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Unnatural Attractions
In Connecticut's hyper-competitive tourism market, brand identity is key
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Business New Haven
2/16/2004
By: Mimi Houston
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With a seemingly limitless wealth of things to do and see even in tiny Connecticut, it's sometimes hard to choose how to spend what little free time we have. Investing a little time into researching possible destinations makes a lot of sense, and - while certainly not a guarantee - it may help to ensure we won't be disappointed with our choice once we arrive at it.
With so many attractions competing for our precious few free weekends or vacation hours, it's crucial for them to be marketed - or branded - in just the right way. Finding that right identity - and then doing what needs to be done to communicate it in all the right venues - can mean the difference between a fairly decent crowd of visitors or a standing-room-only showing.
Because Connecticut has a long history of respect and appreciation for educational values, a trip to a museum can be more complicated than it sounds. Should you choose art or natural history? Science or carousels? Taking the kids? That can involve a whole new list of criteria to investigate.
Dave Holahan of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center in Mashantucket, which houses the world's largest collection of Native American art and artifacts, is knowledgeable about today's visitor. He says his museum is conscious of establishing a certain identity - and it reflects a thoroughly modern age.
"Well, obviously education is a focus," Holahan says, "but we're a new museum and our exhibits have a lot of high-tech, computer-interactive features."
Many examples of this are impressive.
"The museum has dioramas that you can actually walk through," Holahan describes. "They're not small scenes behind glass. We have a very large indoor Pequot village from the 16th century, and a caribou hunt. There are different stations within the exhibit with computers. If you see something you'd like to learn more about - a tool, or weapon maybe - you can enter that into the computer and get more information about it."
And even the format of the information on the computers reflects the museum's high-tech personality.
"The images on the computer are rendered as video," says Holahan. "You can watch a simulated hunt, or get interviews with archeologists to find out what it was like to live 11,000 years ago."
Holahan points to the hands-on features that contradict the customary hands-off philosophy of so many museums.
"You can actually feel the sharp blade of a tool, or put your hand into the sleeve of Native American clothing - we're not your grandmother's museum," he notes with a laugh.
Holahan says a variety of advertising media are used to promote the museum's high-tech educational focus.
"We run ads and send out press releases," says Holahan of the usual mass communications media. "We also send out a quarterly newsletter to all our members and we hold special events at the museum."
Holahan says that such events play an important role in getting the museum's word out.
"We have a 4,200-square-foot gallery for changing exhibits - visiting exhibits or our own," he says. "We also have a 320-seat auditorium where we have films, plays, music and dance by Native American performers.
Via its newsletter and Web site, Holahan says the museum keeps members and Web surfers up-to-date on the latest offerings, which display the wide focus of programs it offers.
"We're a museum for all ages," he states. "We get a lot of families here, and we also get a lot of seniors who come in that are interested in workshops or lectures on a certain topic.
"And we're not just a Native American museum," Holahan adds of yet another identity feature the museum tries to convey in its advertising efforts. "We have exhibits on agriculture, on the Europeans who came to America, and why they came. We have native and natural history exhibits, like the effects of the glaciers on the landscape 18,000 years ago.
"The museum is educational and it's fun," he says. "What we really try to stress is that we're also interactive, engaging and state-of-the-art. People come here knowing somewhat what to expect, but when they actually come in and walk through the wigwams - they're still surprised."
Surprises abound at the other end of the state, too. The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, for example, provides visitors, the majority of whom are families, with startlingly close-up views of sharks, harbor seals and even loggerhead sea turtles - all of whom make their homes or pass through the state on their way to and from their winter and summer habitats.
It's especially important to museum officials that attendees' visits be fun. If you learn a little something about sea life, Long Island Sound, and the importance of environmental responsibility along the way, that's an added bonus.
"Rather than be an environmental advocacy group," explains Tim Gagne, the aquarium's publicist, "we'd just like to ignite interest and promote an understanding. We're letting people know what they have in their own back yard," he says of the Maritime Center's focus on Long Island Sound and its immediate environs which host a multitude of living organisms, big and small.
Gagne says once an interest is sparked, making the connection to environmental responsibility can be a natural next step, especially among the aquarium's younger visitors. Promoting this connection - and providing a fun way to do it - is the aquarium's raison d'etre. And it's how they'd like to be known.
