At a place I do some occasional work with, I happened to overhear a volunteer notice that their inventory of rack cards--those stiff thing with two sides that substitutes for what used to be brochures--was getting low, and they said something to the effect of "time to reorder..."

I've worked in promoting events, festivals, and the like for years. My car used to carry a boxload of several different brochures to drop off at rest areas, tourist promotion offices, and like-minded attractions (music shops for music festivals, etc.). My ears and brain perked up and I said "Does anyone still take them?"

After initial confusion as to why anyone would even ask, he remarked "Well, we have to keep restocking our own rack--not just with our own brochures, but the ones from other [local and rail] museums......"

I asked--cynically, but with thought behind my query--"Does anyone over eight and under sixty still take them?"

He was dumbstruck.

There are reasons I asked. And now I'm asking all you folks.

Tourist promotion isn't what it used to be. States/provinces and local governments have cut back both on the number of rest areas with tourist offices and the hours they're open. Many of the tourist information centers have disappeared, replaced by a wi-fi hotspot that automatically loads the agency's homepage. The brochure racks at motels and hotels are often "managed" by a third-party company that places have to pay to get brochure placement, and it shows--the racks are full of high-priced for-profit venues, often in other states, to the exclusion of local and non-profit venues. I did a triple-take at a (thankfully non-rail) venue STILL selling color post cards for their place from 25 years ago. Does anyone under fifty mail post cards any more, except ironically?

Is the promotional brochure or rack card still a viable promotional avenue if you aim at anyone besides the 50-and-over crowd?

I was recently in Rapid City, South Dakota, and I looked all over town for a brochure or rack card for the nearby Black Hills Central RR. I drover out to Hill City, about 20 miles from Rapid City, where the BHC maintains a station and its shops. Still no sign anywhere of a rack card. There wasn't even a billboard for the railroad. I drove over the hill and down into Keystone, the other end of the BHC, and found that the station is right at the main drag of the town, which also happens to be the main road up to Mount Rushmore. Perhaps that's the reason they don't have to advertise locally. They do have a good web site on which one may make reservations. The BHC must be doing something right, since they handle over 100,000 riders during their three-month peak season.

That Mallet compound 2-6-6-2T is quite a sight to see as well.

For New England Steam's fund raising campaign, and for the general knowledge of visitors, we've found rack cards are a relatively inexpensive way of illustrating the locomotive restoration and providing contact information. People like the photos we've chosen to display our efforts and if only a few collectors respond to the appeal, the cards are paid for and the information gets out. Yes, kids do collect them, but I consider that feeding the future. Older folks like the nostalgia, and they carry it home as a rememberance of the visit. What kills me is going to the snack bar during a show, such as Springfield, and seeing a bunch of our printed cards in the trash, covered with mustard and ketchup!

We place cards at museums, at shows, at stores, clubs, and restaurants. We do not have a service to distribute them for us, and perhaps that's a mistake.

I'd like to say that rack cards and brochures still work. We used a distribution company and they would always ask for more to restock. We occasionally had folks show up to tour the Depot or ride a train with rack card or brochure in hand. As for analytics, I can't say what the conversion rate is of rack cards to patrons - likely pretty low - but obviously it has some effect and it's not all that expensive. It does depend on placement, though. They do keep your name visible and, if well done, could possibly attract new members and/or donations. I think there's a good chance we'll go back to them once we're able to have events at our new rail yard location.

For the past several years the WW&F Railway Museum in Alna, Maine, has had a visitor log book lying open near the ticket and gift sales point. The log book asks for your name, "where are you from?" and "how did you hear of us?" Of the most recent answers to the latter question, 16% mentioned a specific person, 12.5% said family, 10% said internet, 9.5 % said they were return visitors, 8% said friends told them about us, 8% responded to an advertisement, 7% saw a sign while driving by, 6% heard of us via brochures, 6% were already members, 3% from railroad and magazines, and 14% from various other means.

This survey wasn't very scientific, but I think it says that brochures are still important. That said, the results indicate that an internet presence is far more important.

