Marketing of Catamarans

Every year I become more and more baffled as to why a company like Hobie does not create a commercial or infomercial for their recreational catamarans. You look on their website and they have shot some video for each, so we know they are capable of doing so.

If OxyClean can finance a little TV marketing, I think Hobie could too.

Speaking of marketing and TV coverage etc. ESPN 2 covered the Scrabble Championships...Scrabble as in the board game.
How is it that a board game that is about as exciting as doing laundry gets major TV coverage and we can't anyone to even mention a Catamaran unless it is being rescued by the coast guard?

UGH!

Tracie

They always show stupid stuff like that on espn. The only reason being because some sponsor was willing to pony up the cash to promote the event. I don't see why something like the Tybee 500 or the like couldn't succeed on a documentary basis, but you have to admit, watching sailboat racing is pretty boring unless you know what to look for.

Not to stick a picklefork into things, but maybe "Worst Case Scenario" can do a catamaran edition :P

Maybe we could get a real high quality documenatry made, a la Warren Miller's "Endless Summer". I'd be willing to invest/donate some money towards a project like that.

Re: Endless Summer of Catamarans by Warren Miller or Bruce Brown or their kids (BTW- their kids are active and do good ski movies all the time, right?)
Sharing the Wind (Coast Catamaran 1980) with Dean Froome was pretty dang good. So was the 1978? Hobie 16 Worlds tape in Hawaii. Note that there were no X-boats involved. As we are talking about "Promotion of Sailing or even...Promotion of Classes", has there ever been a promo movie with brand X-beach cats in it? I never heard of one or saw one. Why not?

IMHO the Worrell 1000 tapes don't count- all beach shots and little clever dialog in my copies, and nothing on the water.

Actually, I was thinking of making a movie about an Olympic Tornado campaign. Could be pretty interesting, if you put in the preliminary regattas, sail development, and all the other struggles both on and off the water. The "human drama" element might pull in some people who aren't interested in the sailing itself.

Strategy games with the element of luck involved are interesting to watch (Poker etc ).

The problem with sailing is that the strategy portion involves the unseen component of wind. The america's cup tv shows spend a fortune trying to show the racer's strategy with respect to wind shifts and velocity. Meanwhile, the action component of the sailing game... eg starts tacks, jibes and crossings all look the same.... the element of the unexpected is quite low. (no home runs hit or touchdown runs broken off). So. the sailing shows focus on the people and their struggle with the pressure of big bucks sailing. The big story lines last go were about the traitorous ex patriot, the tussle between two mega bucks owners.... and so on. It was actually a better read... then TV show. I know of several sailors including myslef who really struggled to watch all of the sailing footage.

Notice how little racing is actually shown on TV and what they focus on in the show.
Track and Field is only shown every four years with the olympics.
The story line is the athletes struggle to get there and the pressure to perform. Finally, they race.
Horse racing is shown 4 times a year and suffers from declining live spectators ... The story line on TV is the owner, trainer and jockey soap opera..... relatively little about the race. The public takes an interest when the event is contested between two super horses where one must loose.
Nascar seems to focus on the personalites and crew teamwork in their 2 hour shows.

Seems to me that sailing is just not a great spectator sport for TV. On the other hand, The worrell 1000 made for a very good read in the SI coverage the last time it was run. Perhaps we should focus on getting compelling stories written about sailing and less on the video stuff.

Not to mention I I read on the other forum that a 10 minute vido clip required 70 hours of production to get. Wow... that is hard work!

Have you seen the Jan de Boer Nacra promo video? Its fantastic! I have only found it in lo rez though. Does anyone have a copy / know where to get a copy on vhs or hi-quality mpg? I emailed info@jandeboer.com and nobody responded.

Our fleet in Hong Kong recently had it's major regatta of the year and with help from the sponsors we've just got about 8 1/2 mins of footage to be shown for a month on a number of airline seatback TV's. So if anyone's on Cathay Pacific in the next 4 weeks, have a look out for the Hong Kong Hobie Asian Classic on your little TV. It's also being shown on a large number of cable stations around the world, including the UK, but unfortunatley for the majority of folks in this forum, I don't think there is any planned coverage in the USA.

Regarding the feasibility of doing this, we found that to get airtime on TV wasn't that difficult, sure to get primetime is impossible, but 1 month solid on 3 worldwide airlines is a good start for future development. It just takes a sponsor who is able to see the benefit for them, i.e. title sponsorship, big sail stickers with their logo on, etc that is seen by lots of people trapped on a plane for up to 13hrs.

