Spring Break
Indoor Tanning Companies Hit The Beach To Promote Tanning
by Scott Eric Barrett
Although spring break has come and gone this season, savvy salon owners can incorporate these marketing ideas for events and holidays year-round.
For years, tanning salons have helped prepare vacationers with beautiful base tans and supplied them with professional tanning lotions, moisturizers and SPFs to take on their trips. This year, a handful of lotion companies, including California Tan, Emerald Bay, Kava Kava International and John Abat International, took a grassroots approach to delivering the motto of sensible, moderate and responsible tanning.
Thinking outside the box, these companies put their feet in the sand and traveled around Florida beaches preaching the good word to spring breakers about responsible tanning. They passed out thousands of sample products and T-shirts, and may have gained a ton of new customers for their products while educating tanners about the importance of skincare.
"We sampled more than 5,000 lotion packettes, plus a few full-size bottles of lotion and T-shirts," says Sabrina Little, California Tan/Emerald Bay's director of communications. "I saw lots of guys and girls wearing our T-shirts on the beach. The main sampling activity occurred on the beach in front of the Holiday Inn Sunspree where we held our Emerald Bay Spring Break Model Contest. (See page 54.) It was equipped with a stage and DJ.
"We created the contest to help salons bring in more business during the slow season and give them something exciting to talk about before the official kickoff of the tanning season," Little says. "Our three winners from the modeling contest each went up on stage and threw product out to the crowd, while the DJ announced who Emerald Bay was and what our product was all about.
"The salons were very enthusiastic, and several of them held their own tanning contest to pick their three applicants. Another salon held a beauty contest at its local mall and gave its top-three contestants an application. The event was so popular that we already have started receiving many calls requesting applications for our 2nd Annual Emerald Bay Spring Break Model Contest."
Spring break is like the national tanning convention for the industry's future customers, according to Kava Kava's vice president of sales, Dave Beaudin.
"We hit Daytona Beach this year with a decked-out Kava Kava white limousine," he says. "It was basically a traveling booth. We passed out lotion samples, T-shirts and hats. It was an amazing place to be."
The students are there to get dark, so they throw out their sunblocks, Beaudin says. When they saw Kava Kava's limo, the kids rushed to pose for pictures and snatch up free products--which were intensifiers or intensifiers with bronzers. "We really made an impact and maybe even kick-started new indoor tanners," Beaudin says.
This idea works because indoor tanning intensifiers work outdoors, so breakers will see quicker results and will remember the product they used to attain those results, he says.
"It could have a snowball effect," he says. "More companies will get involved next year."
It's a win-win opportunity because it gives lotion companies a chance to make contact with the end user of their products. At the large trade shows, companies probably mingle with about 1,500 salon operators, but at Daytona Beach and Panama City Beach they have the opportunity to make contact with more than 200,000 tanners.
"These kids are there to party," Beaudin says. "They have limited money, so they love things for free. It's also fun for them to get their photo taken with a limo. If Coke and Pepsi can have that crowd eating out of the palms of their hands, then you know it is a great idea. Why not go along for the ride?"
Natalia Erdahl, president of The Copper Zone in Olympia, Wash., would like to see more lotion manufacturers provide product promotions and incentives for customers to purchase their products, along with more ways for salons to showcase and sample out products during spring break to attract young tanners into salons after the break.
"California Tan and Kava Kava have done a great job of offering free-gift-with-purchase products--and the free gifts are ones that everyone wants," she says.
John Abat International also participates at various spring break locations throughout the country with its JA Cooperative Promotional Program. The program provides salon owners with samples to hand out, as well as other promotional materials such as posters, apparel, banners, etc., to help them promote their salons and JA product, says Al Lugo, creative marketing director for JA.
"Our most recent salon cooperative effort was March 29 with Island Tan of Naples in Naples, Fla.," says Lugo. "Salon owner Butch Marcheno contacted us and presented an opportunity of promoting both companies during spring break in his city."
Marcheno arranged for a popular radio station and DJ to set a station remote at his salon, which aired various promo spots throughout the day. Each of the live broadcast spots featured different specials, discounts, giveaways or other various incentives to draw customers into the salon. In addition, he tied his spring break promotion with a local nightclub conducting a swimsuit contest, and took the contest further by offering a free tan to customers who visited his salon in their swimwear during a specified time. He also offered a $25 gift certificate to a local popular restaurant for new clients who signed tanning packages with his salon.
The Big Picture
The weeks leading up to spring break are an ideal time for salon operators to generate sales and keep beds operating on a full schedule. There are few if any spring breakers who want to hit their first day at the beach without at least a base tan. Salons are in the perfect position to help them develop color before their vacation and keep the great color they achieved after they return home. Spring breakers love to receive free product--it's a fact--so sampling is a great way to introduce them to the brand.
Kava Kava's Beaudin believes spring break one day will be a major indoor tanning event. "I can't imagine a better place to endorse intelligent tanning or get end users turned on to indoor tanning products, which can then get them turned on to indoor tanning," he says.
Sabrina Little, California Tan/Emerald Bay's director of communications.
Get Out There
Panama City
Who hasn't heard of, been to or thought about going to Panama City for spring break? Each year, hundreds of thousands of students flock to this northern Florida beach town for a week of sun, fun and parties. Maybe it's because of the recent exposure from MTV. Maybe it's because of the inexpensive hotels and the fact that it's close enough where most students can drive. Whatever the reason, this town is the ultimate destination for spring break.
Lake Havasu
When students are looking for a spring break location in the western United States, MTV will tell them to look no further than Lake Havasu in Arizona. Not only does Lake Havasu offer incredible scenery such as the Sonoran desert, the Mohave Mountains and the Chemehuevi Mountains, but it also has water--lots of it. Lake Havasu offers boating, fishing, swimming, whitewater rafting, hiking, mountain biking and lots more. This is the perfect scene for people who want to spend their spring break outside enjoying the sun. When the sun sets, the nightlife takes over. Lake Havasu is an incredible up-and- coming spring break hot spot.
Cancun
Cancun offers miles of sandy white beaches, great weather, some of the best resort hotels in the world and enormous nightclubs that rock all night long. More than 100,000 American teen-agers and young adults travel annually to Cancun for spring break. During this year's break, which was Feb. 24 through April 14, students buddied up four to a room and occupied 20,000 of Cancun's 26,000 hotel rooms. The businesses have built the area to fulfill all of a spring breaker's needs. There's always something to do in Cancun--24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is truly a student's paradise.