-John

At my full-time paying job, I print three runs of about 12,000 rack cards for our three theatre seasons in the year (spring, summer fall). The cards are distributed in a lobby display at the theatre, using a paid distributor, and by volunteers. In addition to cards we heavily use social media, including regular eblasts, frequent Facebook posts, and Facebook ads. I see our cards in racks in the community. I would like to try a bounce back offer printed on the card to track a response. Having said that, when surveyed most of our patrons say they learned about the theatre through our website and social media.

I will keep printing the rack cards as part of a balanced advertising program.

Wesley

We do rack cards, but we have the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Bureau handing them out at a number of sites.. plus the local Chamber... We are a state agency and they LVC&VB get hotel tax dollars and support us...

We include a $1 off coupon and see them at the ticket office... representing as high as 5-10% of paid ridership

Randy

If you don't have a brochure to hand out at an outreach event, how else do you get your message out? We are still restoring the locomotive and raising funds, so may have different needs than others.

We run a very frugal operation, and I'm cheaper than most. I find the cost for getting them professionally printed takes money that should go for locomotive parts. I print and fold ours myself (a couple of thousand so far) on 32 pound bond paper on my home color printer for some savings. An advantage of doing them in-house is that they can be printed as needed and updated as the restoration progresses.

I realize that this evidence is mostly anecdotal, but when I worked for McKinney Avenue Transit Authority, I answered several calls and made runs to replenish brochures for the streetcars all over Dallas. Granted, MATA has moved from a museum to a transit agency, but our brochures contained a lot of vital information and I saw several people boarding the streetcars with brochures in hand already and used them for not just the map, but the suggestions made inside. There's hope yet.

I reccomend the rack cards, I think all museums should have a common sharing put ours put yours up thing. I go somewheres and theres suddenly this rack full of brochures.
Grocery stores always have this post your note thing up, and I have seen these shelves of freebie literature magazines.
Theres something called the Coffee News that pops up around here which gets dropped in almost every restaurant, a freebie, its clamored full of ads but that makes it the freebie.

I would do a brochure swap with local hotels and resorts, tourist attractions, and chambers of commerce/visitor bureaus. They put up ours, we put up theirs. Having our cards at these places gave their staff something to mention whenever anybody asked "What's there to do around here?" Rather than give out a web address.

Not a substitute for a strong internet presence, but every little bit helps.

Somewhat... if they're supported by an ecosystem of parallel efforts *and* your operation has an offering at least every weekend. Otherwise they're a lost cause.

I'm going to use "brochure" and "rack card" interchangeably. I mean the same thing.

First, the cost of entry is higher (and lower). You have to be full-color even to be seen, and that requires high volume, otherwise the cost per unit is insane. That's why the "Rack Card" became a format rather than the brochure. Printer just prints them 3-up and cuts them down. And the rack card can carry enough information now, in the Internet age, when the customer can simply go to the 'Net for details. It helps to have a short domain name, because very likely, the consumer will be typing this *on his phone*. Ditto email addresses, Twitter names, etc.

Whether to print an annual brochure with called-out schedules, or print a year-less brochure with only vague information, is a tough call. When the what-where-when-cost aren't obvious, the brochure goes in the trash. On the other hand, you'll go broke printing brochures for every year.

You can get free distribution with your neighbors, hobby shops, your state Welcome Centers and the like. You can also do paid distribution into brochure racks all over your area. Just visit hotels, convention centers, AAA offices, airports and the like, and look for a brochure rack. There will be a placard on the brochure rack indicating who owns it. Call them. They'll put you in that rack and many others, most companies offer 2-4 "routes" targeting different demographics. We paid about $1.50 per location per month and each location consumed ~50 brochures per month. Either way, the "mutually supporting" issue applies.

Brochures/rack cards fail dismally unless it's part of a well-balanced breakfast of other promotional methods: billboards, radio, ads or editorial coverage in tourist-focused publications, signs at the local outlet mall, etc. And even then, they don't show up brochure in hand; they funnel into your normal contact channels, primarily your website, and if you mishandle them there, your brochure is in the trash.

