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What is the best way to market a new ride?

mouse

mouse

Giga Poster
This is loosely following on from the WC16 marketing discussion. There seem to be two widely recognised marketing strategies when it comes to new rides: The more ‘American’ strategy such as for Valravn, in which details and developments are revealed early on and used to build up excitement for the ride, and the more ‘Merlin’ strategy in which subtle clues are used to create an air of mystery and guessing, which subsequently build up excitement for the ride. Obviously there’s lots of approaches to marketing in between these two, but they seem to be the two extremes.

But which is most effective? The more American strategy is much more upfront, with details and layouts being revealed early on. From an enthusiasts point of view this could be more effective as the details can be discussed and the focus can be on the construction. It can be argued that this strategy is more effective for the GP as well, as advertising is usually heavy and powerful which ultimately attracts more visitors to the parks to ride the new attraction. The Merlin-esque marketing strategy is more criticised by the enthusiast community for being contrived and too cryptic, which I think this is partly due to it previously leading to disappointment – such as Thi3teen. However the air of mystery this strategy does generally build up excitement for its opening, and draws in park visitors.

I think the ‘Merlin’ strategy generally suits its rides as they usually have a strong and complex theme, such as Sub Terra and WC16. The theme and background story is introduced by the marketing, and the marketing usually reflects the strong theme of the ride. However with many American rides there is not as strong a theme, and therefore not as much of a ‘background story’ to market – so the marketing generally reflects the ride itself.

What is your preferred marketing strategy? Do you have any examples of where the marketing has been successful/unsuccessful? How would you market certain rides more effectively?
 
I think it largely comes down to what you have to show up front.

Saying "Here we have an 80 metre tall coaster that's going to deliver one heck of a ride experience" works well. Enthusiasts would drool over its drop, its layout and its vital stats, and the name would be etched into their memory by virtue of sheer numbers alone.

Now imagine they revealed Thirteen up front like that. For all intents and purposes a glorified kiddie coaster. Small rides with less-than-impressive stats don't look as awesome unless you burn serious money on themeing. The only way for these rides to be notable is to market them as if they were, trying for the longest time to hide how un-spectacular the ride is. Once the public knows it from marketing, the actual look and layout can be revealed. Enthusiasts may groan in disappointment, but the general public will remember the marketing hype and probably not pay that much attention to what the ride actually looks like until they're already in the park.

I suppose it also comes down to what the target demographic is. You won't need as much of a campaign for a coaster to compete in, say, the Norwegian market. The phrase "new roller coaster" is enough to spread the word across the entire country. Compare to the UK market, with dozens of parks largely competing for the same tourists, and practically every year some of them will build new coasters (instead of once every decade). You have to roll Thirteen in a lot more glitter to make it spectacular to the UK public than if it had been built over here.

So yeah, huge and spectacular coasters tend to sell themselves. Small, disappointing ones need to be dolled up as much as possible so it can "compete" on a national level in a market where new coasters are thirteen to the dozen.
 
I think Efteling did a great job with their Making Of Baron 1898 on YouTube. They found a nice middle ground between the CF and Merlin styles. I wish more parks would do that.
 
Do both, build up hype during the season by giving clues and making it mysterious, and release everything at the end of the season, and market in-park for the Haloween/holiday events.
 
Statistics don't lie. Being able to say something is the tallest, fastest, longest, etc. can serve as the greatest draw and "wow" factor for an attraction. It's easily relatable to the general public, and all the more easily marketable (and a touch of the dramatic never hurts):

Raptor: 1994

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysS8Z_vgso[/youtube]

Mantis: 1996

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-cvVBdz7bY[/youtube]

Millennium Force: 2000

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8CaGvNurx4[/youtube]

Top Thrill Dragster: 2003

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mChmEDQYzI8[/youtube]

However not all attractions are the tallest, fastest of their type. So how do you market those? This is where a more careful craft of theming would appear to play top priority. Again, sticking to the Cedar Point examples, the rebranding of Avalanche Run as Disaster Transport was quite literally Cedar Point's attempt at Space Mountain (yes I know, turned out really well). In this case, CP did focus on the theme as the draw, making the ride a more nuanced experience.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbWoMmL0AFg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nGs0w-LJs[/youtube]

So focus on upfront statistics when you have them for a ride to build up hype. Otherwise, theme can help carry the marketability of a ride.
 
