|
Zoos
& Baseball
We live in interesting
times. According to several notable authors, we are living in the
Experience Economy, the
Entertainment Economy,
the Dream Society and
the era of Experiential Marketing,
Emotional Branding and
EVEolution. Keenly aware
of the challenges that impact cultural institutions and, especially,
zoos, Strategic Leisure recognizes the sophistication with which
cultural institutions must compete for consumers' leisure
time and money.
The Baseball Effect
Within this Enriched
Realitysm milieu, zoos are like baseball:
– Everyone
knows what the experience is.
– Everyone knows where to find it.
– Everyone says they like it.
– Yet, people do not do baseball or zoos as often.
Consumers today
constantly evaluate the comprehensive value of their investment
of time, which is soberly understood, by an aging and stressed population,
to be a precious allocation in the zero sum game of life. Within
this market psychology, and in relationship to other entertainment
opportunities (including the increasingly satisfying choice of being
entertained at home), Strategic Leisure believes that zoos, like
baseball, are perceived by many to be more passive, lower impact
experiences. The National past time is past its prime.
Zoos and baseball share the common descriptor of physical context
in the word “park,” and are both “pleasant”
ways to spend the afternoon. For an increasing number of people,
however, a pleasant park experience, of whatever theme, is no longer
compelling enough. Baseball, at least, has the multi-billion dollar
media industry as a powerful, self-interested booster. Zoos are
left to evolve and flourish, or stay the same and become increasingly
challenged and diminished.
Age
Compression
Layered on top of the impact of the Baseball Effect, zoos are also
being impacted by another related trend: Age Compression. Age Compression
is the label the entertainment industry has given the phenomena
that kids are growing up faster, evolving out of the childhood content
and reaching teenage-type attitudes earlier in their physical age,
and even “maturing” physically earlier than past generations.
As Age Compression is adversely impacting such American mainstays
as children’s animated films, it is surely reducing the
archetypal zoo market of families with young children.
Commercial Competition
Commercial enterprise has entered the reality-based enrichment purview
of museums, aquariums, science centers and zoos with smart-money
zeal. The competition in the content-rich leisure market has multiplied
manifold in the last decade.
|
Can
zoos adapt and survive the
evolution of entertainment?
E-mail us your thoughts.
Consider
the following:
– Disney has developed a zoo as theme park.
– National Geographic is not a magazine. It is not even an
adventure, it is a multitude of Ventures, a natural history empire
with its own cable channel, Eco Challenge, IMAX films, adventure,
travel and other magazines, and an e-commerce enterprise.
– Discovery Communications not only has the Discovery Channel,
but the Animal Planet, The Discovery Kids, Learning Channel (TLC),
Discovery Health, Discovery Travel, Discovery Science, Discovery
Civilization, Discovery Wings, and Discovery Home & Leisure
channels, in addition to the Discovery Stores around the country,
and Discovery.com, which includes an online resources called Discovery
School and features sections called the Parent Channel, the Teacher
Channel.
User-Active Home Entertainment
In-home entertainment has become exponentially ubiquitous and
ever more compelling, and the threat is probably even larger than
it might first appear.
Big, beautiful, high definition visual and surround sound audio,
high speed bandwidth and hundreds of cable channels are only the
obvious, ubiquitous factors making home entertainment more compelling.
Home entertainment is becoming much more user-active, which is
far more insidiously threatening to out-of-home leisure industries
like zoos than screens and speakers. Today, our domestic, networked,
and converged electronics sport hardware and software
so powerful they have actually become simple,
While the legacy system of the couch potato will live on, the
American home is becoming a hot bed of creativity, as everyday
people become producers of their own creativity. The resulting
sense of accomplishment may be one of the strongest of human "addictions,"
afflicting many with symptoms of personal expression and self-worth.
And the sociology of "Cheers" is only a click away;
so, the home even becomes a portal through which to connect and
share one's creative output. Home isn't what it used to be. It
is much, much more.
These four immovable forces, the Baseball Effect, Age Compression,
Commercial Competition, and User-Active Home Entertainment threaten
the organizational species known as zoo. Survival of only the
fittest, of only the most committed, creative and nimble, is the
evolutionary destiny.
|
|
