I design and assemble 24 copies of a 12-page marketing piece for Flying M Air.
The Arizona tourist season is starting and will be in full-swing by mid November. That means it’s time for me to meet with Phoenix and Scottsdale hotel and resort concierges to make sure they’re aware of Flying M Air’s tours and day trips and to make it easy to sell them for me.
With the relocation of my helicopter from Wickenburg to a base much closer to my customers, I was able to cut prices on all of my tours and day trips. That should make them more attractive to customers. They are not, however, cheap. My lowest price tour is a 50-60 minute trip around Phoenix that costs $495 for up to 3 people. My most expensive flight is a day-long trip to Grand Canyon West’s Skywalk that includes at least four hours in the helicopter and all ground fees and costs $2,495 for up to three people. Ouch.
When you’re selling services with big price tags, you can’t expect a flyer printed on your Epson inkjet printer to impress anyone. You need to create marketing materials that will fully explain and illustrate what you’re offering, presented in a professional-looking package.
And that’s what I spent much of the past week doing.
I use plastic portfolio binders with a cover insert to prepare 12-page booklets about my company and its services. The cover has an 8×10 glossy photo of the helicopter with my company marketing design (the blue and red swirls).
Inside, there’s a “Welcome” letter, mostly for the use of hotel/resort guests who might be browsing the book on their own. It provides brief information about the company and urges them to book through a concierge. If a concierge isn’t available, however, they can call us directly for more information and reservations.
Next are full-color information sheets about the tours and day trips we offer. Each tour sheet includes at least two photos of the destination or route, full pricing information, and branding elements such as my logo. You can see thumbnails of these pages here, on the right side of this post. I created each of these sheets in InDesign, using photos from a collection I’ve been building steadily for about six years. When they were finished, I e-mailed them to the local KwikPrint. The folks there printed them out on their color laser printer. Although I have a color laser printer, their’s does a better job and, given the cost of consumables on mine, is actually cheaper. As you might imagine, all of these documents are available as downloadable PDFs from the Flying M Air Web site. I figure I spent about $200 on printing.
I also included a copy of the front cover of the August 2009 issue of Arizona Highways magazine, which listed my company’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure as “The best way to see Arizona in a week.” I clipped out the paragraph about us and pasted it onto the cover image so both the cover and the text are on the same page. The folks at KwikPrint handled the copies of these sheets,too. They look nice.
Then there’s a full page summary of all tours and day trips and their prices, including optional add-ons like Jeep tours or lunch stops.
Finally, there’s a page that provides information about our helicopter, including the make and model, engine specs, and passenger-friendly features.
Putting the books together was rather time consuming and tedious. We did it after dinner last night. Mike helped me. I spread piles of each page out along the table and we walked around the table, inserting pages into the booklet’s plastic sheets. It took about an hour to do 24 of them. I figure that if I would have paid a marketing firm to do the same job, it would have cost me at least $5K for design and document creation and $20 to $50 per booklet.
The resulting booklets are extremely attractive and professional. They present the image I want people to have of my business. The removable pages make it easy for a concierge to pull out a page and make a copy for a guest or co-worker. Frankly, the only way I could make this any better is to print individual booklets using something like iPhoto. But if you make them too nice, people take them as souvenirs — as I discovered the expensive way with a local guest ranch a few years ago.
But what’s most important about the booklets is that they provide all of the information a concierge needs to help a guest make an informed decision about a tour or day trip with Flying M Air. And that, after all, is the purpose of this exercise.
Later this week, I’ll start making the rounds with my husband, Mike, who has become the company’s Marketing Manager. By that time, we’ll have my new business cards back from the printer.
This season, it’s do or die in the Phoenix area. I’m determined to make it work.
Remember Greg from 
We watched the July 4 fireworks from East Wenatchee. Wenatchee puts on a good show from Walla Walla Point Park on the river. We were right across the river from there, all comfy with our good cameras. I got some decent shots, but I don’t think I’ve put them online yet.
Okay, so it’s a washing machine.
On July 10, Mike and I celebrated 26 years together. For the second year in a row, we celebrated it apart. These are the flowers he sent me.
This is a failed attempt at stealth photography. You know — when you photograph someone without them knowing you’re doing it. I obviously need a lot of practice.
This is the best reason I can think of for avoiding a bridal shower. Give me a break! I don’t like anybody enough to wear a getup like this in public.
