Mass ascensions, delighted crowds,
and breakfast burritos are a few of the sights, sounds, and smells of balloon
events. During the past two decades balloon rallies have become big business.
In fact they are the fastest growing type of airshow.by Tom Hamilton
Mass ascensions, delighted crowds,
and breakfast burritos are a few of the sights, sounds, and smells of balloon
events. During the past two decades balloon rallies have become big business.
In fact they are the fastest growing type of airshow.
Balloon Life estimates that there are approximately 300 balloon events in the United States each year. These range from the small 10- to 12-balloon invitational to the 850-balloon, mass extravaganza of Albuquerque where millions of spectators enjoy the kaleidoscope of color parading across the sky. An estimated 15 million people attend one or more balloon events during the course of a year.
Those spectators spend lots of dollars. How much? The economic impact study for the 1992 Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta showed people spent $32 million throughout the nine day event. This resulted in a $94 million economic impact for the city.
Jodi Baugh, marketing director, Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, says. "One thing that makes balloon events successful, versus other events, is that they are cross-generational, fun, and family oriented."
Balloons have always attracted a crowd. For all ballooning's advancement since 1783the forays into science and warfare, long distance and altitude flights, and even the challenges of competitive flyingthere has been one common thread throughout its history: show business. Exploits of the early aeronauts often revolved around the entrepreneurial drive and involved an admission fee.
The first organized attempt to turn ballooning into a spectator sport can be credited to the newspaper millionaire James Gordon Bennett. A sportsman and sports promoter, it was Bennett who inaugurated a series of international long-distance balloon races September 30, 1906 with the first race for the Gordon Bennett Aeronautic Cup. Gas balloons were the aircraft of the day, so success was measured in either distance or duration. For the Gordon Bennett series, the winner would be the pilot who flew the farthest, as measured in a straight line from the starting point.
Sixteen entrants from seven countries took off from Paris on that historic day. Among them was American Frank P. Lahm who would win this first Gordon Bennett Race after a flight of 395 miles which lasted 22 hours and 28 minutes.
The event proved to be an unquestionable success. Some 250,000 spectators watched the ascensions and millions more read about the race in the press, including Bennett's New York Herald.
The first modern hot-air balloon race was held in conjunction with the St. Paul Winter Carnival in 1962. Four balloons participated; a young engineering student named Tracy Barnes won the Piccard Cup flying a home-built balloon.
Over the next two decades balloon events were held mostly for competition with little thought given to festivities. As events became larger, more structure and funding were needed. Albuquerque, for example, had been started by Sid Cutter, but the event was draining his resources. The AIBF organization was formed to take over management and raise money to put on the annual affair.
Entrepreneurs new to ballooning in the early '70s, like Bill Meadows, saw an opportunity to make money by staging an event. Slowly the concept of balloon races as money-making airshows took hold.
Not until the '80's, however, did balloon events come into their own as airshow festivals. As some events became larger, they started having a significant economic impact on the community in which they were held. What promoters discovered was the public's insatiable fancy for airshows. Spurred on by the tremendous success of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, many other communities started to host events.
Unlike conventional airshows which require an airport, balloons events can take place in relatively small areas. As a result, ballooning become a natural vehicle for holding airshows almost anywhere.
What is necessary to have a financially successful balloon event? Balloon Life spoke with many successful balloon event organizers to learn their secrets. Common to the successes of each were three elements: marketing, organization, and community involvement.
Marketing
The only way to guarantee the financial success of a balloon rally is to pre-sell the event. Go out and raise the money needed before the event. Sponsorship is the key.
Whether it is $20,000 or $3 million, raising the money can be the most challenging task. Yet, companies continue to spend money on event marketing. According to Baugh, corporations spent advertising dollars to the tune of over $2.5 billion on sporting events alone in a year. Ten percent of that was spent on all types of sports festivals. Baugh says the current trend is for companies to spend more on event marketing.
These sponsors are looking for a grassroots approach to their marketing. Balloon events are a positive medium for their messages as these events cross generations and are fun and family oriented.
Many sponsors want to be associated with the type of lifestyle found at a balloon event as they bring whole family together to have fun. These events also give sponsors an opportunity to place their product samples in consumers' hands at a time when they are feeling good. This helps build a close relationship between consumer and company.
Baugh says she doesn't like to use the word "sponsor," to describe this relationship between corporation and event, "When I contact an organization I use words like `investment,' `opportunity,' and `partnership.'" The key is to increase and create value in the sponsorship package. Once that value is created and conveyed, the ability to sell the package is easier.
"Balloon events do not charge enough [for the sponsor packages]," Baugh said. One value that can be readily sold is repeated attendance. According the same marketing survey 67 percent of the people attending the Albuquerque event said they would come back next year. Event organizers should not consider sponsorship a one-shot sell. The continued involvement and relationship between the sponsor and their consumers is important to these advertisers. Remember, companies want the ability to establish a close relationship in a favorable environment with consumers.
