Frank R Uroda

09/22/03

Re: Rocketry is dying.

 To the BOD of the NAR and TRA,

 The news isn’t good. The regulators are at our throats. People are leaving the hobby in droves. The rocketry organizations are fighting hard but are running out of time and money. Small vendors are giving up and going back to their day job. The large vendors (relatively speaking) are all on the verge of bankruptcy. The regulators know if they hold us back long enough, our numbers will dwindle and we will die away. And they are right.

 Some have suggested we vendors should spend more money on advertising in the rocketry magazines. They think that this will draw more people into the hobby. But do they realize that 98% of their readers are already in the hobby? We need to reach those that don’t know about the hobby.

 About 5% of the US population has flown rockets as kids. Of those about 10% would get back into rocketry if they knew how it has grown and matured (IE. mid and high power). That said, handing out 1000 free rocket magazines *might* lead to 5 prospects. Is that cost effective? Of course not. But this is what has been going on with HPR and other rocketry mags in this industry for years. Additionally, these prospects need to be followed up on. A single issue or ad will not get them hooked. They need to be reminded over and over. You need to catch them at just the right time. How many times have you read something that interested you and you said to yourself "I gotta try this someday". Then you forget all about it. If it was in your face on a regular basis, you would be more likely to give it a try. Of the people I meet on the street, none of them knows that HPR exists. Not one.

 What we really need is new blood in the sport...and a lot of it! There is strength (and money) in numbers. We told the former president of Tripoli about my plan in the mid 90’s. Tripoli should have taken us up on our offer years ago. If it had, by 2000 Tripoli would have had 15-20,000 members. What kind of voice would we have had in Washington with numbers like that?  Now it’s time to do or die.

 In the past, the NAR and TRA board of directors were always too cautious when it came to spending money on our defense and our growth. In the last 2 years or so they learned a hard lesson on the importance of defense. They both stepped up to the plate and are doing what it takes to save the hobby. But an army cannot win if it’s fallen soldiers are not replaced. So now TRA and the NAR need to learn about growth.

 No more preaching to the choir, no more half measures. We need to increase the number of active people in our hobby by a factor of 10 starting now. How do we do this? By promoting rocketry on television, in major, national (and international) magazines and on high traffic, space related websites.

 Below is my plan for Phase 1 of the “Help Rocketry Survive and Thrive Campaign”:

 e have a once in a life time opportunity with the Discovery channel. They spent over $1,000,000 producing a one hour special on rocketry and LDRS. This series of shows will reach 6 million homes. Five million of the viewers will be our target audience; men between the ages of 25 and 54. The Discover Channel told me it will begin running the 3 hour show (Rocket Challenge) in November and it will run 6 times. If we (NAR and TRA) don’t have commercials airing during the show, we will have blown it for all time. What we MUST have 3, 15 second national spots for each time this show airs. This show is equivalent to MILLIONS of advertising dollars but without our contact info, it’s totally worthless. They will not give us the airtime during the shows required to get our info to the public. We will have to buy it in the form of commercials. That is how it works, and it ain’t cheap.

 I have no idea yet how much a 15 second spot will cost us to have produced. It must be done by professionals as the Discovery Channel has high standards that must be met. The big ticket will be the airtime. The ad should display a website address at the end for more info. See the attached mpg for an example of a 15 second rocketry spot. This spot is just an example and in no way do I want to use it. I made it from bits and pieces I found on my hard drive in just a couple hours with no experience. We need a real pro to make the real one. It should show a father and son building, prepping, and flying both large and small rockets together I just wanted to illustrate that this does not need to be a complicated effort.

 A high bandwidth web site will have to be set up with all of the information the prospects will need to enter the hobby. People will be needed to create and manage the site. Others will be needed to answer e-mails. This site will get almost no traffic until the spots air. At that time you can expect huge spikes. Everything must be ready (our operators are standing by). Large volumes of e-mails will have to be answered ASAP. The links and forms must work the first time and every time. It will have to be set up to take secure on-line credit card orders for membership. On line memberships will have to be processed immediately. Printed material will have to be ready for immediate shipment. The days of “please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery” are long gone! If the customer doesn’t get the membership card and any printed material (IE. Magazine, launch info, etc.) within days, they will be pissed. I will volunteer to design  the layout of the site and make a list of what it should contain. I cannot implement any of the ideas or content. I have ZERO experience doing any of that. Greg Deputy of Blastzone.com has volunteered his services to create the site. Andy Waddell and I will assist in design and implementation. Greg will also donate 20 gigabytes of  bandwidth per month. Additional bandwidth will be billed at $3.50 per gig. We can also help the NAR and TRA in sprucing up their sites or providing other assistance.

 Also, I found that www.rockets.org is active and owned by a totally unrelated company. We should try to obtain www.rocketry.org as it seems to be owned but inactive.

 I have yet to explore the possibility of having a toll free number to call.

 In a nut shell, the 3 hour show “Rocket Challenge” will air twice on Nov. 9 and 7 more times in the next 3 weeks. We cannot pick and choose which shows or hours to run our ad. We must buy one 15 second spot in each hour of the show and for every time the show is run. The full package for 18 insertions was originally $93,000 but after some major negotiation between me and the accounts manager, I got the rock bottom price of $68,000 (to be paid in advance).

 I know this is a major effort but it has to be done now. Like I said, this is our big chance, let’s not blow it.

 Phase 2; The prolonged effort:

 We need to run large (full color, 1/3 page minimum) ads in major magazines like Popular Mechanics. These ads, when done right, work. Again, they are not cheap, but they are worth it. PML tried it in 1993 and it worked. We still get mail from those ads even though we quit running them 10 years ago! The problem we had is we could not afford to sustain the ads. We had just enough money to run for 3 months. Momentum was building rapidly but we just ran out of advertising money.

 It is a huge waste of money to run smaller ads. Trust me on this, we learned that the hard way.

 I contacted Popular Mechanics and used every negotiating trick I knew. It looks like we can get the 1/3 page color ads place for much less than PML paid in 1993! If we sign for 12 consecutive insertions, the cost per issue will be $4590.00. This is a great deal. I may even be able to squeeze them some more it we really do go with the 12 insertion pkg. They work well ahead. Even if we work very fast, our first ad would not come out until the January issue. The December issue closes on Sept. 25.

 Yes it is a big risk and a lot of money. But wars are not won by small, incremental moves. It is the bold strokes that win the wars. We are in a war now, actually a battle of attrition. It’s a battle we are sure to lose. The regulators have nothing but time and money on their side. We have neither. We have but one choice, grow or die.

 There is still time to do this but now it must be done by the organizations since all of us manufacturers are on the verge of bankruptcy. Yes this will cost a lot but the membership will increase in large numbers and so will the revenue. So far TRA and NAR have done nothing to get new members. The government will win this battle by attrition. They are almost there. When AT, LOC, and PML, and the others are gone, LDRS 20-something will look more like LDRS 1. This will happen within 2 years.

 I will do my part as a volunteer in organizing, implementing and coordinating the ad campaigns. There are a lot more details that need to be discussed. Many other volunteers will be needed. So far Bruce Kelly, Greg Deputy, Andy Waddell, the entire PML crew, and I will do our part. I’m sure many others will too.

 Lets talk,

---Frank R Uroda