Effective Industry Communications
By Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional
Effective communication is an art form. When we understand how effective it can be, we tend to take it more seriously. When we take our communications seriously, we study it more and we get better in its usage. I believe that effective communication usage in the recreational diving industry is the foundation of our understanding about how the industry operates now and how much better it can be managed in the future.
Over the years, I have seen many surveys that try to pinpoint the problems, challenges, and roadblocks that are present in the recreational diving industry. A major concern among the various stakeholder groups is that of industry fragmentation. The industry has been fragmented for many years and I believe that it has the possibility of getting worse, although we are working on strategies that could end industry fragmentation once and for all.
Fragmentation is the opposite of unification. Fragmented industries, or groups, break off into smaller segments, or fragments because of what makes them different from the others in the larger group. Unification is a process where small fragments of an industry come together in spite of their differences and look for the things they have in common. So, fragmentation and unification are outcomes that happen because of the way we look at similarities and differences in our stakeholder groups. The choice to fragment or unite is ours to make.
The way I like to explain unification and fragmentation is that unification brings together groups that have a common denominator on a large scale. “We are all Divers” is a common denominator on a large scale. The group Divers, consists of recreational, sport, advanced, specialty, technical and free divers. Fragmentation happens when a small-scale group breaks away from the large-scale group with a larger common denominator that originally brought them together. Many technical diver segments like cave, wreck, and CCR broke ranks with the recreational diver stakeholder group and branded themselves as Tech Divers. They may have thought that uniting their group as Tech Divers would result in economies of scale, but in fact they are uniting under a smaller scale common denominator which made their group less effective and less visible. There is even further fragmentation occurring within the tech community today. The outcome is less visibility, less sponsorship potential, and less economic impact. If we only preach to the choir, their choir just got smaller.
When specialty groups break away from a larger group, they are in effect creating a smaller choir they can preach to. Not only are they making their group smaller, but they are also limiting their future growth and sustainability. The solution is to retain ties and communication with the larger group as you refine your sector management capabilities within your specialty group. This way, you have the best of both worlds. A highly qualified subset of a larger, more recognized set. Using 21st century marketing methods, we can acquire potential business contacts on a mass scale, while we organize the demographics into manageable segments and use target marketing techniques in cost effective campaigns.
Understanding and Dealing with Industry Fragmentation: It is not our job to fight industry fragmentation. Our job is to work with it. We need to understand the reasons that fragmented segments broke away in the first place. Each stakeholder group that has broken away, or fragmented from the whole, has different needs, wants, and desires. Therefore, it is likely they have different agendas. Industry Planners, like myself, are busy acquiring their statistical data and organizing it into workable market segment populations. With target marketing capability, we should be able to understand and serve their individual recreational diving needs, wants, and desires,
Recreational Diving, Work, and Business: Ever since the early 1950’s when scuba diving began its commercial growth in the United States, there has been channel friction between divers who use scuba diving as a recreation, those who use scuba diving in their work, and those who use it as a business tool. Understanding their needs is key to our industry’s growth and sustainability.
The Use of Scuba Diving: Many different types of individuals use scuba diving as a means of doing something. Believe me, I’ve been in many different camps over the past 60 years. To many of us, scuba diving is a recreational tool for exploration and adventure. Military divers use it as a tool to transport them to a specific location, to conduct military operations, perform ship husbandry, or to perform oceanographic work of some type. Scientific Divers use scuba diving to study the oceans, waterways, plants, and animals. Commercial Divers use all kinds of diving equipment to do work underwater. Public Safety Divers (Police Officers and Fire Fighters) use scuba diving equipment for search and rescue. Countless other professions use scuba diving as part of their work requirements or in training. And of course, there are those of us who are in the scuba diving business. Are we professional businesspeople specializing in diving or are we divers who own a business because we love diving? We can discuss that at the next trade show. You buy the first round.
Part-Time or Full-Time Business: We define the term Dive Industry Professional as any person who works in the diving industry. It doesn’t make a difference if it is full-time or part-time and it makes no difference if the person is an employee, a business owner, or a volunteer. That’s a pretty broad description, but we make it that way to be all inclusive. As you can see, the diving industry is a pretty large tent, and it is filled with the most diverse group of individuals that have ever walked the planet.
The Global Diving Community: As an Industry Planner and Industry Business Advisor, I have made it my life’s work to study, understand, and document the diving industry and consult with Entrepreneurs who want to start, grow, and succeed in the business of diving. I understand that all divers who are active today are consumers of diving programs, products, and services. Our purpose in the industry is to create and maintain a viable Global Diving Community. Part of creating and maintaining a database of all divers in the global diving community is to actively communicate with divers across the globe. To do that we are creating marketing vehicles that facilitate two-way communication between buyers and sellers.