Your brochure is also in the trash if you're not running this weekend, or if it's unclear on the brochure when exactly you are running. While some brochures are kept for *years*, most are taken for a *this weekend* decision. If 60-80% of your brochures are going in the trash because of this, the campaign is a waste of money. So for outfits like Steam Railroading Institute, which runs several times a year, fuggedaboutit. It might make sense for a 1-month surge right before the big Fall Event or Christmas trains - but there are problems with that. #1 those events tend to sell out months in advance. Nobody will take a Christmas brochure in September, and by November, you're sold out. #2 the brochure distributors *will not* sell you 1 month of service. #3 They won't return your untaken brochures either, so you'll go broke printing enough color brochures to fill the pipeline.

Brochures are totally ineffective at plowing people. Your brochure customer needs you to be open when he wants to ride, brochures won't make them want to ride your open dates. That's also true of online customers, but they are at least somewhat steerable via the method of online ticketing.

For instance, 1-color (dark blue on pastel paper) brochures worked extremely well for the Southern Michigan Railroad when they ran 7 runs every Saturday and Sunday. There were well rounded efforts in other media, and followup queries were handled well. None of those things were true 20 years later, when summer weekend ridership had plunged from hundreds to barely a dozen, and 2 trains a day ran 2 days a month. A massive 40,000/year color rack card campaign didn't work. (It can be said that it doubled ridership, smh.) Now that whole struggle has been obsoleted by the Internet.

We've been doing ridership/intercept studies now (written surveys) since 1992. One of the basic questions is the "how did you first hear about the XYZ Railroad"....

Even in the age of social networking, the 'word of mouth' recommendation is nearly always first, which underlines that the quality of what you do is still your best marketing.

But second place has changed. Fifteen years ago the rack card/brochure would nearly always come in second. It still may, but it depends a lot on whether or not your target market hits someplace where they are actually looking at them (visitor centers, hotel lobbies, etc.) Putting them out on your own counter doesn't count.

In the 'millennial moms' market, I've seen all forms of social networking/internet now take second place, if the marketing actually offers anything for them and their kids (which includes Polar express and special events). If it is the 'over 50' market, it may fall to third, depends on the mix.

But still, and despite that, I've seen the paper brochure outscore paid media responses over a wide range of operations. And I've seen a lot of pretty poor attempts, too, with the top two inches of the rack card poorly laid out and completely wasted. And little if any distribution in rather logical places. I always check hotel lobbies to see if the railroad I'm working with is well covered, and it's an alarm bell if they aren't.

I don't think its over, not yet anyway - and it's a two-part question - one is there anything noticeable and eye catching on that magic top 2", and second, where are they being distributed to and how do they get there? The all-too-typical response is that 'our volunteers pass them out when they can'.

To me, the first thing I look for is a mix of graphics and text - not too heavy on either, and you get an instant "F" if there isn't at least one really good picture of a kid or a family having fun on your train. Nothing like roster shots of an empty, parked train to prove your point of 'well, nobody there'.... I just looked at a railroad museum brochure a couple days ago where they managed to do an entire three-fold without one single person in it.

Like a lot of things, if you're not sure, it's because you're not asking your visitors, and if you were, you'd know whether or not you're getting your bang for your buck.

Years ago, one music group for which I was doing "roadie" work had sign-up cards for the mailing list (both e-mail and snail-mail--yes, this was a few years ago), and the band member in charge of handing that over to their publicist and I looked over all the "how did you hear about this concert?" responses. They were all over the map, so to speak. He audibly growled and said "If we could just find that one thing that works!" I replied "The worst part is, until you do, you have to throw your effort at ALL of them...." At this point, he just beat his forehead softly on the table.

This is where you "hire" some young people to go through your place and marketing and tell you, in brutally frank terms, what "losers" you are, and how to get other young folks interested in your place. If that means Pokemon Go or interactive video tours, so be it.

Don't under-estimate the power of an 8 year old... Many a family vacation destination is decided by where the kids want to go and what they want to see. Especially if your operation is near or on the way to a popular destination.

They probably don't spend hour looking them over when they get home like I did when I was a kid, too busy on the internet, but all it takes is for them to see something that interests them and tell their parents about it.

I also spent a few days in a resort town recently. I saw quite a few people browsing the brochure rack in the entrance area of the hotel, and I did so as well.

The brochures tend to be single page these days, as you mention, and mostly consist of an attention grabbing photo, bright text, a few details and "visit our website", which helps avoid them going out of date due to price or schedule changes.