The sheer scope and size of the initiative will be discussed in full in an article that will appear in Boating Business shortly. In the meantime here are a couple of examples that will give you an idea of its potential.

Most people would assume anything entitled Grow Boating would be an advertising campaign. While advertising/promotion is an essential element of the strategy it's only one part of it and that is what sets this initiative apart from anything that has been tried before.

There are three major strategic elements 1: Increase interest in boating, 2: Motivate interested consumers to become boaters more quickly, and 3: Keep boaters in boating.

Each of these elements has its own sub-set of strategies and, more importantly, a set of pre-determined and published values so the success of each strategy can be judged.

Most people would also assume that anything entitled Grow Boating would last a few months or a year at most. Here is another major difference: this a multiyear initiative with some pretty major goals.

For example, one of the "overall campaign measurements by the end of financial year 2008" is "increase participation in recreational boating from 70 million of the adult population (16+ years) by one million participants a year by the end of 2008 to 73 million".

Many recreational industries recognise that they have challenges. Most do nothing about their challenges except uttering "happy talk" statements like "we need to do something".

The Grow Boating initiative is way beyond "happy talk" and well worth keeping your eye on.