I liked Busch Gardens' recent videos like their Falcon's Fury construction updates and Cobra Curse model reveal. Definitely american style though and quite nerdy with facts etc. Paultons and Kolmarden have been doing some nice construction update videos too. I still like creative hype with storylines etc but I hate being lead on for too long with loads of really vague clues. Some suspense is good but not too much that you get fed up waiting.
 
Like anything it depends on the product itself.

Something in your face like a coaster should have as much information as possible pumped out - stats, photos, videos, blogs, updates - do it all.

Something more reliant on shock factor? Be secretive. So dark rides, coasters with 'hidden' elements - keep it secret, give enough of an idea to show this will be great, but not why. Th13teen tried this but appealed to the wrong people AND then in the end showed its tricks.
 
Also depends on who you're marketing it to. If it's teenagers, absolutely focus on the uniqueness of it, the worlds first hype, the ability to brag to their friends about what they've experienced. If it's families, it's possibly best to be visual, show as much of the ride (and families on the ride enjoying it) as possible.
 
There's absolutely no black and white answer for this as there are so many attributes to any marketing process:

1) Your core market (the age group of the people the product is aimed at).
2) Your desired clientèle (the group of people who realistically will purchase said item, different to the above).
3) Marketing budget.
4) Time frame for the marketing process.
5) Sponsorship for marketing (happens a lot).
6) The narrative of the attraction.
7) Style of marketing (media based or text form).
8) Media outlets you want to interest (strangely, you might think that parks market their rides as to explain to clients what the product is solely, when in reality, they usually release 4/5 different kinds of press releases to attract different media markets, example: the same press release you send to The Sun Newspaper wouldn't be appropriate for the readers of The Independent).
9) If the marketing includes Television advertising, whether it would be pre/post watershed etc.
10) If the aim of the marketing is primarily intended to boost attendance for a park, or to boost revenue income - ie, if the marketing includes (as an example), 'Only at Thorpe Park', or 'Use XX code for 20% Discount at Thorpe Park', these are vastly different marketing strategies.

Again, they're merely just a 'few' questions - it's a very interesting subject.
 
^This guy explained everything anyone needs to know. That's non-enthusiast thinking right there. Lofty <3
 
As everyone has said, such a difficult question to answer, since it depends on so many factors.

But parks just need to make sure they don't over-hype something to a ridiculous level. Like Th13teen or the IAC finale, for example. Don't give me a turd and say it's chocolate ice cream; people don't like that.
 
Snoo said:
^This guy explained everything anyone needs to know. That's non-enthusiast thinking right there. Lofty <3
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You're a babe :oops:

JoshC. said:
As everyone has said, such a difficult question to answer, since it depends on so many factors.

But parks just need to make sure they don't over-hype something to a ridiculous level. Like Th13teen or the IAC finale, for example. Don't give me a turd and say it's chocolate ice cream; people don't like that.
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I don't buy into this "You shouldn't overly market a product", in reality, saying you're the biggest and best sells tickets (or puts bums on seats in terms of movies, theatre etc.) and that's all you're trying to do at the end of the day. Yes, sometimes that can lead to a backlash of people saying "It's a load of ****", but you risk that anyway. You have to remember that these people are trying to recuperate a HUGE amount of money here, not just a few quid.

If you read a press release saying "ALTON TOWERS OPEN NEW FAMILY COASTER - Alton Towers are to open a roller coaster that resembles a mine train with trim brakes whenever you feel a slight force" you wouldn't exactly rush to the park would you? No? So by using the term "Psycoaster", a confusion word, you suddenly become attracted to it.

It's actually NLP (I know I bring it up a lot, but marketing is) - it's the use of 'hypnotic language', ever wondered why in interviews the creators of the rides use words such as 'imagine you're flying...' as an example, they're giving you command words in your brain to actually do something, and you do it, therefore creating an image in your head of said experience, and usually, your brain overcompensates and makes it a really great experience. Now, this brings me on to the next part, using the word 'Psycoaster' was genius for Alton, Th13teen was cloaked in secrecy when it was being constructed, it was part of the hype for the ride, both generated and from the general public. The word 'psycoaster' is a confusion word, it has no meaning, no relevance to anything, but in marketing, it created a hook word, a word to go back to, to make the guests imagine just what a psycoaster may be? they have nothing to compare it to as it's unique, so therefore this one simple word rooted itself into people's brains as something to be curious about. Then, finally, when they released the information, it was something completely different to what they had thought of (unless they'd followed construction, like us geeks ;) ), and therefore, they wanted to go and try it regardless, because by that point, it was a new, interesting fresh idea of the story they'd constructed in their minds.

