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Camp people are artists
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Camp people are artists. I can say that confidently because I know artists. Heck, one of them is working out in my garage right now. My wife, Alison, is a potter. She runs her studio out of our garage. For a year and a half I tried to convince her to work with Sophia's team on social media marketing for the business. During that year and a half, which felt long, every time Sophia came up Alison had a version of the same thing to say. It was something like, "My pottery should speak for itself. I shouldn't have to tell people about it." Then one day she said, "You know what, doing marketing is getting in the way of making my art." She saw that every hour spent trying to make a reel or write a caption was an hour she wasn't in the studio. Which is exactly how camp people think. Camp people think camp is so great. They are right. And a lot of camp people also think that camp, if it is good enough, should speak for itself. Families should find it on their own. In a perfect world that would work. In reality it doesn't. It's much the same thinking Alison had about her pottery. Why do I think of camp people as artists? Really successful camp professionals have an extraordinary amount of range in whatever their work asks of them. In a given week, they go from a meeting about facilities to a meeting about marketing to a meeting about youth development. Camp people have vision. And they have the resolve to turn that vision into something kids actually experience. Most people couldn't even begin to picture it, let alone build it. Camp people also romanticize the camp experience, because it is special, and because it has such a profound impact. So the artist mentality kicks in. You might think things like, "This is my work. This is my canvas. We are not going to do this by committee." I love working with people like that. This is drive. And that drive is what makes the camp "art" actually land with campers and families. Camp people are also a certain kind of person. Creative, divergent, sometimes allergic to the way other industries operate. Most of us ended up here because this is the industry that made sense of us. Artists need support in the things that aren't their strengths. And the really great camp directors recognize when the range has gaps, and bring in people around them to get the job done. You have to respect the artist's vision. And sometimes you get artists to think a little bit broader. By the way, Alison is still at it. Top-rated pottery studio on Long Island, two years in a row. It's largely because she focused on the art and let others focus on the parts of the business that are decidedly less artistic. Same thing with the camp directors I see still at it summer after summer. They know what their art is. The rest, they get help with. Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
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