Air shows will have plenty of competition for the public's attention and money

By ANN Associate Editor Juan Jimenez

Back in November, ANN covered the International Council of Air Shows convention in Las Vegas (NV). At the end of the show, we interviewed the Council's president, John Cudahy, and asked him what he thought would be the biggest challenges to the air show community in 2005. His response: competition, and not the aerobatic type. Cudahy believes that the biggest challenge ahead for air shows is to cut through the flood of advertising for the various mass-attendance events vying for the public's attention, and convince that public that the air show is the place to be.

With that in mind, we decided that an analysis was in order to determine just how much competition is there for the public's attention, and money, when it comes to major events with attendance of 5,000 people or more.

As of December 15, according to ICAS, there are 221 air shows scheduled for 2005 in the United States, 40 in Canada, one each in Ireland, Portugal and Mexico and three in the United Kingdom. This is by no means representative of the world air show schedule, but the US and Canada numbers are accurate, so we will concentrate on those.

Of these 200+ air shows in the US, there are three states which stand out from the rest, California with 27 shows, Florida with 20 and Texas with 19. Extracting those from the list, we decided to first compare them with each other.

We were somewhat surprised to see air shows competing with each other for attendance within radiuses of 200 miles or less. For example, the Ian Groom Memorial Speed Spectacular in Immokalee (FL) on April 23, 2005 is being held the same day as the Patrick Air Force Base Open House just a short two hours driving distance away on the eastern coast of the state. The Dyess AFB Open House in Abilene (TX) on May 21, 2005 is also competing with the Denton Air Fair in Texas, 165 miles away, and we all know that for Texans, a 165 mile drive is about the same as a Yankee drive to the local Starbucks.

It seems the Canadians could use some scheduling help as well. The Canadian Aviation Expo in Oshawa (ON) and the London International Airfest in London (ON) are both scheduled for June 24, 2005. Those two are some 130 miles apart and they're connected by what looks to us like a major thoroughfare, highway 401. On top of that, the ICAS tentative schedule for 2005 shows the Canadian Snowbirds performing at both shows! Is there some kind of family feud going on here that we should know about, folks?

Instead of competing with each other, air shows and aviation activities ought to cooperate. A good example of this is the Tacoma Freedom Fair Air Show in Tacoma (WA) and the Arlington EAA Fly In in Arlington (WA). Both of these are aviation shows within 70 miles of each other, but the Tacoma show takes place on July 4, 2005, and the Arlington fly-in on July 6 through July 10. Clearly, these two shows ought to be pooling their advertising dollars and go for the "one-two" punch -- a great air show to see airplanes flying on a long weekend, followed by a fly-in to go see the local airplanes up close and personal. A quick scan through the schedule show more examples of date conflicts between air shows that are to take place within 150 miles or so of each other.

Speaking of advertising, there's only one way to get people to go to air shows, and that is to tell them that you're having an air show, right? Well, what's the big deal there? You just have to place the ads and people will come, no?

Not quite. According to Coen's Annual Spending Dollars statistics data, advertisers spent $236.8 billion dollars in ads in 2002, and it was not a national election year! Can you imagine trying to cut through a solid wall of political advertising to promote your air show? All this money generates a veritable roar of competition for the attention span of the average US citizen, which on television amounts to exactly one second. If you can't cut through the din and get the viewer's or listener's attention in that first golden second or two, you are dead meat. It is a blood-curdling statistic, if you ask us, mostly for what it says about the state of our society, but it's the raw, unadulterated fact.

What other major venues are you competing against? As you probably well know, there's no shortage of those. There's all the major sports; national football, baseball, hockey and soccer as well as all the college versions of these. Those alone represent hundreds of activities that not only compete for your public, they offer something you cannot -- a coach-potato quality seat right in front of the action, even more so if there's a big-screen TV between the viewer and that action. The cable and satellite TV companies have developed this into an art form, going so far as providing Internet-based tools to craft carefully-honed sports schedules, ready to be stapled to the back of your favorite reclining furniture.

Your competition is not only active, it is passive, and by that we mean such locations as national parks and other outdoor venues that present the free show put on by Mother Nature on a 24x7 basis, 365 days of the year. To convince the parents, you must also convince the kids, which means you're also competing against theme parks like Six Flags and the Disney sites. The list goes on and on, but you get the point.

What that means is that you, the air show organizer, must find and make use of the best minds available to design an advertising package for your show that grabs the customer by the ears and says "Look at me! This is fun! This is the place to be!" This year's winners of awards in the various marketing categories devised by ICAS to reward the best ideas were great examples of what you must to do to get people to know that your air show is taking place. Bold, vivid colors; images that capture the thrill of watching that performer zoom through the sky leaving a trail of smoke behind the aircraft; the roar of the engines as they come to life; the steady "drip... drip... drip..." of round engines marking their territories... Ok, maybe we should skip that last one, but you get the point. Air show advertising must strive to capture all of those images and sounds and convey them to the public in order to bring them to the venue.

Which brings us to what we feel is the most powerful tool that the air show organizer can use to promote the activity -- the Internet. There's no other tool that allows you to collect, in one place, all of the things we have talked about. The web site can be your best friend and right-hand person, stretching its tendrils out to the search engines, dazzling the kids with images and sounds and showing people how to get to the show. It can even be your virtual ticket booth, selling tickets online with direct credit card or electronic check sales, so that patrons only have to get to the show, scan the ticket and enjoy.

In closing, we feel that the year head in air shows is going to be determined by how crafty, cunning and creative the organizers of air shows turn out to be in 2005. The good news is that we have seen how these same folks performed in 2004, and we were impressed. Every year they get better, and there's plenty of evidence to show that 2005 will be no exception.

FMI: www.icashq.org