"Again, research I've done with hundreds of non-divers clearly indicates that swashbuckling pirates and skulls and sharks and other "adventure" signals actually turn 4-6 people off for every 1-2 they attract."
2 Of the biggest draws in diving are coral reefs, and wrecks. After that, at a guess (and at times associated with wrecks), are seeing 'big stuff' (e.g.: sharks, the goliath grouper aggregation) and 'macro.' (e.g.: nudibranch lovers, anemone shrimp photographers, etc...) and finally spear fishermen. I have have the order of #'s wrong on some (& I'm leaving out technical diving, cave diving, etc...).
Not all of those sound like big, bold, 'where no man has gone before' type activities (unless your wreck guys want to do penetrations, or go technical and maybe pursue the Andrea Doria). They sound somewhat like...
1.) People who tour botanical gardens and like flower beds/decorative landscaping (coral reef divers).
2.) History buffs, the shorts who might like using metal detectors at old cemeteries in the woods (wreck divers). The military aspect of many wrecks is important to some.
3.) Animal/nature lovers - not just hunters, but people who enjoy seeing deer, moose, bear, elk, etc...in the wild (think land tours of Alaska, or people who go to zoos or wild-life parks). (Big animal encounters).
4.) Bug collectors and some land-macro photographers (the macro UW photographer).
My main 'pre-diving' interest was field herping - I enjoyed seeking out reptiles, some some extent amphibians and other wild animals, in the wild and photographing (& hand-catching) them for photographs. I liked snakes, various turtle species, etc... So diving, I like moray eels, barracuda, sharks, sea turtles...basically turtles plus anything with teeth or otherwise powerful (e.g.: sting rays, jelly fish).
How you'd go about marketing to those groups, of whether it would be worthwhile to do so, I don't know. For the reptile aficionado crowd, I wonder what a scuba booth at the large reptile convention like the annual Captive Reptile Breeder's Expo. in Daytona Beach, Fl, might stir up?
Have any of those of you in the dive industry tried marketing directly to a 'non-traditional group' like the above? If so, how'd it go?
Richard.
P.S.: Diver and customer, not a business owner, but interested none-the-less.