The Global Diving Business Network: If you are in the business of providing diving programs, products, and services to the Global Diving Community, you are a part of the Global Diving Business Network. In order to be successful in our mission of bringing buyers and sellers together, the Dive Industry Association has a process of identifying all the producers, sellers, and resellers of diving equipment, training, travel, and lifestyle products across the globe. Our plan is to identify and publish a current active list of all Dive Stores, Dive Boats, Dive Clubs, and Dive Instructors who are in the business of teaching people to dive, outfitting certified divers, taking them diving, and keeping them active in the recreational diving community. DIVE LOCAL currently maintains and publishes a Dive Store Directory on its website, so that divers can find a dive store in their local diving community, close to where they live. Our plan is to start with a current listing of dive stores, and then add dive boats, dive clubs, and dive instructors. We encourage all Dive Industry Professionals to contact us for a free listing and tell us about their business.
Having a verified listing of dive businesses published for free on a website is a great service to active scuba divers. You would think that every dive store, boat, club, and instructor would be visiting our website to make sure they are on the list, but I can tell you that is one of our biggest challenges in the diving industry. Maybe it’s the independent and entrepreneurial nature of Dive Industry Professionals, but our industry lacks a central marketing and media source of information. Everyone gets their industry information from their own circle of influence and rarely do they venture outside of their own safety net of familiarity. The solution is to have an industry wide communication network that reaches all Divers and Dive Industry Professionals regardless of their certification agency affiliation, their diving equipment vendor preference, or their travel destination choices.
We have covered this issue in our Daily Blog, Weekly News, our monthly magazine The Dive Industry Professional, and in our annual Trade Directory & Buyers Guide. Our article, Stay Active shows certified divers how to become active divers after getting certified.
Effective Communication: Communication is a two-way process. It requires a speaker and a listener and a format where they can exchange roles. As a comparison, advertising is a one-way process because the message is formatted to talk at you. You can’t have a conversation with an advertisement. Salesmen don’t really do any better because they talk to you, in hopes of making a sale. The job of a salesperson is to sell you what they have. What you need and what you want are less important to them because they are limited in what they can sell you. Marketing professionals are a different breed of salespeople. We try to talk with you; in order to understand your needs so we can meet them. The entire Global Diving Business Network needs to change the way we do business with the Global Diving Community. The number one challenge is to get both sides of the buyer-seller relationship to open up to each other, in a meaningful dialog.
Bringing Buyers and Sellers Together: Our Mission at the Dive Industry Association is to bring Buyers and Sellers together for mutual benefit and to facilitate industry growth and sustainability. That is a “Conception to Consumption” strategy. That means we get involved in the demand side process and supply side economics. This process includes producers, wholesalers, sellers, re-sellers, buyers, consumers, and end users, just to name a few. Believe me, the entire process is extensive, multi-dimensional, integrated, and complex. The best way to describe a conception to consumption strategy is to think of how the flow of goods and services pass through the industry channels of distribution. We call them channels of distribution because we have to take into account the differences in distribution methods for diving equipment suppliers, training agencies, the travel industry, and businesses in the service and lifestyle stakeholder groups.
Gathering Product Flow Data: In order for a distribution system to work properly, it must be designed to complete a purpose. The best way to understand a business’s purpose is to survey them about their goals, objectives, planned outcomes, agendas, core competencies, and unique selling propositions. We need to know about their targeted customer demographics, geographics, psychographics, and genagraphics. On the buyers’ side, we need to compile data and understand their needs, wants, and desires for the programs, products, and services our industry produces.
Establishing an Industry Communication Forum: We have our work cut out for us. If the goal is to defragment the recreational diving industry, we need to get the cooperation of all divers across the globe, both certified divers and dive businesses alike. We have to set up an industry-wide communication network that includes industry surveys, periodic blogs, weekly news updates, monthly trade magazine, and a live-streaming digital conference. If we can schedule local dive community meetings and conferences at local, regional, and national shows & events, across the globe, we could unite the industry like never before. I realize that many of these pieces to our communication dilemma are already in place, but it’s time to connect all of the scattered pieces to our dive industry network and move forward in a unified manner.
Looking forward to your response and engagement. For more information about participating in a global communication forum, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director, Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica circle, West Melbourne, Florida 32904. Phone: 321-914-3778. eMail: gene@diveindustry.net Web: www.diveindustry.net & www.divelocal.org
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