Once we had the money, we just contacted a sports production company who sent a cameraman, edited the footage and produced the final result and did all the distribution, so it was very little work on our side. It's just a case of going out there and doing the sponsorship rounds. Surely something like the Worrell on TV would be great. As long as you get some wind, I don't think you need to go through the finer points of tactics etc, you just show guys going flat out one the wire and flying a hull! You don't have to be a sailor to appreciate or enjoy that.

Contact Performance Catamarans here in the US - they have that Jan de Boer video for something like $10. I got a copy but the alignment was out of wack on the tape. I still watch it every now and then although the video is fuzzy at the bottom and the sound garbled occasionally.

Jake

Just to throw my buck in.

Round Texel makes a video/DVD pretty much every year and has a 30 min coverage on TV. Sure they overdo on Human drama (I hate that stuff) and show little in how the race developped (wind conditions, water, lead changes) but okay it is thre.

Wouter

I don't think catamaran racing will ever get great coverage until there are radical changes in race format and coverage technology.

That is why I say these companies need to advertise from the lifestyle side, not the racing side. The new sailboat buyer isn't looking to race right away. They are looking to have fun. People that are already racing know what boats are around.

An infomercial or commerical about "The Hobie Way of Life" or something like that. Fun in the sun, a beer, some breeze... People watch NASCAR, but they don't go out and buy one because they want to drive in a race.

We need some adventure sailing on catamarans. There is always a great human aspect to any adventure, but when you're showing a short clip of the guys going full-bore, flying a hull, and out on the wire, with a big ****-eating grin and saying "This is what it's all about!" you're sure to get some people interested in catamarans.

One of the many problems with promoting sailboat racing is that in most cases the races are not close enough to shore for spectators to see what is going on (if they can even see the boats at all). And if you put the course in close to shore, the racers complain about the flukey wind or the boat chop or whatever.

They managed to have close-in, spectator-friendly racing for the America's Cup boats that raced recently out in San Francisco, and also at the Little America's Cup at Newport. Those were rare situations, but we need more of them.

The real answer is that ESPN or FOX sports will air a pre produced program if it is edited, in the can and has allowances for 18% of the run time for commercial breaks. If you want it run in prime time for your sponsor there will also be a substancial fee in addition to the $200,000 budget you'll need to produce a show that is high enough quality for them to air it.

Blue torch, 5-4-3-2-1, and other low budget X games shows are produced by the networks or their subcidiaries and generate income for them. If you plan to take up their air space it will cost ya.

The reality of sailing is that there is little or no demand for it in this country. If there were demand, someone would have identified it, produced a show that spoke to it and would be living in the lap of luxury because of their forsight. I think what most of you are looking for is an infomercial that gets people exposed to a sport in the hopes that they will buy into it and join us on the beach. In the real world fiberglass and epoxies are out and rotomolding is in. Low tech vehicles that allow some access to the water at a budget price is what sells and that is why the manufacturers like hobie and other rotomolded kayaks are spending their money where there is demand. That's how business works.

I don't like it but that's the way it is.

Mark Michaelsen

VIDEO’S

1 - Fly Hobe Fly – Story of a group of H16’s caught in a storm with gusts of 80 mph.
2- Violets Are Blue – Nice movie with great seen of H16’s and P16’s fighting it out on the race course
3 - Sharing the Wind & A Moments Glory – Get TheMightyHobie18 footage and wonderful documentary about the first H16 worlds.
4 – H16 Worlds in Australia – Great video
5- 1996 H16 Worlds - very professionally done and exciting
6 - Learn to Sail Video – H16 with Americas Cup sailor doing the instruction is very well put together.
7 – More to come

There is one website where you can find all of these videos so if you are interested email me as I don’t what to do un-authorized advertisement on this website. info@sail-s.com

what about the little movie hobie had shot just after he finished building the 14 (and payed for by way of one of the 4 original test mules) would be good if we could maybe get some of these old movies encoded and uploaded to somebody's webspace.

I'm tried of paying $20 for a video to introduce new sailors to catamarans. If manufacture's want me to promote their sport, give us a cheap or FREE beginners tape for people who ask questions.

Miles,
It's fine if you want to give the website url that has those videos available. I would like to know, too. At one time there was a catamaran group out West that had a list of lots of beach-cat videos, and you could get copies through them; but I have lost the contact information. This is important resource information for everybody.

I don't think market demand has anything to do with it. The US economy is built around the idea that you can create a market to sell goods and services. Sure if people want something and we create it for them, then business is great. On the flip side there are a large amount of products and services that created their own market.