Many balloon event marketing directors are finding that more sponsors are becoming savvy. Baugh says, "Some companies are using balloons throughout the year, not just during the event, the same way they might use radio [station] remote-type advertising."
From an advertiser's standpoint, the balloon event provides them with an attentive and captive audience. The number of people who attend and who are exposed to the event make this a good media buy for the sponsor. Use this point to demonstrate how, in comparison to other media buys, sponsorship of a balloon event is cost effective. Taking care of the sponsors by providing on-field services and by giving them opportunities to set up their own booths for hospitality and consumer testing are attractive added values.
Organization & Community Involvement
Before the money is raised there must be an organization. Planning an event can be a headache. Budgets, sponsors, crowd estimates, insurance, flying events, advertising; the list of things to be done goes on and on. Creating an organization responsible for running the event topped each event organizer's list as the essential element for success.
Successful events begin with strong organization and the right goals. The events that last have a purpose for the community. They get marketing people on board early who know what they are doing. And, they get the city or community involved.
Battle Creek has 42 division of volunteers. Likewise, Freedom Weekend Aloft in Greenville, South Carolina, has 50 steering committees. Keri Hall, Freedom Weekend Aloft's director, says, "The key item is to work on community support. That support leads to use of services that would be costly to hire, like the use of heavy equipment."
Revenue Sources
Probably the first source of potential revenue that comes to mind is an admission fee. Don't count on it. Balloon event promoters have filed for bankruptcy when the gate failed to save them.
"The biggest problem is relying on the gate. That is a big mistake," Mark Sullivan, with AIBF and former Chair of the BFA Competition Division, says. "Reasonable expectation of income from gate receipts is 10 percent. Whenever I see an organizer with 30 percent or more of projected income in their budget coming from the gate, I know that they have the potential for financial trouble."
Sullivan suggests that event organizers control concessions rather than hike ticket prices. By allowing only the balloon event organization to sell commemorative items, such as pins and shirts for the event, as well as take the responsibility for beverage sales, a source of income is insured.
Rob Schantz, a balloon event consultant and organizer living in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, recommends letting everybody in free and charging a dollar to park as well as controlling the concessions. "It is important to your sponsors that you have the largest crowd possible," he says. "I would rather charge a dollar and have 50,000 people attend than charge $10 and only have 5,000 people there."
The Great Reno Balloon Race in Reno, Nevada, has no parking or admission fees. This free event packs more than 60,000 people each day into the launch site for a morning ascension. That's lot of exposure for the more than 100 sponsors of the event.
In 1992 Albuquerque organizers did away with its parking fee. That meant a loss of income for the two civic clubs that traditionally did the work and kept the money for distribution to charitable programs in the community. KAIBF paid the groups $56,000 each to keep working. In part, that money was generated from sponsorships. Public transportation officials thought bus ridership would be down because of the suspension of the parking fee. Not so. In fact they were very pleased with ridership during the event. Why? KAIBF reduced the admission fee for people taking the bus by a dollar.
Everybody won on these creative ideas that were designed to increase attendance at the event. Attendance which created more value for the event sponsors.
A major exception to the conventional wisdom about charging a low admission fee is Freedom Weekend Aloft.
Creating Value
Sponsors, balloonists, workers, vendors, and the public are a multitude of constituents for the event organization to try and keep happy. When all the elements of that equation come together, the entire event is successful. Adding additional incentives for each is the challenge.
"You can not take the pilots for granted," Hall says. "It is important to provide hospitality, fun events, with cash and prizes." Baugh agrees. "Pilots [are the entertainment we hire] and we try to keep them happy. They are the show." There is no doubt that without balloonists there is no balloon festival.
"You want to create opportunity for pilots and sponsors," Baugh says. This helps to create value. And, creating incentives for one group often creates value for another.
Organizers are also taking more interest in their spectators. After all, if nobody comes, nobody wins. You want people on site. And that involves more that just putting on exciting new events like a balloon glow, a special shape rodeo, or performing arts attractions. It involves generating creative incentives like the coupon book with parking fee at Battle Creek. An added benefit is that this helps get spectators into the event parking area rather than opting to use a free parking area near by.
Even simple things can help. Changing the name of security to courtesy patrol, for example, breeds a more positive environment in which spectators feel welcomed.
The way in which foot traffic moves around the field is also important. You want to make sure that spectators go through the vendor area. This convenience makes both groups happy.
