Jeff Fromm’s Post

Transcript

Hi, I'm Jeff from. I'm a senior advisor at Lane Paralever. I'm also a contributor at Forbes and we're going to be talking about generations and guest experience and water parks. I thought I'd maybe just start with a little bit on younger consumers and try to understand the opportunities and challenges you see with that cohort. Obviously, they're big users of water parks. They're probably a big force too. They are the workforce so mean. 90% or more of our of our employee base are people who are under the age of 25 years old and and probably even more the majority of them are are under the age of 20. So we are constantly trying to figure out how to communicate to them, how to engage our employees just while they're on staff but also recruiting purposes and all that it's it's a new world and and the old ways of. Doing things don't really don't really work any longer. And the same thing with our consumers, I mean we are are constantly trying to find new ways to to engage with them and to test happen to different trends and social media and and Tick Tock is really a game changer for us in marketing too. So it's it's it's a whole new world, but umm. You know, they want the same thing. They want the experience. They want to go out and have a good time and and and even people that are working for us, they wanted to work, but they and they want the money, but they also want to be, they want the perks and they want to have some fun while they're while they're working. Makes sense? As you think about this consumer, is there a key fact that you would share that might be super relevant to people who work outside the industry that they could latch on to? Like as you think about younger consumers and youth culture and you work on some other brand that's not, you know, a water park, right? Here's here's what you need to know. You have to give them quick, quick information, second and a half, two seconds tops. I mean if if they're not engaged in in what you're trying to tell them, they will just flip on through and and continue scrolling into the next topic. So you have to you have to punch him real quick and and get them your message and and get them to continue on and and even if they're even after that initial you know second and a half. We got you really only got maybe 7 or 8 seconds to to keep them engaged. So we do a lot of quick quick turnaround video in a fun and entertaining way that will that you know starts off with something funny taps into a trend that they're they're used to seeing or hearing and and just keep it going and and you know the left it looks like an ad the more successful it seems to be. Thank you. Inverse correlation between sort of authentic and and and and and and. Yeah authenticity is is huge and just you know giving them what the experience is they they they can read through the you know ads ad lingo and and you know it's it's you have to give them exactly what it is. Yeah, authenticity is, is great. So when you think about the water park industry specifically, where do you think? The industry efforts are focused at this point in terms of guest experience and consumer innovation and things like that. Umm, well, I think, well, I think it's focused on moms and then that's who we focus a lot of our efforts into his moms. Umm and you know the if you're talking about the younger audience, it's it's moms with young kids and so and some of our locations where we're now building things that are are targeted towards younger like the younger kids, whereas most of the time people are are building things. Or. Young teenagers and up. So if you look sort of in the trends, I mean we we built, we built, we just have huge success in California opening a an area that was targeted towards towards little kids let's say 5 and under. And then communicating that in a in a meaningful way and saying look we have stuff for your kids here and then also providing enough adult experiences to where they can leave their kid with their husband or boyfriend or or whatever their scenario, whatever the scenario is and and they can do something for themselves as well. So it's it's being able to communicate and and target the entire family is is really what we're doing that's really successful for us. Thank you. When when you think about guest experience and and obviously the journey starts before they they come to the park and often ends afterwards with social posts and sharing and photos and memories. Where's the biggest opportunity in the journey for? Closing a gap. Umm, I think marketers and advertisers need to understand that the customer experience no longer starts when they park their car and walk through the front gate. It now starts when they are going on your website and and and looking to buy tickets or they are searching for something to do. In Yelp and TripAdvisor, we're on social media, so the customer experience starts. Way earlier. I mean oftentimes days or weeks before the actual visit is made. So you have to make sure that you are accurately portraying your brand, that you are being truthful and authentic in your responses to reviews and onto social media posts. Because maybe they are not following you or or they don't like your page, but they're looking for something to do and they are seeing. What's happening and and and they can kind of read through the content they're used. These are people that are used to looking at social media. They grew up their entire life. They don't remember a time where where. Something like Instagram didn't exist. So they are used to seeing comments and a quick way and and that will start. I mean that will start. That starts the experience almost immediately. Great. And as you think about loyalty, which is obviously wildly important and you think about both consumers and employees and you split those two groups. What would be your big thing for marketers and general management to think about as they think about loyalty with respect to each of those audiences? Umm. Well, I mean, our kind of. Approach