I 100% agree that televising catamaran racing as it stands today will never happen. It is boring to watch if you don't understand it and sometimes boring even if you do. There is no interactive technology to be integrated into it and all sailboat makers have failed at building a youth market. So who's going to watch?

I personally think a combination documentary / reality series is the way to go. Find 10 sponsors, one for each team. Each team gets a build facility, a preset number of builders, and design limitation of the cat. The teams then draft their two sailors. Then they go to work to design and build a cat to race in a competition pitting all 10 teams against each other in various courses, racing styles and locations. A cross between Monster Garage and an adventure race with custom built boats.

does anyone know of the website where all the vidieos of sailing, sail s mentioned in his reply.tried e-mailing him but no reply

Not sure where you can buy the video tapes, but if you want to view some short video clips online, Damon has 14 videos on his site http://www.thebeachcats.com .
Click on Downloads / Videos.
Jack

1 - Fly Hobe Fly – Story of a group of H16’s caught in a storm with gusts of 80 mph.
2- Violets Are Blue – Nice movie with great seen of H16’s and P16’s fighting it out on the race course
3 - Sharing the Wind & A Moments Glory – Get TheMightyHobie18 footage and wonderful documentary about the first H16 worlds.
4 – H16 Worlds in Australia – Great video
5- 1996 H16 Worlds - very professionally done and exciting
6 - Learn to Sail Video – H16 with Americas Cup sailor doing the instruction is very well put together.
7 – More to co
these were the videos he was referring to

www.sail-s.com the click on CART, then click on Video's & Books section. Sorry not trying to advertise but then again not all the video's are sold on the site and some are direct links where you can purchase them. I am always looking for new video's to promote the sport and some more may be coming so will have that info on the website or have a direct links to the sites. Seems there are more video's of dinghy multihull sailing out than one would think. Also this years H16 worlds is going to have great coverage so should be great video as well. I will say I have shown all these video's at boat shows and usually have a line of people watching them particularly the 1996 H16 worlds video. Also I should have a new H16 Trapseat video available soon for those interested. Cheers!

Is there a magazine or monthly publication of some sort devoted to cats? Sailing world is good but rarely is there anything on catamarans is seems. ~Reid

Well, there is "Multihulls Magazine," which is devoted primarily to big multihulls; and "Multihulls World," which is the English translation version of a French publication; and then, of course, there is "Catamaran Sailor," which is devoted mostly to beach cats and which is published by the owners of this website. Just go to the catsailor.com home page and click on "About the magazine" in the menu on the left side of the page.

If you have a Hobie cat and if you belong to the North American Hobie Class Association (NAHCA), you will receive their newsletter, which is a pretty substantial magazine.

Mary, Have you received that magazine lately? It's always so outdated that it is nearly worthless. I feel bad for the poor volunteer who has to put that together. I do the newsletter for Hobie Fleet 61, with help from a layout expert, and it's always a major effort - and I make my living as a journalist. As for marketing catamaran's, I don't know if NAHCA News is helping.

Also, no one has mentioned the movie, Thomas Crown Affair. There is about five minutes of cat sailing on a 60-foot version of a beach cat with Pierce Brosnan hanging off of an extended trapeze device and flying a hull. It ends with Brosnan's boat in a slow motion capsize. Hoaky but cool. I played it for my 2 1/2 year old son and he kept saying "do again, daddy."

I hope he was talking about the catamaran part and not the part where Renee Russo is... uhmm... yeah.

The one that capsized was Randy Smyth's open 40 (they're 40 footers). If you look closely, you can see Randy in the movie although Pierce, who's wildly grabbing and grinding wenches, acts to be in control of things.

It was a great scene and I enjoyed it but I'm sure the capsizing does little for the 'tipsy' catamaran reputation.

I was guessing on the length. You can also see everyone but Brosnan on leward hull. Wild thang on an open 40? Is that Smyth driving?

I don't remember if he was driving or not - but he's the one that looks like this

Yes, there was some "wench grinding" in the movie but as for the sailing scenes, if you go frame by frame you can see that Pierce Brosnan is grinding on a winch with NO LINE WRAPPED!! It's no wonder he was cranking so fast. Maybe that contributed to the dump.

Randy was on one boat, and Bob Gleason was sailing the other boat. It should also be noted that the sailing all took part in off the coast of RI, and New York was superimposed into the background. They shot something like 5 days in very light wind, and had to work hard to flip the boat.