A Splash for Cash : Group Wants to Help Beaches Reap Endorsement Rewards
In Seal Beach, lifeguards get free Jantzen swim trunks. In Huntington Beach, they ride in free Chevrolet S-10 pickups and jet skis, and in San Clemente, the booty is new trash cans.
The goodies are all the result of small-scale endorsement campaigns individually negotiated by each city.
But under a new marketing approach being considered in Orange and Los Angeles counties, lifeguard agencies and county and state beaches may enjoy an even larger bonanza.
Last week, coastal agencies agreed to form an Orange Coast Regional Marketing Coalition.
“The idea is to go into a marketing program together,” said Dusty Brogan, head of marketing for Los Angeles County Department of Harbors and Beaches. “We were going to do it just with the state beaches in Orange County but pooling them together with L.A. County helps have a bigger inventory that can attract bigger players, bigger dollars.”
Selling the beaches is not new. Los Angeles County has been contracting with different corporate sponsors--among them Nissan trucks, Gatorade and Body Glove wet suits--for about 10 years. In exchange for thousands of dollars, corporate sponsors get to have their logos splashed over beach benches, trash cans, lifeguard towers and shiny new trucks that serve as rolling billboards.
Once viewed as intrusive, environmentally insensitive commercialism, corporate sponsorship is being looked at anew in the budget-tight ‘90s.
The logic, said Lynn D. Hughes, San Clemente marine safety and recreation manager, is that it’s easier and more profitable to sell advertising in large blocks.
Instead of individual cities going to advertisers, it’s easier to pitch the entire coastline, he said. The selling point then becomes the estimated 60 million beach visitors a year at Los Angeles County beaches plus the 35 million visitors in Orange County.
Each public agency can then enjoy a percentage of the ad dollar, with Los Angeles County getting 15% for coordinating the accounts.
What’s marketable so far? Everything from vehicles, sunscreen, swimwear, soft drinks, bottled water and radio stations, to name a few.
“I don’t have any particular concerns with many products,” Hughes said. “But I don’t want, and I know a lot of the other agencies don’t want, to get into any tobacco and alcohol-related sponsors.”
Beach marketing began after the Legislature passed a bill to allow advertising on public property in 1982. Brogan said Los Angeles County’s marketing department then developed a plan through Fleishman-Hillard, a St. Louis-based public relations firm, and the county started working with marketing consultants.
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“Initially, the first contract was for 40 trucks from Nissan, and the second consultant brought on the Wave (radio station KTWV-FM) and they put their logo on trash cans,” she said. “After a two-year period, we went in-house and started doing it ourselves. At first, we brought in $80,000, then $100,000 and in the third year, $300,000. We kept building and today, through donations and funds, we get about $1.4 million a year.”
For Los Angeles County lifeguards, a helpful hook has been the popularity of “Baywatch,” a one-hour TV drama about county lifeguards that is now one of the most popular TV shows in the world.
It has led to a renewed focus and interest in the beach lifestyle, Brogan said.
“One thing you always remember,” she added, “your primary focus is public service. Secondary is to make sure you’re maximizing your revenue from that service . . . . We call it marketing but it’s not really. We think in terms of bringing more public services to the user.”
To beach users, though, it’s a sensitive balance: Keeping beaches open and fees low allows the public to enjoy well-maintained facilities and equipment. On the other, more advertising poses a threat to the pristine beauty of the coastline.
“I understand the needs of the community,” said Terrence McCann, president of Surfrider Foundation, a national beach and ocean water-quality conservation organization. “But I’ll tell you, anything, ANYTHING, that takes away from the natural state of our beaches, I’m against. It depends on where you’re at. If you’re at a highly commercialized beach like Marina del Rey, they can have a billboard on the beach and you don’t even know it because it (the beach) is deluged with signs. But if you take Malibu or Trestles (just south of Orange County), I would find it offensive to see a bench or a post (with a logo).”
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In Orange County, where a consolidated joint-powers agreement would be sought, the idea has gotten a warm response from Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, San Clemente, Orange County and the state Department of Parks and Recreation. The challenge is to have all coastal cities, the county Harbors and Beaches and state Department of Parks and Recreation agencies in agreement, city and department officials said.
Although Newport Beach lifeguards were represented at the initial meeting, the city has not yet formed a position, said Lt. Jim Turner, a Newport Beach lifeguard.
Meanwhile, Laguna Beach, which relies heavily on tourism, has had a longstanding policy against advertising on public property because the city wants to retain a “small-town ambience,” City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said.
In San Diego, lifeguards are mulling over a proposal to add electronic message boards behind lifeguard towers that would give water and air temperatures, surf conditions and ultraviolet index, all followed by a corporate logo.
