let their equipment age for a few years then out it up on eBay.

We don't need more divers, we need more active divers. This takes better, longer training, not faster and cheaper. It also takes work. I can tell you exactly who will continue to dive locally. It's the divers to were taught well enough to be happy and comfortable and safe, and have someone to take them out on smaller non-scary dives initially, and work up to bigger more demanding dives.

The once a year vacation divers are useless for any long term business because they stop diving after a few years. If you can't teach people to enjoy local diving, they will eventually stop. The race to the bottom for price of training and race to the top for speed produces nothing but one-time revenue for the certification agencies.

Just for an example, my OW class took probably 8 weeks of weekends, plus when I was done, people kept inviting me out on dives. 14 years later, I've spent the price of a nice SUV on SCUBA. The people I know who picked up a c-card on vacation got hurt or scared and stopped diving, spent whatever the class cost, plus rental gear for a few dives, and that was the end of it.

If I were a shop owner or a manufacturer, I'd be working like hell to get more divers like me, and less divers of the "Check off the bucket list" variety.