[PAO] Marketing question

Mon Jun 30 00:28:21 CDT 2014

While recruiting members is a major activity, with our rapidly changing missions due to 406 replacing 121.5 SARs we need to be recruiting customers to keep the members busy and fulfilled. I have raised this issue with NHQ for years and PA said it's not their job and referred me to Operations. The response from Ops has always been that our "valid" customers know who we are. 

 We have had a booth at EOC conventions where less than 30% of the county EOC directors had ever heard of us, and even fewer knew how to request our services. We have no national material for this type event or individual meetings with potential customers from EOC staff to sheriff and FD departments. A few years ago I made a poster showing some of our ES activities and had many sheriffs and FDs in smaller counties taking notes about how to go through their state EOC or directly to AFRCC or the NOC to request help in locations that have no local aviation support or active local Red Cross units. So much for having our customers know who we are or what we can offer. 

 In Florida, we still get 50-60 active AFRCC missions a year, but with many 406 searches we don't need all of the resources we've used in the past. Because of the lack of active missions, I've seen plenty of members leave CAP for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, Red Cross, and other volunteer ES organizations because they felt they weren't being utilized or appreciated. We can only assure our relevance by listening to our customers and responding with services that meet their needs, and without customers, we don't need to be recruiting some of the categories of new members. 

 As for member recruiting, I've never seen any marketing research to know exactly the demographics of who we're recruiting and who we have the best retention numbers with. It has always appeared we're standing up saying here we are, without any real targeting for members that are the best fit. Recruiting material for a home school convention should be different from material trying to recruit seniors on an airbase. This is an issue whether recruiting members, sponsors, or customers. 

 I'd like to see a catalogue of CAP services to hand out to potential customers, and have PA help sell customer requests to Ops when we have a service that could get us good community publicity. 

 I love the idea of being able to quickly get locally produced CAP material to fit the needs. We get a good local citizen response when we have small yard signs pointing the way to a SAREX or other weekend activity. We also would like the ability to locally create more event T-Shirts and even specific handout trinkets, but we're told we're limited in what we can do with a CAP logo because of contractual obligations to Vanguard. That chills many good ideas for fear of stepping over a line that most don't understand about Vanguard's exclusive lock on certain CAP items. 
         Normal   0               false   false   false      EN-US   X-NONE   X-NONE                                                     MicrosoftInternetExplorer4                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Bill Weiler, Maj CAP
Florida Wing Civil Air Patrol 913.488.5392 FLCAP 218
  wweiler at flwg.us  

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 From: "DOUGLAS E. JESSMER, Lt Col, CAP CAP/PM" <djessmer at cap.gov>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2014 4:40 PM
To: "CAP Public Affairs Officers" <cap-pao at lists.sempervigilans.org>
Subject: Re: [PAO] Marketing question

Hey, everyone, so far, got some great ideas, which is what I wanted - I was more interested in seeking ideas and input than getting direct answers to my questions, anyway. I'm hoping we can get some folks to put our heads together and make them work. Keep those cards and letters coming... 

DOUGLAS E. JESSMER, Lt Col, CAP
National Marketing Officer

COM: (727) 480-9606
Clearwater, Fla.

CAUTION: This e-mail is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. Do not disseminate this message without the sender's approval. If you received this message in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and delete all copies of this message.   
 On 28 Jun 2014, at 17:58 , DOUGLAS E. JESSMER, Lt Col, CAP CAP/PM <djessmer at cap.gov> wrote:  This may be the first of a few questions I ask, just to better assess the marketing needs in the field, and as I'm in the midst of a branding project for CAP. This may be a little random, but there is a method to the madness, so bear with me.

- What's the need right now for posters, brochures, flyers, et al., and what do you think would help better tell our story? What would you change about what we're doing now?

- What do you see as flaws in CAP's branding, whether it's in the visuals, the brand message or overall messaging?

- Do you perceive a need for tschotchkies - key chains, stress balls, stuff like that - and since budgets are as they are, if online ordering (let's say, from eServices) were stood up, or if preferred vendors were identified, would you use it/them?

Fire away at djessmer at cap.gov.

DOUGLAS E. JESSMER, Lt Col, CAP
National Marketing Officer

COM: (727) 480-9606
Clearwater, Fla.

CAUTION: This e-mail is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. Do not disseminate this message without the sender's approval. If you received this message in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and delete all copies of this message.

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