Spirit of South Carolina gets some publicity

 It wasn't much, but undeniably, it was at least
something; the first exposure to the public since the fine feature article last summer in the Post and Courier.  Our schooner got some signage in front of people at the annual Georgetown Wooden Boat Show.

It was a fitting venue for announcing her return, but it was on short notice. Bryan Oliver  was already set to exhibit his Beetle Cat at the Boat Show. We were looking at a perfect advertising opportunity. Given that we had no marketing effort yet established, Bryan proposed a poster mounted on our sandwich board currently lashed down on the dock with other gear. Colleen Flynn, Exec Asst to Tommy Baker immediately agreed to the idea and volunteered her creative marketing staff.   

So, earlier last week, Bryan drafted up a poster design and forwarded it to Colleen.  She added an OCR scanned code to the bottom, linked to a Paypal donation account she had set up.   So, now we  had a Marketing Campaign. This was another first. 

Spirit's first Ad Campaign product
 set out in front of Bryan's Beetle Cat
at start of the Georgetown
Wooden Boat Show

When the Show started at 10 AM yesterday, the poster was strategically positioned in the path of the crowd as it moved down the rows of exhibited wooden watercraft.   Bryan, at the curb next to his boat was able to observe the crowd passing around it. Too many to count, stopped to read it. Half of those pointed it out to their walking companion, and a few even took out their camera and snapped an image of the OCR code at the bottom.  We'll see how it works.

After the Show concluded Sunday afternoon, Bryan recovered the Sandwich Board to be reused at the ship's gangway, or at the foot of the dock, to advertise the schooner when she could be open for tours, with a donation of course.  A decal banner "Open for Tours Today-Donations Appreciated" will be applied over the current "Coming Home Soon" banner.  It was a fruitful weekend for the schooner, with some names collected for adding to the Volunteer Contact Roster.. and hopefully a renewed interest rekindled in a lot of visitors.