Comments on: A Tale of Two Dealers

By: Joe Lewis

Joe Lewis — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:10:12 +0000

I find myself in agreement with Ben and Thom. The results the Discover Boating campaign achieved before and after the re-direction are nothing short of amazing. Arguments can be made pro and con weather the marketing reduction was a wise move. What should be crystal clear and supported by all is we need to move this program forward quickly and as effectively as we have in the past. If we as an industry don’t promote boating who will?

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:14:57 +0000

Thom:
I Knew you would respond to this article. So now I have to take issue with the issue you took with me. (You had to know I would.) What I hear from dealers is that they feel boat builders pretty much took over the Grow Boating Board and then redirected 85% of the G.B. monies to the manufacturers. Then, I am told, after complaints from MRAA members, the Board (Boat builders?), decided to just not collect the 85% to shut the dealers up. How is that working out for you?

A lot of dealers are pretty upset over the way this has been handled. To quote one well known dealer, “When the hell will this industry learn that we are all in this together? If I ran my dealership like this, I would be out of business before too long.” He added, “It is part of what’s wrong with boat sales, and our Industry being in the doldrums. We just can’t seem to get together and work together as an industry, and it is just plain stupid.”

As I understand it, the Grow Boating is an Industry program set up to be run by an “all industry” Grow Boating Board. But is it??

By: Thom Dammrich

Thom Dammrich — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:38:11 +0000

Hey Ben–

I am going to take issue with you. I think the Grow Boating approach has clearly been the Dealer B approach!! We continued promoting, and spending our dollars wisely to get the most bang for the buck.

For the past eighteen months 85% of the GB assessments were re-directed to manufacturers, most of whom spent that and much more to help dealers sell boats during the depths of the recession. The balance of the dollars were deployed effectively online promoting the boating lifestyle.

With 8% of the dollars, we achieved > 25% of the results in terms of visits to http://www.discoverboating.com, prospects generated, “Get Started in Boating” DVDs requested and sent, and PR impressions. No, we are not on TV at the moment, but we continue to aggressively promote the boating lifestyle and participation in boating through our public relations efforts and online marketing efforts and social media.

We just recently launched a Facebook game, Making Waves. Check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/making-waves/ and send it to all your friends to. Since the launch in the past two weeks, the game has generated:
• 30 million impressions from the online media buy
• More than 10,000 minutes of consumer engagement with the game
• 4,085 Sweepstakes leads!
• 1730 DVD requests (32 percent of prospects are asking for DVDs!)
• 1846 Discover Boating newsletter requests (34 percent of all prospects).

We continue to have an aggressive effort to promote boating participatioin and the boating lifestyle. And, we are working a new strategy and plan to expand these efforts further as full funding returns in January.