S6E7: Bachelorette and Divorce Markets

Join me as I debrief my time in Austin, Texas for my cousin's bachelorette party and how they have targeted this very particular niche of bachelorettes. I then go on to talk about how any town or company can create their own life-event style niche, like divorce parties, instead of choosing an existing target market and competing in a saturated market. 

Things mentioned in the podcast: the picture of all the bachelorette's taking the shot - I used it as my cover photo for this episode! Check it out!

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Transcript

Hello, hello my beautiful, wonderful, incredible amazing podcast listeners. I am taking a break from my 437 emails, so I could record a podcast. I am a week behind and with good reason to. I have been out of the office the last two weeks on two different trips. The first trip was to Austin for a family function, my cousin's bachelorette party, she gets married next month - I am so excited for her. And then I immediately came off that and went straight into Stephen Covey's Seven Habits for Highly Effective People. Big fan of the book, have always, I read the book, I own the book, I've done a lot with the book over the years and it was really cool to get the in-depth training and the workbooks and all the things and kind of refresh some of that learning. I love that I work at a university that invests so much in professional development if you so choose to want to sign up for it. 

I was posting a ton of pictures from Austin, Texas for my cousin's bachelorette party and someone reached out and said, Oh my goodness, you have to do a podcast on this because one of the pictures I posted, I should create a link in the show notes, one of the pictures that I posted was at a piano bar in Austin, and it was 14 bachelorettes up on the stage all doing a shot together. All the comments were like oh my goodness, where are you? Where is this? What's going on? And I had to write in the comments like this is nothing. Austin has really marketed and advertised itself for this very specific niche market. Austin, Texas is actually third in the country for bachelorette parties, which I didn't even specifically know, that, that was even necessarily measured in that way. Fun fact, first is Nashville, second is Las Vegas, third is Austin, and fourth is Miami. So if you want to know where to get your bachelorette party or where to do it, those are the hotspots. 

And let me tell you when I say Austin is a hotspot for it - there wasn't a single place we went that we didn't see a bachelorette and their posse. It was kinda crazy. We went to dinner and we started counting them and there was over 20 bachelorettes at dinner at one restaurant. And then we went the next night, the piano bar and there was the 14 bachelorettes. So you couldn't go anywhere, we went out dancing to some of the different bars that had little dance areas in the back down on Rainey Street. Super wonderful. And there was just so many, whether it was a bride to be with one person or a bride to be that had 12 bachelorettes with them. We had, the, the Texas cowboy hats with the veils. We had everywhere in between. And of course, being the person that I am, I’m asking everybody for all the details like, hey, congratulations, where are you from? Oh, you're from North Carolina. Cool. Oh, you're from Houston, Texas. Awesome. Oh, you're from Nebraska. Oh, you're from Indianapolis, from all over the country. And some people from Canada that we met out - all down in Austin. And I said to myself, I said this is really interesting, because I used to live in Las Vegas. I lived in Las Vegas for nearly four years. And I always thought that was a big place for bachelorettes. And it is a huge place, obviously it's number two, it's above Austin. But when you think about Las Vegas, it's spread out over the entire strip. So it's not so highly concentrated. And I really started to think about that in terms of the I don't know the aura of the event or the energy or the atmosphere.

In Las Vegas, they would see bachelorette and they would cat call and they would whistle and they would congratulate you and buy you shots and buy you drinks and you're in Vegas so you're making poor decisions. And then in Austin, it was so concentrated that, they honestly, there was no cat calling, there was no whistling or yelling, the bridesmaids were responsible for buying your drinks. And let me tell you for my cousin, we bought a lot of drinks, I just got that Venmo request today. So it's like fresh on my brain. 

