With 9 million visitors in 6 years, 500 employees and having injected around £800 million into a region in desperate need of regeneration- the Eden Project in Cornwall is certainly one successful visitor attraction.
Eden Project image by Jürgen Matern
As David Meneer, former Eden Project Marketing Director told the audience of last week’s Marketing Society conference: “we love provoking the envy of others”. And with the iconic attraction having settled at annual visitor numbers of around 1.2 million, while expanding its offering to encompass books, rock concerts, green car shows, surf boards and ice skating – there is indeed a lot to inspire the envy of visitor attractions worldwide.
But what I found particularly fascinating was David’s statement that they conducted “no research whatsoever” before opening the Eden Project. The reason? Because, after all, how many potential customers would think a big greenhouse in a pit in Cornwall was a good idea!
David has a point. And just look at all those potential customers and locals that think XYZ museum/attraction is a great idea at the feasibility research stage – only to fail to materialise after the attraction launches.
The Eden Project may not have conducted customer research prior to their launch – and they continue to attach little or no value to qualitative research process (”just a rear view mirror”) – but they did speak to 250,000 people before the project even opened to ensure local buy in and public support. It seems they invested their energies on word of mouth promotion and local engagement, not public consultation – an approach that brought them positive results.
So, to what factors do the Eden Project team attribute their success?
In his Marketing Society presentation David spelled out the top 10 factors that he believes account for the Eden Project’s success:
- Zeitgeist
- A big vision
- Scale
- Iconic architecture
- Media friendly CEO
- Location and locals
- The team
- Square pegs in round holes
- Agility
- Out-thinking not out-spending the competition
Vision, energy, confidence and a “try it and see” approach (reflected in so many of the factors above) is clearly at the heart of the Eden Project’s success.
Their success also seems to be passion driven, rather than data driven – so, perhaps its unsurprising that the factors they most attribute to their success are those least likely to be apparent in a feasibility study or pre-emptive qualitative research.
Does the Eden project use research now?
David explained that while they still undertake no qualitative research, they “do a ton of quant” – to the extent that there is the risk of “analysis paralysis” and “disappearing up your own bum”. (Nicely put!)
They are clearly doing a lot of valuable database segmentation work and have a strong grasp of the metrics that matter to them, but as David explains, they use the quantitative data with caution in that “we don’t let the minutiae dictate what we do”.
Appropriately, given the sustainable and ecological nature of the Eden Project as an attraction, the critical element of their approach to research (and indeed their overall strategy) is balance.
Into the future
Going forward, the Eden Project’s success will no doubt rely on continue its fine balance of data and instinct, the opportunistic and the planned, the old (leaflets) and the new (database) and the unpaid (pr) with the paid – all in a business environment that is fast paced and agile.
As David acknowledges, “its not easy to get one million visitors a year” and while the role of Marketing Director will now pass to someone else, it seems likely that the Eden Project will be “provoking the envy of others” for a good while yet.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Tourism market research, Visitor attraction research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.