Off the Wall Summer Ideas. Well Someone Has To Do IT!

We’re always dealing with something. Some days it seems like we are swatting away problems every 15 minutes. The bartender called to tell us he is sick and won’t be in; well at least he called. Lane 13 and 14 are giving us heartburn, a scorer part is out and it looks like snow is going to wipe out tonight’s biggest league of the week.

On top of all the day to day ins and outs, you have to gear up for fall leagues, mid winter leagues, summer leagues, tournaments and now you have to maintain your website, create social media communications, send out emails and maintain your website.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming.

So grab a cup of Joe and let me take you through some quick planning ideas for summer leagues.  I know your summer leagues have been getting a bit softer every year, once in a while you get a great program going and it boosts you over last year, but the home runs are getting fewer. L

Stop fighting it.

Summer is the time when you have the most lane availability. It’s a time to introduce new people to bowling and put on your sunny face.  It’s a time to host company parties, fund raisers and special events. It’s a time for Kids Bowl Free and building your data base. 

It’s a time to refresh and rethink.

Last year, you put together your summer league schedule from the year before and the year before you put together a schedule from the year before that. 

Are you still going to do what didn’t work so well the last three years and “hope” that it somehow works this summer?  Seriously?

Please get a fresh sheet of paper or open your computer screen, laptop or tablet and right this down

WHAT CAN I DO THAT WOULD CREATE AN EXPERIENCE THAT PEOPLE WOULD TALK ABOUT?

 Here are some idea starters:

·        A summer fund raising league where you contribute $500 to the charity.  Did you know that the American Heart Association and the BPAA now have an alliance which will help you work with local chapters?

·        A Miller High Life Shirt League that’s so retro that it is cool for your seniors or for companies…and you can do it in 8 weeks.

·        A NASCAR league where participants get tickets to the Pocono 400. Available for proprietors in NY, NJ and PA.

·        A Bowlers night at the ball park, whether it is major leagues or minor leagues. NO it’s not just giving them tickets. They don’t need you for that. It’s about putting together an adult child package that includes tickets, an autographed ball or picture of the team, food vouchers, play time for the kids on the field and maybe a meet and greet with the players. No doubt this would be easier in the minor league stadiums, but hey you never know.  What’s that experience worth to Dad and Junior or Juniorette?  You got it. Priceless!

·        A series of company parties that you market as hard as or even harder than your holiday parties. What? Companies don’t have outings in the summer? Of course they do and here’s what you can promise: GUARANTEE THEM AN-INDOOR-NO RAIN-OUT-NO-ANTS-NO-SUN- BURN-NO-HEAT-STROKE-NO-DROWNING-NO-DEHYDRATION-NO FAINTING-SUMMER-OUTING. Think that’s enough benefits.  Go put that on a big postcard as a headline and send it out. I’ll bet your phone will ring off the hook.  And even if it doesn’t ring off the hook, you will get some parties…AND YOU’LL GET SOME PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT IT.

·        How about turning the center into a club on Friday and Saturday nights and book a band schedule and publish it in April or May. “It’s expensive,    I can’t do it. It’s hard.” Yeah, Yeah, I know, but here’s how you do it. Get your junior bowlers or high school bowlers to go scout up bands in the area. Then set a price of $15 to come in on Friday or Saturday night. You keep $10 and the band gets $5.  If the band doesn’t have a following or know how to use social media; you don’t want them anyway.  If you’re real creative, you might be able to get a few bucks from a charity to sponsor it or Pepsi or a store in town as a way to keep the kids off the street in the summer after the sun goes down and their “heat goes up”.

·        Start your planning now. In February. Have it all done by March 1^st. make your flier and websites open play friendly.  Have leagues for competitively high average bowlers (scratch leagues, get better gear leagues, tournament leagues – run a different tourney each week – on the same lane conditions.  Have leagues for low average bowlers (Bad Bowlers –I’m bad but getting better at Happy Lanes).  Have leagues and instructions for newbies; for newcomers in the neighborhood who usually move after their kids are out of school for the summer. 

·        And then go back and check on which leagues were successful last year Create an incentive for those bowlers to bring a friend.  Create an incentive for your employees too. If you’re still thinking $2 a bowler, you might as well close this summer. I’m talking $25 a bowler for a 13 to 15 week summer and $100 a team for the same thing.  Think about it, if the league bowls 13 weeks and you get $10 per bowler per week, you’re getting $520 per team. If you get A NEW team that didn’t bowl with you since last summer, that’s an additional $420 you will get that you didn’t have last year. NOT $100 you will spend. You don’t spend it until you get the increment over last year’s 10 x 4 league.

All right now. Lift your spirits. Go out there and fire up your team. Brainstorm every new idea possible and then go out there and make your customers say WOW!

And WOW again!!

Awareness

Been moving around the country since the new year and talking to lots of proprietors.  One of the topics that came up, during the course of our conversations, was the subject of "awareness."

"Fred, one proprietor said to me, "we just aren't visible. Bowling has no awareness."  I agreed. Another proprietor said to me: "People just don't think about us; they don't think about bowling".  Again, I agreed.

And then it hit me. We're looking at the wrong end of the problem. It's not more awareness we need.

We need to do something so cool, and so outrageous that our community of followers starts to talk about us and that creates awareness.

What if I rolled a bowling ball down the length of US 95 in an attempt to set a new Guinness Book of Records.

Would that be outrageous enough to get our followers to talk about us so much that other people, who don't follow us would become aware of bowling?

Yeah, I think it would.

Boring.

Marie and I checked into a Florida Hampton Inn for about 4 days and I remarked to her how unremarkably remarkable this hotel is. In fact it was the same hotel I stayed in Detroit, Dubuque and Des Moines. They’re all the same…give or take a few wrinkles here or there.

But over the last 10 years, something has been happening in the hotel rooms. When Holiday Inns used to advertise that “the best surprise was no surprise", they were right for the time. Back then all the weary traveler wanted was comfort, convenience, ease of service, reliability and quality.

But that was then and this is now.

As David Brooks commented in the New York Times recently, “It’s easy to forget how much more boring the marketplace was just a two decades ago – more boring cuisine, more boring restaurants and more boring hotels.”

Recently, there has been a creative brand explosion within the hotel industry. It’s called boutique hotels. And while a $339 night hotel in Soho NY can be sold out and $139 Hilton Garden Inn goes begging for rooms, I ask myself why that is?

Simply because people will pay extra not to be bored.

People are no longer buying things. Do you really think the IPad, the big screen TV, the bazillion Internet gadgets and devices are being bought are being bought NOT because they are just “things”, but because they represent “experiences."

So the basic rule of consumer happiness is:  Buy Experiences, Don’t Buy Things.

If you are still selling things, you have a problem with the new consumer and more importantly if the hotel industry, which used to be a commodity can differentiate by turning itself into an emotional experience, why can’t the bowling industry?

Clues of this starting are beginning to be seen. From the "all open play experience" to the "private lanes" to "the boutique centers"  to the FEC with bowling as an anchor, we are seeing this trend s-l-o-w-l-y starting to take shape. and it needs to start moving faster. We need to get an emotional arousal from our customers because the Internet has taught them to expect more and thus they are culturally more competent than ever and more informed to make better choices that won't result in boredom.

But far too many proprietors are holding on to the past.  And while it is expensive to change; it is far more expensive to remain the same and be viewed as just plain old BORING!