Overall, the Friday was good. The Saturday reasonable, the Sunday dire, the Monday and Tuesday not very good, the Wednesday began to pick up, the Thursday, Friday and Saturday were OK. The Sunday was, again, dire.

But the boatbuilders did OK and, surprisingly for such a low turnout, the retail sector also did OK.

I am very disappointed the attendance didn’t pick up this year because I really thought National Boat Shows (NBS) had done enough to bring the crowds back. And BB was looking forward to buying the NBS staff another crate of bubbly if the show brought in 150,000 people.

I have my own ideas why the show didn’t attract a larger audience, but more of that later.

So let’s look at the positives here.

First, most of the exhibitors seemed to do good business: take a look at the Show Quotes we’ve received. And if you didn’t do business, please email me and tell me why you think you didn’t do good business – pnash@boatingbusiness.com

Next, BB has always said we’re in at ExCeL for the long haul and that it will not be able to replicate the atmosphere and surroundings of Earls Court until London grows out to it. Well, if all the plans revealed at ExCeL come to fruition, that’s now going to happen. London is due to arrive at ExCeL pretty soon.

It will arrive at The Dome – now to be called The O₂ - in July this year when the massively refurbished White Elephant is launched as a huge entertainment venue.

In addition to the O₂ entertainment centre, the development calls for a huge number of dwellings – something like 30,000 around the development.

ExCeL itself will see a change between now and 2009. There are 150,000 new homes planned for Silvertown Quays right across the dock from ExCeL, with the west end of the ExCeL complex being developed into an ‘Urban Village’.

The east end of the development will see another huge entertainment complex. And ExCeL itself will see the building of Phase 2 that will increase the exhibition space from 65,000 sq m to 100,000 sq m, with (hopefully) higher ceilings that will enable a little more creativity in the show layout.

Then there are the transport links that will see the Jubilee Line and DLR upgraded enormously, to the benefit of those going to both the O₂ and ExCeL. Those upgrades are due in place in 2008 and 2009.

2012 Olympics

The driving force for all this is, of course, The 2012 Olympics. So let’s not look at precisely how they expect to get the entire Olympics development completed by the target date of 2011. I’m sure it will happen, but quite how, I’m not so certain. Someone told me there were press gangs outside every Polish labour exchange trying to attract construction workers over.

In short, the entire East End of London will be revamped. And ExCeL will benefit. The plans for the canal network to the south of the Olympic Village (in the area from Canning Town north through Bow Locks [careful now!] to Stratford International Railway Station) should see it all turned into a village on the water (they told me). British Waterways is on tenterhooks right now awaiting the decision on whether it will be able to carry aggregates onto the construction sites and is still waiting on funding for the Prescott Lock.

You can take a look at the plans for the O₂ and ExCeL developments on the BMF website – www.collinsstewartlondonboatshow.com/excel_the_future.html

They make very interesting viewing.

But what good are all these exciting future plans going to be for us when we can’t attract enough people to fill the current ExCeL, let alone 35,000 sq m more? Fair comment, I say, especially with a sales team wandering around ExCeL offering exhibitors the chance to take part in the new ‘revival; Earls Court Boat Show that runs from November 30 to December 9 this year.

I wrote this before seeing the press launch of this promised show, so I can say very little about it here – the story will be covered in this month’s news pages; they get passed later than these feature pages.

I was told by a person connected with this proposed event that Henri-Lloyd was considering becoming a sponsor. A quick call to Paul Strzelecki brought an instant and emphatic ‘We want nothing to do with the Earls Court Boat Show’.

Check the news pages in this issue to find out what I heard at the launch on January 29. But let’s get back to the 2007 Collins Stewart London Boat Show.

Dramatic changes

I, like most of the press, backed NBS to the hilt with its dramatic changes that saw features brought into the show, revised ticket prices, kids going free, revised trade ticket deals, a new show layout and a Value Card.

We did this because in under a year we saw a transformation in the attitude of the BMF and NBS. Gone are the somewhat less user-friendly attitudes that brushed away suggestions, seemingly out of hand. These days you are encouraged to talk and tell them what you think.

So a lot of talking was done by lots of people from the industry (and probably a few garrulous journalists as well) and a lot of ideas were looked at.

Suddenly the London Boat Show (not the London International Boat Show [Sunseeker and others please note]) changed from its previous exhibition status into something that stood a real chance of attracting the visitors. For the first time at ExCeL, we had something to shout about.

So it’s a pity we didn’t shout about it.

We had hoped the downward spiral of attendance would be halted. BB offered another crate of bubbly if the attendance reached 150,000. But, much as we would have liked to stump up for the bubbly, it was not to be.

