Penn’s Outdoors

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review has an article about how the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is more aggressively targeting anglers.

The commission will mail postcards to people who bought a fishing license last spring. The card will remind people to buy a license, thereby boosting the agency’s income, said Adrian Martin, marketing development specialist for the commission.

“The card’s going to highlight the opening day of bass season and Father’s Day as prime times to get outside and fish as a way of connecting with family, so, hopefully, that will spur people to buy a license,” Martin said.

The efforts are part of a National initiative to go after people termed “lapsed anglers”. 

It takes about three years to determine who qualifies as a “lapsed” angler, Martin said. It’s typically someone who might have bought a license two years in a row, then missed a year.

The Fish and Boat Commission will send a mailer to every angler who bought a license through the end of April 2007, but hadn’t through the end of April this year. That’s roughly 26,000 people.

What I really like is the attitude being applied to attract more anglers.

“We’re telling these agencies they need to likewise treat their anglers like customers. They need to remind them to renew their licenses. Get them back out on the water.”

Yes, Yes, Yes, We are your customers.  Next step will be to get the PA Fish and Boat Commission to have more of that attitude toward those of us who aren’t lapsed anglers.  But I’ll take this first step as a positive step in the right direction.

I also like their strategy for targeting a younger generation of fishermen.

Traditionally, efforts to boost the sale of fishing licenses have focused on getting more youths involved in the sport.

In the future, though, it’s going to be just as important to reach out to adults through direct mail and other campaigns…That’s because, if parents fish, their children are much more likely to grow up as fishermen, too. If they don’t, even the best programs aimed at getting kids started in fishing will fail more often than not, Richardson said.

That is exactly right.  Its not the video games that keep our children out of Penn’s Outdoors.  Its us.  If adults don’t take kids out, they won’t go out. 

While this initiative won’t solve all of our issues in PA, There are a lot of positive things to be said about the Commission promoting fishing in PA through marketing strategies borrowed from the business world.  Good job PFBC.