As host to more than 525,000 visitors a year, the aquarium ranks as Connecticut's most popular attraction.
"We're primarily reaching out to children and families," Gagne says. "We do advertise in print and radio, but it's also the programs we have and the IMAX films we're bringing in, that are appropriate to families.
"It really happens in lots of layers," he continues. "We're working to provide families and educational groups with something different every time they come here."
Gagne says the 7,000-square-foot exhibition space changes displays frequently enough to let that happen.
"Right now we have an exhibit about microbes with video games, holograms and interactive computer displays," he says. "The kids are having fun while they're learning. We feel that if they can internalize the information somehow, they'll get a better general picture."
Gagne says the films the aquarium offers also reflect an effort to promote an image of educational fun for all.
"The IMAX [Image MAXimum] film changes every four to six months or so, and it's always a family-oriented film. It's such a different experience from seeing a normal film," says Gagne referring to the enormous size of the screen that is eight stories wide by six stories high - the only one of its kind in Connecticut.
Gagne says even the aquarium's permanent attractions are changed frequently.
"Our permanent tanks are always refreshed by local fisherman," he says. "We get calls from the oyster companies saying, 'We've got a couple of nice sharks that got caught in our nets....'"
Aquarium personnel are also known to be riding about on the fishing boats hoping to collect specimens of a particular sea animal they might be short on when the catch of the day is brought up.
Gagne says the outdoor aspects of the aquarium help attract visitors and provide a new experience for seasoned members as well. Whether students are meeting on the nearby Calf Pasture Beach or out on a seal watch cruise on the 31-passenger research vessel, Oceanic, there are plenty of opportunities for fun, and maybe even for learning, too.
"We have a lot going on," Gagne says. "There are a lot of different programs. We have about 125,000 school kids coming here each year, plus we're going out into schools that can't get here. It's a way to show that even if you don't live near Long Island Sound, you're still involved - you're in the watershed area. Everyone is environmentally connected. The students are learning about the animals and about recycling and pollution. They're learning why you don't want to sprinkle pesticides on your lawn. But the whole time they're learning, they're having fun."
Gagne says the learning may be paying off. Increased numbers of harbor seals in the Sound over the last ten years could very well mean cleaner water. And corporations in Connecticut are getting more involved as well.
"We're a non-profit group, relying on grants and public and private support," explains Gagne. "Since September 11 [2001], we've definitely noticed an increase in corporate and individual support. It seems to be a time when people are revising their identities - wanting to do good."
He points, for example, to Dunkin Donuts, which just signed on as the museum's newest corporate partner, as a way to give back to the community and the environment.
When not busy promoting the environment and teaching about the rich life in and about Connecticut's waters, the aquarium is host to weddings, corporate parties, private functions, proms and member sleepovers. But whether you're having Champagne by the sharks or supper with the seals, chances are you'll come away with a better appreciation for and resolve to do more for our precious natural resources.
Traveling farther into the middle of the state leads you to a different yet equally liquid natural asset - itself a growing tourist attraction. Up in Cornwall Bridge flows a section of the Housatonic River (which runs right into Long Island Sound) that boasts some of the best fly-fishing in the country. And growing numbers of tourists from throughout the U.S. and Europe are coming to cast in its waters.
Fly-fisherman and owner of Housatonic Meadows, a fly-fishing school, store, lodge, and soon-to-be restaurant, Marty Iannone says some free marketing from a major motion picture company really helped his business take off.
"After the movie, A River Runs Through It came out," he explains, "fly-fishing just took off."
Iannone, a former tree-company owner from North Haven - and passionate fly-fisherman whenever a free moment arose - never dreamed of turning his passion into a business. A regular customer, along with his grandfather, at a small but well-known fly-fishing shop along the Housatonic since he was very young, Iannone's life was changed after one fateful visit to the shop.
"I went in one day and the owner, who I'd known for all these years," remembers Iannone, "asked me if I would buy the place."
Iannone's first reaction? "'Forget about it,' I said to myself. 'I could never afford this.'"