The concessions or vendor booths have become an enhancement to the revenue streams of many events. These areas may be losing their focus at some events. Prices for booth space have been rising. Vendors selling high margin items like food and drink can more easily absorb those increased costs. However, other vendors, both balloon novelty and non-balloon related, are not able to make enough money to justify a high space cost. Glen Moyer, a balloon event announcer for more than a decade, warns, "Concessions need to offer more than food and drink. It is important to have a wide base of vendors," he says. "Maybe even an arts and craft festival." Again, these provide more added value.
More value can also be created by promoting an event within an event. The balloon glow, special shape rodeo, and similar attractions give the event organizer additional marketing leverage.
"What we have had to do as organizers," says Ron Crick, Executive Director of the Oldsmobile Balloon Classic Illinois, "is accept the fact that, to bring people out early in the morning expecting them to pay money for something they could see for free from along the roadside, we've got to develop other things for them to do. Generally balloon races have become married to other types of things, whether it's a craft show, river festival, or in our case a community festival where we put a bunch of attractions into the mix.
"What happens then is the balloons become a component of the event, but not the entire event themselves. Of course we still recognize the balloons are the stars of the event and we just patch the other attractions around them."
While other attractions are important it is equally important to consider the type of spectator or crowd those attractions will bring to the event. At Greenville, South Carolina's Freedom Weekend Aloft entertainment, nightly music concerts, are the event's mainstay attraction, after the balloons. Executive Director Keri Hall says it has become evident over the event's 16 year history that appropriate entertainment has to be selected.
"We have to be careful who we choose as entertainment," explains Hall, "because we know who the stars of the event are, they are the balloons. Our market research shows us that our spectators come first to see balloons and we want to be a ballooning/family event. Whatever entertainment group we select, the crowd they draw has to merge with our families and balloon fans. We don't want an entertainment group to bring in a crowd that interrupts that family atmosphere."
Still it seems that no matter how much entertainment, how many craft booths and even with a plethora of food booths, people still show up at odd hours demanding to see balloons.
"We try to give them a little bit of everything but we still find it necessary to spend time educating our spectators," says Ann Doyle, executive director of the New Jersey Festival of Ballooning. "We find that we have to go over and over the weather requirements and the fact that balloons can't fly at midday. Inevitably though you get someone who shows up at two in the afternoon and now it's four and they still haven't seen a balloon."
For many festivals this demand of spectators to see more and more of the balloons has lead to other changes that are quickly becoming more commonplace. One is the mid-day "fluff and puff" or "blow and show." Call it what you will, it's the request of organizers for balloonists to volunteer to go out and just cold inflate, roll the envelope around, stand it up if you can-but somehow, someway put on a show.
Of course the master of getting the most out of the balloons is the granddaddy of festivals, the Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Veteran balloonists can remember when a trip to Albuquerque meant nine days of morning flights, a few parties, and lots of free time to shop, sleep and party. Then came the Sunday evening balloon glow, then the Thursday and Friday afternoon Special Shapes Rodeo, then the Mini-Glow on the second weekend Saturday night and more.
Second only to Albuquerque is Danville, Illinois' Oldsmobile Balloon Classic which introduced, amid much controversy, the first Night Flight. For change to be successful it is important not to be too parochial in your thinking. For example, remember when the Indianapolis 500 refused to allow their race to be broadcast live on television for fear it would hurt their gate receipts? Today millions more people watch the greatest spectacle in racing than ever before and the on-site crowds have never been larger.
Some event officials are even creating relationships with tour operators. These travel professionals can to bring groups from another part of the country or world to the event.
Taking Care of Business
As the move is on to require more and more of the balloonists, organizers insist they are asking for more from sponsors in order to provide more to the pilots. Indeed the one thing that has not changed in all the years is that pilots expect to be compensated. After all, they have a sizeable investment at stake.
"It's important that pilots be compensated, and compensated fairly," says Dan Sherrill who organizes a variety of events including Baltimore's Preakness Celebration Balloon Festival. "I know many events pay pilots just $100 for flying an envelope banner," says Sherrill, "but my events pay them $500. It's been my experience that if you compensate pilots fairly, you have little trouble getting their cooperation no matter what you ask them to do."
Often when a community decides to start an event they want to bring in hundreds of balloons, and make expense no object. "Don't try to be the next Albuquerque," advises Schantz. "Make the event unique to your local area. Give it its own character and flavor."
The first order of business for the balloon event organizers should be to decide what they want to accomplish. Then, decide how to make the event unique. Is it a celebration of the community? That's how Albuquerque got its start. Or can you stimulate the local economy by simply creating an event like Springtime Tallahassee in Florida? Can you successfully merge two events like a charity cook-off and balloon rally as the Speidie Fest organizers did in Binghamton, New York?
Good weather, of course, is necessary, but it is the hard work of planning that more often than not makes or breaks an event. Strong organization with focused goals, the assistance of experienced marketing professionals, and community involvement can help insure the financial success of a balloon festival.
