Simon, it is always good to keep reminding the fleets of the things they can do to promote at the local level, but that has been covered in other threads in this forum and several times in my magazine. Many of the fleets do all the things you suggested, and everything helps.

However, this thread is the first time we have talked about what the manufacturers themselves could be doing.

For instance, if they cannot afford to advertise in the large sailing magazines and in the general circulation magazines, they could at least bombard publications with press releases and photos and filler tidbits just to keep their name, and catamarans, in front of the public.

Just as an example, when I was working for newspapers, I used to get press releases all the time about all sorts of events, sport and otherwise. They would be generic stories about the event, which might have taken place on the other side of the country or the other side of the world, but if some person from our coverage area was involved in the event or won a trophy or whatever, their name would be highlighted in the press release so the newspaper could follow up and personalize the story to lead with the name of that local person. If they sent a picture, so much the better. Often this would result in a full feature story about that person and his or her particular hobby or sport. Small newspapers, in particular, love this sort of thing.

But, to my knowledge, our sailboat manufacturers do not send out such press releases. (Maybe I'm wrong.)

Another example is that they could send out a story and photos about how the rotomolding process works to create a sailboat. I would love to use an article like that, and I'm sure other publications would use it, too.