Loop 032 printable

Volume 2, No. 8. May 10, 2002

Positioning a sale
As the Tussauds Group was considering various options to expand Halloween programs at three of its parks in England, the company was exposed to a new sales medium that turned out to be a crucial cog on the way to securing a deal with The Sudden Impact! Entertainment Company.

The New York-based designers will be installing two mazes at Thorpe Park in Surrey and a walk-through show at the mansion on Alton Towers in Alton for late October fright festivals. They also have been contracted to build a yet-to-be-determined walk-through at Chessington World of Adventure in Chessington, England, for this year’s Halloween celebrations. Tussauds’ executives were first drawn by Sudden Impact’s Return of the Mummy maze at the IAAPA Trade Show in Orlando last November. Talks moved on to phone calls and e-mails, but then Sudden Impact Chairman and CEO Lynton Harris widened his use of the Internet in pursuing the deal.

At the time he was filming scenes of his Fright House in Washington, D.C., a show intended for last October but one he canceled in the wake of 9/11 (THE LOOP, September 21, 2001). He taped a personal message to the Tussauds Group—“I played up the Australian-English humor a bit and said we wanted to come over and scare them,” Harris said—and uploaded the whole thing onto a private Web address, which he sent to Tussauds.

“It was very, very useful, considering they’re so far away and the difference in time zones,” said Paul Lanham, creative director for Tussauds Parks. “(Harris) created a unique web site that shows the look of the thing, the audience reaction, the sound. You get a proper understanding of what his things can do.” The same effect could be accomplished via video or DVD, but the Web method allowed not only for same-day viewing but simultaneous screenings during conference calls.

Harris still had to fly to England for face-to-face meetings and presentations to close the deal, but once he had the contract he continued using the private Web site to share design ideas and concepts. “If you don’t have high-speed Internet access it takes a while to download, but it’s still a lot quicker and cheaper than sending it Federal Express,” Harris said. “And you have the ability to change it the next day after you get their inputs.”

“I think it’s a very useful tool, actually, especially if you are showing a show-biz product,” said Lanham, who had never experienced that kind of sales approach before. “It’s not easy to get out and see those kind of things.”