But once he was out on the river that day, casting for the plentiful and large rainbow and brown trout that jump hungrily for flies, Iannone's mind began to open up to the idea. He was not married, had no children, and knew the owner had asked him and not someone else because he felt confident Iannone would protect the integrity of the place.
Once he made up his mind to go ahead with the purchase, Iannone never looked back.
"We're five years into it now," he explains. "The lodge has been completely done over. We've expanded the fly shop to an 1,100-square-foot former gas station across the street."
Iannone is renovating six woodland cabins to be ready this summer, and a new home-style restaurant will debut next year. As part of an area in Connecticut that scarcely needs advertising - storied Litchfield County - Iannone's dream location is, well, a dream.
"The Housatonic River starts up in Vermont and ends up in Long Island Sound," he describes. "If you travel on I-95, you go over it. If you go past Sikorsky [Aircraft in Stratford], you go over it. We're in the upper part - the last ten to 15 miles in the state - the blue-water section, where the river runs fast.
"This is classic New England," continues Iannone, "and I wanted to market it that way."
Getting the word out to fly-fishing aficionados hasn't seemed so difficult. When Iannone bought the fly shop, it was already endorsed by Orvis, one of the nation's largest and oldest catalogue retailers, which caters to outdoor sports and activities. Iannone took this a step further by becoming an Orvis dealer. Now he is fully endorsed by the company. Even the lodge is now Orvis-endorsed - even down to its very furnishings.
"Just being in their catalogue gets us into over two million homes every spring," says Iannone. "And it gets us right into the hands of the people who actually want the information.
"And, if you click on Orvis.com and look up fly fishing in Connecticut, we're there," says Iannone. "We get a lot of New Yorkers, and a lot of Europeans who are in Manhattan for business fishing here because these guys are going into the Orvis store there and asking where they can go fly-fishing."
The Orvis store sends them right to Housatonic Meadows, now a 75-year-old feature of the river's shores. Iannone sends a driver into Manhattan to pick them up, they spend a day or two casting, and then get driven back into the city.
annone is hard-pressed to come up with a "typical" fly-fisherman. But he can tailor his teaching program to fit a wide variety of different needs.
"It's really hard for me to tell you over the phone what your visit is going to be like," he explains. "It really all depends on your physical ability. It's hard for me to judge that until I actually see you."
Once Iannone gets a sense of what visitors are up for, the fishing begins.
"First, we'll go out to the field across the street and practice casting for about 45 minutes to an hour," he says. "It's hard to say exactly how long it will take. Then we'll go out into the river to where the fish are feeding behind the rocks and tie on an imitation fly.
"Or, if you're not comfortable in the river there are some nice sandy places to stand, or I have boats that go out into where the fish are feeding. Eventually, by the end of the day, you'll usually catch one. Though not always."
Iannone emphasizes it's the thrill of the cast and not the actual catch that makes the sport so appealing - and so enduring.
"Fly-fishing is a lifelong sport," he says. "It's like golf. It's all in the timing. And women are usually better at it, because it's not about strength. It's about timing."
Depending on the season, down to the very week of when you are fishing, Iannone says there are particular flies to use for specific conditions. While he sells plenty of whatever flies you'll need in the shop, he spends as much time as he can during the off-season tying his own - a craft he has perfected since he was 12 years old.
"Most people who are into this as much as I am tie their own flies," he admits.
Tying his own flies may become more and more of a luxury to fit into his schedule, as the lodge now boasts accommodations for a wider range of guests.
"It was my wife's idea to market the lodge for events like weddings," Iannone says. Incidentally, Iannone met wife, Frankie Winter, while teaching her fly-casting one summer.
"We don't actually have the weddings here, but we are large enough to lodge the whole family together. Everyone gets to have their own rooms, but they can all meet at the fireplace for drinks."
Iannone says he's starting to market the lodge for other things besides fishing on a more regular basis now, since good fishing weather in New England can be anything but dependable.
"These last few summers especially have been very rainy," he says. "And if the weather is not good, people don't come."
With an surfeit of private boarding schools in the area, Iannone says there is really never a shortage of potential visitors that he and his wife plan to host in their upcoming sixth season.
But, clearly, it will always be the fishing that tugs at Iannone's heart and soul. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't say to myself, 'I can't believe I'm doing this."
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