Morwenna did her job and did her job well, maybe too well? But, she did her job and that was to market a ride, so in fact, no, there isn't such a thing as 'over selling' a product.
 
^I agree with everything you're saying that actually. I've put my point across wrongly really; I more meant don't over-hype it to the point where you're basically lying.

With Th13teen, and how the press release saying 'you have to be over 16 to ride', 'you have to sign a waiver before you ride', 'you can only ride it once a day it's so scary'. Or the IAC maze, where the ending is apparently blasting winds of over 50mph at you. I just hate that, and it's all just there to over-hype it. I don't know how badly those things affected the original reception of them, but I still know of people (geeks and non-geeks alike) who have a hard time believing some new ride marketing after Th13teen..

I wouldn't have cared if they'd just gone with the psycoaster angle for Th13teen; that would have worked well until the secret came out. But it's the rest of it which I just think was terrible and the perfect example of how not to over-hype a ride.
 
Easiest way to market a new ride: get licenses for well-known movies, characters, etc. and incorporate them into the ride and/or name the ride after them.

Batman: the Ride, Harry Potter & the Forbidden Journey, etc. The thing about those is that they have the ability to reach people who are indifferent to rides in general, but would try the rides just because they have characters they like in them.
 
JoshC. said:
^I agree with everything you're saying that actually. I've put my point across wrongly really; I more meant don't over-hype it to the point where you're basically lying.

With Th13teen, and how the press release saying 'you have to be over 16 to ride', 'you have to sign a waiver before you ride', 'you can only ride it once a day it's so scary'. Or the IAC maze, where the ending is apparently blasting winds of over 50mph at you. I just hate that, and it's all just there to over-hype it. I don't know how badly those things affected the original reception of them, but I still know of people (geeks and non-geeks alike) who have a hard time believing some new ride marketing after Th13teen..

I wouldn't have cared if they'd just gone with the psycoaster angle for Th13teen; that would have worked well until the secret came out. But it's the rest of it which I just think was terrible and the perfect example of how not to over-hype a ride.
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If I remember correctly, they said "The coaster is looking so scary that we are looking into ways of limiting the access - guests may have to sign a disclaimer, only ride once per day etc. etc., the use of the term 'may', or 'it is possible' gives you a loophole to then say "It was an option, not a definite" at the end of it. Like I said, I'm pretty adamant that's actually how the initial press release went, followed by other media outlets twisting it as 'fact'.
 
Ah, if that was the case then fair enough. I thought the release was also saying "It will have an enforced restriction", "You will need to sign a waiver", etc. Obviously my memory just blurred the actual release and media's interpretation of it. :p
 
Out of interest Lofty, do think Thirteen's marketing was misleading? (I'm not implying that you're alluding to it, just interested in your opinion)
I feel that although it was definitely successful marketing, but it was somewhat sensationalised and didn't particularly reflect the final product, which makes me wonder whether it was good (for want of a better word) marketing.
 
JoshC. said:
Ah, if that was the case then fair enough. I thought the release was also saying "It will have an enforced restriction", "You will need to sign a waiver", etc. Obviously my memory just blurred the actual release and media's interpretation of it. :p
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I think that the original press release stated 'it is possible', then the subsequent postings by the media diluted the actual message and changed the meaning. Think of it as Chinese Whispers of the PR world. I've had to deal with this firsthand with a show of mine so know how much of a nightmare it is.

mouse said:
Out of interest Lofty, do think Thirteen's marketing was misleading? (I'm not implying that you're alluding to it, just interested in your opinion)
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I think it's a very tricky subject in all honesty because I don't think it was 'misleading' merely just a whole lot of different marketing angles that confused the matter and led to it overselling it. For instance, the 'Psycoaster' was one angle, then thy started going further and further afield with their claims, which is where it gets complicated because then, I do think they started to mislead. The whole 'Psycoaster' marketing was genius, because nobody could argue with them about it as there's no president to disagree with. But when they started to claim it was going to be the scariest ride on the planet, that's when they became a bit ridiculous.


Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk.
 
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