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GeoCaching TV Commercial


PSJKids

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I did a forum search for "commercial" but did not get any results and I cannot imagine that I am the 1st person to wonder why nobody has suggested a standard commercial that could be run on just about any TV station.

 

I see throughout the forum topics about making Geocaching more popular and I think that with the vast amount of Geocachers from all over the world who work in such a variety of jobs that there has got to be someone or a few who have the capability and access to the equipment needed to put together a very nice 30 second TV commercial that would cover the basics of Geocaching. Enough to introduce it to the viewer and Highlight the use of not only GPS but the SmartPhone that so many people carry these days. With the Geocaching.com app and some of the aftermarket apps like c:geo which pulls its data from the GC databases, I bet it would peak a lot of peoples interest in Geocaching.

 

I had heard about Geocaching a few years back and read up on it but didn't get involved in it because I did not have a GPS and did not know a Smartphone could be used. When my daughter was working towards some of her Girl Scout badges, I noticed one for Geocaching and let her and her mother know what I knew about it and the PSJKids Geocaching team started the next day with a cache 1 mile from the house. Both my wife and I and both of my children all Geocache as a family and we know several other families that Geocache together as well. My kids are home schooled and since we started Geocaching, we have managed to incorporate Geocaching into their need to learn about nature. Being in Florida, they have seen a lot of our unofficial state animal the alligator, racoons, armadillos, snakes and spiders. They have found caches at several Wetland Parks as well as lots of our wooded areas. They have learned about the use of compasses as well as the technical aspect - GPS and Smartphones.

 

I would love to turn on the TV and see a commercial about Geocaching showing family as well as individuals out searching for Geocaches in the woods and urban settings and short blurbs about being able to use that smartphone they already own and end the commercial with WWW.GEOCACHING.COM

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Actually... no. I would not like to see such a broadcast on TV.

 

We already have plenty of "cross-contamination" as it is, without letting the whole world in on it.

Part of the allure, is the hunt without others knowing or being aware of what it is that you are doing/hunting. Otherwise, just why would we bother hiding geocaches at all? Leave 'em out in the open for every Tom, Dick and Harry to walk away with them.

 

Sorry, but I do not think that aggressive advertisement is a good thing, in this instance. Apparently for the last 10+ years, Groundspeak feels similarly.

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A worldwide TV ad campaign costs millions of dollars. How much more per year are you willing to pay for a premium membership that helps support that kind of advertising budget?

 

Me, I'm happy to continue at the $30 per year, no TV ads level. I'm impressed that the cost of membership has stayed constant for more than ten years, while new features and improved infrastructure are added regularly. I wish I could say the same for my cable TV bill.

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Ok, I see all your points and you make so much sense I regret posting that now. Thanks for straightening me out on that, I had not thought about the points gitchee, ecu, and Leprechauns make. In the area north of me, there are not a lot of Geocachers and thats where that thought of mine came from. Now if I could only lock this thread.

 

Happy Geocaching.

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Nope. There aren't any commercials for playing TAG, Red Rover. None for Angry Birds. We don't need a commercial. Geocaching is out there enough that you look for it you will find it. There is even a Travel Bug Wikipedia page-There really is no reason for people not to know about it. Various internet searches-including things to do with GPS result in Geocaching.com being on the first page.

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Ok, I see all your points and you make so much sense I regret posting that now. Thanks for straightening me out on that, I had not thought about the points gitchee, ecu, and Leprechauns make. In the area north of me, there are not a lot of Geocachers and thats where that thought of mine came from. Now if I could only lock this thread.

 

Happy Geocaching.

 

Maybe you can start a discussion to get ideas of grass roots like efforts to get more in your area involved. It's not a fun game if you are the only one playing, but a mass inundation of new people, "just trying it out", would probably be worse.

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Between evening news stories, newspaper articles, magazine articles, books on geocaching, book mentions of geocaching, movie references and a few high profile produced tv show mentions - I am continually shocked at the number of people that either never heard the term or that have heard it many times but never looked into it at all. I think a high profile ad campaign wouldn't be terribly successful in growing our long term ranks and would only bring in a lot of try-it-one timers. I recently was told that the average person takes up a hobby for (on average) only about 5 years. Might partially explain the dramatic drop in the number of Charter members over the years - not many of us left.

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Between evening news stories...

Just last night on the local evening news in their little segment at the very end, the reporter went out with a couple of ladies to do some caching. I was cringing throughout. The cache they were looking for was a 1/1.5 with a very specific set of directions that would lead you right to the cache. It's so descriptive, you wouldn't even need a GPSr to find it. However, they were bumbling around all over the place, not really explaining what was going on, and one of them even referred to it as "geotracking"! It took them forever to find and the reporter was actually leaving when they called out that they found it. They did at least find a discarded bottle and CITO'ed it, but they seemed like noobs and didn't shine a very positive light on geocaching. I wish a more experienced cacher would have gone out instead, because they likely could have given a far better demonstration of caching and could explain it's related benefits (ie. community interaction, CITO, economic benefits/tourism value, etc.).

 

On the other hand, the story probably won't trigger a bunch of try-it-once hides because they didn't make it look very appealing, so maybe it was for the better...

Edited by The A-Team
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