The end of show release said the unaudited attendance ‘exceeds 130,000’ which, after the original ExCeL show of 2004 had brought in 213,800 visitors, was a dismal continuation of the downward spiral.

This spiral must be halted. Either that, or we satisfy ourselves with a lower figure that generates seemingly acceptable levels of business, even for the retail sector.

But do the finances work at the lower attendance? The 130,000 probably netts down to around 105,000 paying guests. Let’s say 110,000. Average at, say, £10 a head to take in the various ticket deals on offer and you get £1.1m through the tills.

Is that enough when the show costs around £6m to put on? Only NBS and the BMF know…

Hopes were, indeed, very high after all the work put in by the industry non-execs and the staff at NBS. After three years of featureless shows at ExCeL, consultant Tim Pyne came up with some intriguing ideas that everyone hoped would save the day and bring back those much wanted visitor numbers.

Anchor Watch was the true star feature. Sailing Today’s editor John Goode did a good job (no pun intended) in driving that feature forwards and making it work so well there were spellbound crowds there every time I walked past.

And it was a very informative feature as well: I overheard people confessing they had learned a lot (as, I have to confess, did I…).

Features diluted

OK, so some of the features were diluted between concept and execution. Maybe the Engine Race took up a lot of room and didn’t work quite as well as anticipated. That can be sorted. And the Fog Tunnel was a good Raymarine advertisement. That can be sorted.

The Inland Waterways feature was at best confusing. This really needs a lot of work and now has Ed Rimmer heading up the working group to push a few ideas forward. He’s hardly a shrinking violet, so expect to hear some straight talking.

But what started out as a stand with a walkway between reed beds and a ‘hide’ that would double as a tower so visitors could get above the show ended up with a cluster of boats (little ones at the back!) with the reeds dotted around in what looked like canvas bags straight out of the builders’ merchants.

At least the now-listening NBS managed to make an immediate change after the exhibitor meeting on the Monday to get the builders’ bags covered with some black material to make them look a little less out of place. I’m sure most visitors wondered what they were meant to represent.

Bring back the ‘pub, I say. Separate it from the exhibits in some way so the drinkers don’t overflow onto the boats and you’ll have another great attraction. Remember the first ExCeL show? 213,800 people. And NBS’ research showed 37% of them went there to see the Inland Waterways feature… We could have done with that 79,000 people this time around.

One stand that always seemed to attract the crowds was the Classic Boat stand, next door to the Inland Waterways feature. For those of us used to wooden boats, just walking onto the stand brought a smile. Dan Houston, editor of Classic Boat, told me the stand staff reckoned the average was four paces onto the stand, then a big smile from ear to ear as the scent of wood, varnish and glue brought back beautiful memories.

But today’s marine industry is more plastic and carbon fibre than wood, so those old memories are not the way forward. Nice though they are, the realism is they have to remain a sideshow these days.

The Guinness Bar brought differing responses. Most were quite happy that drinks other than Guinness were available. But many felt the decision not to allow pre-pouring of Guinness meant long queues to get served.

Back to the question; why didn’t the masses rush to ExCeL this year?

OK, you can use the old thing about ExCeL is too difficult to get to. But that’s a perception that is simply wrong if people use public transport. And it’s a perception that NBS really ought to knock down at every opportunity.

Those tempting the M25 take their chances. Sometimes they’ll get through (especially if coming down from Cambridge or Essex). But at some stage they’ll end up in a traffic jam.

So, perceptions aside, why didn’t they come this time around? The cry that boat show attendances are, in general, falling all over the world may also not be the whole truth.

Genoa slipping

Looking at the reports on show attendance, Genoa peaked at 350,000 in 1998 and has been slipping ever since. Last year’s show saw 324,000, down another couple of thousand from 326,000 the year before.

This year’s Düsseldorf Boat Show closed 6.5% down on last year with ‘around 273,000 people’ visiting.

Against that, I came up with a statement from the USA’s National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) telling us that that ‘23 of its consumer boat shows had seen an average increase in attendance of seven per cent compared last year’.

Perhaps the NMMA’s Grow Boating campaign is the difference here.

And the 43rd Hamburg International Boat Show, also known as Hanseboot, attracted around 130,000 visitors last time out, resulting in an 8% rise over the year before.

These figures serve only to prove running big exhibitions is an up and down business. So let’s look elsewhere.

After spending thousands on designing, developing and building the features that took up revenue-earning floor space, why didn’t the marketing campaign for the show scream about these bright new features? These were the self-same features that everyone said visitors wanted to see and were necessary to stop the slide in attendance.

