Changing the Industry, Two Words at a Time
– By Dave Cooperstein, senior creative designer
Dear Attractions Industry,
It’s not a last name. It’s not like “Bob Masterplan.” It’s a “Master Plan.” It’s a PLAN for creating a long-range MASTER vision of your park and/or attraction. Not, as Wikipedia would suggest, “a German power metal band” or “an adventure planning/campaign design tool for Dungeons & Dragons (4th edition).”
A Master Plan is used by destination attractions for shaping their future… for turning their attractions into something more than a ‘one-hit wonder’… for creating a way to roll out fresh, repeatable experiences over a long period of time. They hire firms like ours to analyze their existing brand and operations, and to create a series of new products and experiences, rolled out over several years, that will allow visitors to extend their stay, to satisfy everyone in the family unit, and to ultimately spend more money at the attraction. A successful long-range master plan is one that not only creates this vision, but also is realistically achievable by the client. A plan which they can ultimately master.
And that’s why it’s called a Master Plan. In the 15 years I’ve been creating, designing and planning attractions in this industry, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen drawings, news articles, and press releases announcing the latest “Family Destination Creates 15 Year Masterplan.” No, you didn’t. You created a Master Plan.
You wouldn’t wake up on Sunday morning, take out the paper, and read the comicstrips. And then take your six-year-old to the donutshop. Or take Rover for a walk to the dogpark.
Yes, I understand that you fly in an airplane, and drive on a freeway, and put your roses in a flowerpot. But that’s because those are real compound words… and can be found in the dictionary. This is the reason that I don’t get that little red squiggly line under them when I write them in Microsoft Word. But Masterplan just got that little red squiggly line under it.
So why do so many organizations think that it’s one word? Maybe because it’s such a critical component to a destination’s success that it has taken on an elevated stature. Perhaps because a great long-range master plan touches all aspects of an organization’s goals, from branding, to guest experience, to operations, to food and merchandise, to marketing, and even to social media. It’s achieved a sort of ‘proper noun’ status… a non-accepted Words With Friends word. Maybe that’s why it’s almost always capitalized as one word: Masterplan.
Regardless, it’s still two words: a Master Plan for an organization’s long-range success.
Oh, and you also don’t take your kids to a waterpark. It’s a park filled with water.
This pill is going to be a little harder for you, Attractions Industry, to swallow. Because lots of destinations have branded themselves as a “Waterpark.” And, given my thoughts above, maybe that’s a little more understandable, because they have decided to adopt yet another proper noun status, and to manufacture a new word as part of their branded identity. But the reality is that waterparks don’t exist. Water parks, however, do exist.
The folks in the industry, like myself, who create these attractions are no less guilty, because they are constantly putting titleblocks on their drawings. There it is, again… that little red squiggly line. It’s a block of text used to create a title for your drawing. This one will never achieve proper noun stature. It’s too mundane, too ordinary… just one of those things that the drawing has to have. It’s a title block. Again, not a compound word.
If all this is surprising or confounding to you; don’t worry, you’re in good company – your Friends have been struggling with the same challenge.
And while I’m thinking about it, there’s no such word as “theming”, either.