is that you know a lot of a lot of places will have water slides, a lot of places have wave pools. So there's an expectation that exists when you purchase tickets to go to the water park and amusement park. We. Try to exceed those expectations in almost every way from the way that you interact with the person that's taking your ticket or scan scanning your ticket at the front gate. To how you are being engaged with with people that are walking around and and how staff members are walking around. How, Uh, you mean everything? We you have to exceed expectations in every single way. And when they walk away going man that was great it's it's it's that that will itself think they go on social media and they posted pictures and they're like we have a great time and and that that really is how we try to increase loyalty amongst all of our customers is is just exceed all expectations. It's a very the company is it's very much built around sort of like the. Umm. You know it it's very much filled in in like a week, week what we call it Aloha spirit. So everybody that walks in when when you're sad when people come in instead of saying hello or soup or whatever is you know the lingo we we say Aloha and mahalo and and it's sort of from the top down and we just we build these cultures in the parks that you know when you have we build these cultures here that that have a staff that. That appreciates that and supports it and and even if they're starting off and they're just kind of half doing it, give them give them a couple of weeks and they're all involved and and and and smiling and loving it. And it's really made a difference in how our customers respond because Aloha is not really something that you hear a whole lot of in the middle of Texas are in California. So it's it's they have an expectation of OK, they're going to say hi and then they're like Aloha and they throw a lay on you or something like that. And and it's it's fun. So that's that's how we do it. That's awesome. I love it. Is there anything you wished I'd asked you that I didn't get to ask you in this conversation? Umm well. Again, you know, it's it's we have to. Influencers are very important that everybody seems to have some or or a handful of bloggers or video loggers or social media people that they that they follow for various things. So we spend a lot of time working with influencers and and and. Creating a rapport with You build a rapport with an influencer, and you're also building a rapport with their audience. I think that's important. TikTok is is uh the biggest thing right now. You can you can go to any Little League baseball game where or or any place where there's a collection of young moms and and they're all looking on their phones you know in breaks between innings or whatever if it's baseball and and flipping through to TikTok. We found the big six. We we found a lot of success in some of our properties with TikTok and that we sort of let some of our employees do it. They're the best. I mean lifeguards, as long as they're doing it safely, they're not sitting on a tower. We've kind of given our staff a lot of freedom. We we have some rules that you know, it's got to represent the brand the right way. We got to use the say the right things but umm, but we let a lot of our our staff members run our tick tocks around around the country and that's really helped because everybody's got a different set of eyes and ideals and what's trendy to one person might not be trendy to another group. So we kind of hit a lot of different. Runs that way. You know another thing that I would say is and and you know it used to be a couple years ago pre Pandemic I, I would be interviewing young staff or or young potential staff members and and they would say well what do you want to do when you grow up and they go I want to be a YouTuber I want to be an Instagram influencer and I would go you don't you don't have it you can't you know that's like that's like that's like saying I want to be a Major League Baseball player you know it's it was just. Undoable. And you know, sometimes you walk it. I have a employee now who were who works for us in California and he walked in and said I'm an Instagram influencer. He's not. I want to be, but I am. And I said, well, what do you mean he shows me? He's got 4 million followers on his Instagram and he travels around the country and he films roller coasters and and the parks pay him to go and do that and he does that on his own, he says. You know this is pretty good for me money for me. This is paying for college. But ultimately I want to do what you do. I want to run a park. I want to be marketing at a park and and who knows what happens after that. And I said, I said well can you translate what you're doing on your Instagram and and make that happen on ours and can you make that happen on on all of our platforms and goes, Yeah, I think I can and sure enough he did. I mean we have we have TikTok views over 3,000,000 consistently over over 100,200 thousand views. Umm. And it's been very, very, very positive for us and. Couple years ago I would have said no. You know if you if you're doing that you don't need us you know what what can what can you do for us. But I gave him a shot and and he works really hard and he and he didn't The good news is he didn't slack on us but he didn't slack on his other on his other you know platform too He was capable of doing both and and maybe I just hit a home run and and and found the right person but don't be afraid to give one of these kids a shot because I don't know how many people I passed on. Because they said I wanna be, I wanna be an influencer and and and maybe they had the chops and they were just needing a break. So don't pass them up, give them jobs. Grateful for your expertise and time today. And you've busted one of the many myths about Gen. Z that I wrote about my books, which is they are not lazy and they are definitely focused on building their personal brand. Thank you again for your expertise, Carl. I appreciate it.