Instead, we got an advertising campaign that used Peyton cartoons. And with a boating market split approximately 65/35 between power and sail, I wonder why NBS chose to use a creative treatment that targeted mainly the minority - the 35% that are sailors.

You could reduce this target audience figure even further by pointing out that Peyton cartoons appeal only to experienced sailors. So perhaps the Peyton advertising was targeted at maybe 20% (at best) of the UK boating market in all?

Leaving 80% of your target audience bewildered is, perhaps, bewildering to those who have paid good money to be at an exhibition with so few visitors.

Peyton cartoons are essentially ‘in jokes’ for experienced sailors. You need to have been sailing quite some time to appreciate Peyton’s humour which, in many of his cartoons, relies heavily on impending doom.

Been there

If you’ve been sailing a few years, you know what Peyton means because you’ve been there. If you haven’t, you must wonder what the cartoons are all about. And is impending doom a good message to be putting out to people who may be thinking about buying a boat for the first time?

And what about the powerboaters? And the canal boating enthusiasts? Or canoeists? And what about those very important people – the non-boaters we desperately need to turn into boaters to replace the declining number of people on the water?

What does NBS think non boaters made of the cartoons? What would a non-boater have thought of the bloke hanging off the back of a boat holding two empty Wellington boots that were obviously recently on the feet of the man who is now drowning? What’s all that about, I can hear them saying from here.

The same goes for most Peyton cartoons, I’m afraid. Great cartoons. But used here in the wrong place for the wrong purpose.

And none of these treatments actually told the reader to go to the London Boat Show.

My thoughts were echoed by lots of people at ExCeL – and many to whom I’ve spoken since the show (I pity the postman who delivers to Meadlake Pace – he must have been overloaded with irate letters over the past couple of weeks). People simply could not understand what NBS was playing at with this campaign.

‘These cartoons may bring a wry smile to the face of some boat owners, (mainly sailors over 50) but their overall themes made them wholly unsuitable images to represent an exciting and dynamic industry such as ours,’ said Andrew Smythe, MD of Cactus. ‘And an image of a gentleman clad in dinner suit and bow tie shouting at his wife! I don't consider myself to be especially liberal, but I have to say I find the sexist subtext of this ad to be deeply offensive.’

He added; when I showed it to my wife, the first question she asked is ‘what's a spinnaker?’

Nick Heyes, MD of MES, also reckoned the advertising campaign just didn’t work. ‘The walk-up attendance was down,’ he said, ‘and that’s driven entirely by the advertising.’

David Barrow, of Barrow International, wrote a letter to BB that you’ll find on page XX. He, too, singles out the Peyton cartoon campaign as being wrong.

I reckon an advertising campaign shouting about the new features would have been the natural way to try to attract those missing thousands. After all, the new features were the show’s USP, as the advertising people put it. And most advertising selects a product’s USP and majors on it.

It’s an old trick, but it might just have worked…

The Value Card seemed to work well – once the people at the entrance stopped offering them to visitors as discount cards.

‘They worked very well when used for added value, rather than a discount card,’ said David Lewin, who was responsible for rolling the idea out to the trade. ‘The next thing is to see if that can be rolled out and used elsewhere – if companies run their own loyalty card schemes, they can finish the year off with a free ticket to the boat show to reward their customers.’

And what was originally Ancasta’s idea of changing the method of charging for trade tickets only on those redeemed also worked very well. ‘We were hugely up over last year,’ said Lewin, ‘but there’s still a lot of mileage to be gained from it when people realise how they can use the trade tickets as a sales tool.’

So now we look forward to next year’s show. What will it bring, I wonder? Will the Earls Court Boat Show go ahead? If it does, how many exhbitors will feel they simply have to be there?

I think NBS is in for a bumpy ride over the summer months.

And I hope their marketing ideas for the next show are a whole lot better than this year’s.

 

Captions to pictures below (clockwise from top left).

Yes, there were some crowds at ExCeL
Photo: onEdition

This is what the ExCeL area should look like by the time The Olympics begin

Anchor Watch – the star feature. Who would have thought people would stand around and watch blokes chucking anchors into sand?
Photo: onEdition

The Inland Waterways feature’s reeds in their builders’ merchant bags

The Guinness Bar: serving a millionaire potential client in a plastic glass was felt to be a bit naff
Photo: onEdition

The Inland Waterways feature concept. The reality didn’t quite match it…

This was as busy as I ever saw the Engine Feature, although I’m told there were busier times
Photo: onEdition

The reed bags looked a bit better after NBS sorted them out