One of the things I did to fill the time between rain showers — and let me tell you, there was lots of that time — was revise my Leopard book for Snow Leopard. Since I do layout on my Visual QuickStart Guides, I brought along my 24-inch iMac (left). I also bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro (right) to run the Snow Leopard software on. These two computers, along with the usual collection of junk I seem to accumulate, filled my workspace, which was my camper’s dining table.
Part of my equipment for drying cherries is an 82-gallon fuel tank that I keep filled with 100LL fuel. That’s the kind of fuel my helicopter takes. The tank, which is mounted on my husband’s pickup truck this year, has an electric pump so I can do off-airport refueling. This saves time and money when I have to dry.
I really do hate the Wal-Mart in Wenatchee. One reason is the checkout lines. Not only are they long, but they’re confusing — they’re set up like flag lots and you never know what side to check out on. They’re also lined with more crap ready for impulse buyers. And they have televisions playing ads all the time. Televisions I can’t seem to shut off with my 
Another trip to Blustery’s for another Logger Burger. This time I had it with sweet potato fries. I wrote a little about this visit 
Would I be dating myself if I admitted to seeing Tommy in a movie theater when it first came out? (Yeah, I thought so.)
Jim and I flew down to an orchard near Othello, WA to meet another pilot and attend a party. Since we both wanted to fly, we took two helicopters.
When you see two guys working on a power pole outside your door with a pair of clippers, you should not be surprised if the power fails immediately afterward.
One of the first things I did when I arrived at the golf course RV park in June was to retrieve the planter I’d bought the previous summer and plant tomatoes, basil, rosemary, and some flowers in it. The tomatoes were just starting to ripen when it was time to go.
This is the honkin’ huge cloud that formed over the Waterville Plateau about 20-30 miles north of my position. You should have seen it on radar. The thunderstorm moved northeast to Electric City and the Grand Coulee Dam, wreaking havoc along the way.
This is my landing zone at the Wenatchee orchard where I’m finishing up the cherry drying season. I’m parked between a dirt road and a pond in a clearing used as a staging area for cherry picking equipment. One skid is slightly lower than the other; it’s a bit of a slope. I was supposed to park on the other side of the pond, but they’d stacked cherry boxes there. All I could think of was the forklifts and seasonal labor pool moving those boxes around right next to my huge investment. So I parked on the other side of the pond where I thought there would be less activity.
Imagine a long, low dam across a wide river. Now imagine a walkway across the top of that dam. Both sides of the walkway have concrete walls about chest high. And on top each wall is a fat metal rail running the whole length of the wall.
This is Greg, a fellow helicopter pilot. He’s posing 
This is one of the windmills at the huge Wild Horse Wind Farm between Ellensburg and Vantage on the Vantage Highway in Washington State. It huge. There’s a visitor’s center up there that I really recommend for family outings. It’s also nice and cool up there.
On the way back to where I was staying in Quincy, WA, I stopped off in Vantage at Blustery’s for a “Logger Burger.” You’re looking at a hamburger with bacon, cheese, ham, and fried egg. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner on one big bun!
If you’re looking for seafod, you’ve come to the right place: Inna’s in Wenatchee, WA. (Personally, I prefer seafood.)
I did, however, treat myself to a hot fudge sundae at the Owl Soda Fountain across the street. They claim it’s an authentic soda fountain, but I think it looks too new and shiny. It certainly has that feel about it.
Mike came out for a visit at the end of June and we flew Zero-Mike-Lima (far right) up to Chelan. We parked in the “heli base” between the hangars there, with two other red R44s. The one in the middle belongs to my friend, Jim, who has 
I also sent this one to TwitPic. I thought the sign was funny. When I sent it to TwitPic, someone commented on it, thinking my helicopter was the only one there. It was actually one of four, but happened to be the one parked behind the sign.
I had my birthday lunch at the Applewood Grill in Wenatchee, WA. It’s in a wonderful old stone building near the railroad tracks. I’m sure it’s got all kinds of historic significance that I failed to look into while there. We sat outside on the patio in the shade. It was a nice day. The food wasn’t bad, either.
Later, we went RV shopping in Wenatchee. We walked into one RV after another, going up in size and luxury with each step. This is the kind of 5th wheel model we’re considering as a trade-in for our sad little camper. This one was 32-feet long, had Corian countertops in the full kitchen, two La-Z-Boy recliners, a sofa bed, a table with four chairs, desk, a flat screen television, and king-sized bed, and a full bathroom. I could live in something like this.
I shot this one in a Wal-Mart parking lot mostly for the amusement of my skeptic friends. You either get it or you don’t. I’m not explaining the joke.