Volume 1, No. 21. November 16, 2001
A case of ideas
Bridget Donato arrived at her first
IAAPA Tuesday morning as Andretti Thrill Park's director of sales and marketing
in Melbourne, Florida. By noon, she headed "the largest marketing firm in the
country," the tag Mark Nichols of ITEC laid on her after Donato volunteered
to serve as a case study in the "Successful Shoulder Season Marketing" seminar.
With Donato and her go-kart park in the spotlight, moderator Nichols guided
the audience of about 150 people through a spirited half hour of brainstormed
marketing ideas and far-flung experiences.
"I saw it as an opportunity to get people's opinion and advice," Donato said
of sticking her hand up immediately when Nichols asked for a volunteer. It worked.
"I got more marketing ideas than I can use. There's enough meat in the sandwich
to make a sub." She has been at Andretti Thrill Park for just over a year, but
she has a long experience of public speaking, all the way back to her student
council days in grade school. "I always stood up there speaking to the other
kids while they threw stuff at me."
The only thing thrown at her Tuesday were suggestions and, afterward, business
cards. "Thank you for letting us have an idea fest," said Todd Hansen, director
of sales and marketing at Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium in Orlando.
"Hey, you can lay an idea on me anytime," Donato replied.
The impromptu case study resurrected a session that seemed snakebit before it
started. One of the scheduled presenters, Robert Owen of Blackpool Pleasure
Beach in England, had to remain home when his son was hospitalized with a sudden
illness. "He phoned yesterday morning and said, 'I'm not in America,'" seminar
organizer Joanne Taminiau-Cook, marketing director of Het Land van Ooit in Drunen,
The Netherlands, said Tuesday. She and her husband, Tobias Taminiau, director
of the park's licensing and publishing company, recruited Sarah Dornford-May,
Blackpool Pleasure Beach's head of public relations, to fill in. Then they counted
on the case study segment to fill out the program.
"The interactive type of workshops are most effective," Tobias said. "The problem
is not so much the important thing. The process of solving the problem is what
it's all about. That's what we saw here."