You can’t beat the weatherman.

Confirmation is in: You can’t beat the weatherman. We’re in the outdoor entertainment business, and we’re open for more than just one special event. Which is great, since one bad day can’t shut down our business. It’s lousy because there is no incentive for guests to ‘tough it out’ in less than perfect weather.

It’s a factor of time, really. If there is the potential of, in this most recent case, the HOT weather impacting your day of fun, you simply don’t go. You have options, such as stay at home in the A/C, watch a movie in the A/C, shop inside in the A/C, go to an air-conditioned bar; knowing full well that Maize Quest will be open another weekend, if you get to it.

Makes for a long boring day for us, makes no difference to most of our guests. We could have spent $100,000 on advertising the Peach Fest and if the weatherman says it’s going to ‘feel like’ 107 degrees, you ain’t comin’. Rainy weather works the same way. (My frustration is being vented on the weatherman, but he didn’t make the weather, he just whipped you into a fenzy of panic about your safety.)

In all fairness, it was a real burner this weekend, and I didn’t want to be at the Peach Fest either. The real trick is discovering what the real need people have, in which season they have it, how the weather affects their decision-making processes, and how to combine all those variables with advertising and marketing to meet the need of the guests at the right moment with the right attraction.

The Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams, says that, “The more salient your message, the less you need to say it.” Saliency here refers to my outline above: Are you meeting a guest need with the attraction you are offering? This is why attraction design begins with the needs of guests, then moves to solutions, then budget, then materials, then implementation. What Roy neglects is that if you get rained out, it really doesn’t matter how great your message was.

How do you combat the weather? Be open more often, with different choices by season. Move something inside so you can be open in any weather. Co-op the weather by making too hot or too cold or too wet, something fun (we’re still working on that one.) But the true answer is: if you know it’s coming, and bad weather always comes sometime, innovate a solution, so you aren’t left all wet.

“If you build it, they will come” is Hollywood. If they need it and want it and the weather is nice, you won’t be able to stop them from coming is more accurate. If you miss any of these three criteria, you likely to ‘get burned’.

Maize Quest designs corn mazes and attractions for entertainment farms and operations around the world. Learn more at http://www.MazeCatalog.com.