So it's really up to the bridal party. It's not up to random strangers, you don't necessarily have to worry about if somebody is going to try to pick you up and take you home and it was a completely different environment. That made me sit there and say, okay, a lot of my research in the past has been in destination personality and destination marketing and saying, what is your unique gift? What's your unique value proposition that your advertising? And how on earth did Austin come up with hey, I know we have South by Southwest over here, which is a huge thing for us and income generating and now we're randomly going to go for the bachelorette market. Like somebody, somewhere had to have made a very specific choice in that saying like, hey, we have sun and sun leads to tans and tans lead to people who are about to get married. There had to be some kind of marketing persona somewhere that somebody in some important place and this is going to be our market and we're gonna kill it. 

And then you look at the number one, the number one is not even Las Vegas. It's Nashville. Which is country capital, right? So what's making these stand out? And I was actually using it as a case study in a community that I was talking to. So I came home from Austin. I had one afternoon of meetings. Then I went to the three day seven habits workshop and then I've come back and I've been home, I guess back in the office for half a day. And I was talking about Austin and I said if Austin can choose a random market that they think would thrive in this area, why can't you choose a random market? I think so often we try to be everything to everybody all the time. And we're always saying in target market, right event design, target market, and marketing personas like narrow it in, narrow it in, narrow it in. Or choose your top three personas. Okay? You have three very specific target markets. You're going to create marketing messages that are tailored to each of those, those markets. It’s going to feel like you're speaking directly into their soul. I absolutely get that. 

But why can't you create your own market? To sit there and say okay, these are existing markets. Yes, you can already go into a saturated environment but why can't you say like, Hey, why can't I? Why can't I specialize in divorce parties? Right. I am in, I can't remember if I even actually mentioned this on the podcast I think I did a couple episodes ago, I'm in a stand up comedy class right now, and one of the people in my class, she has a whole entire bit around divorce parties and making divorce parties cool again. I should say again, trying to make divorce parties a thing of when you get married and you have a bridal shower and then you have wedding showers and then you have the wedding gifts. You're consolidating two households into one and then you're asking for all these brand new things. But when you really need those things is when you're getting divorced because you're going from one house into two houses. So instead of needing one set of towels, you need two sets, instead of needing one set of silverware, you now need two sets. And how cool would it be to have a divorce reveal party? Like, okay, we're gonna get all our friends together, and we're going to be together and then we're going to do a grand reveal. Maybe instead of giving us tips or advice or guessing what our kids names are, why don’t you all guess why we're getting divorced, and then we'll do a big reveal so there's no drama or secrets. Or you know, whispers and hush hush. Why don't you all guess why we're getting divorced and then we can do it and then we can just go ahead and split up the friend groups here while we're at it. Right? So, just super interesting concept. And not necessarily a quote unquote target market, over 50% of marriages lead into divorce. So that is a viable market that anybody could do. You could be the middle of nowhere and you could say I'm going to target divorces, and I'm gonna have giant bonfires and people can bring all their stuff and like throw in their wedding dress and throw in their furniture or I've actually been to one of these parties in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. On a farm, where the ex wife was like throwing in their wedding dress and all their photo albums and with a giant and like giant giant bonfire. Why can't that be a thing? Why don't you just make your own niche? So I've really had a lot of thoughts about this just in the week since coming home from Austin. And thinking what other parties can we, can we create or can we target or can we make cool or make viral? There's things in our lives that happen every day. Why can't we just choose one and make it a thing and then target it. You don't have to be a cool city. You don't have to be, even a city at all, you could be a township. Think about Burning Man in the middle of the desert, they construct a town. Why can't you do that? 

So I'm really going to be kind of thinking about that a lot because I think that's just such a fascinating concept of creating your own type of life-event party and making that really cool. And this is very well timed because our next episode is episode 100. So crazy and there has been a lot of stuff that has happened this semester. I shared that I kind of renegotiated my job at the beginning of the semester. Now I've got some other really cool things in the works, there's some other cool projects. I talked a couple episodes ago about the speculative design. I've been invited to an Event Industry Council kind of mastermind group in one particular area. I've been invited to do some things in Europe. There's just a lot going on that I'm really excited to share. And then there's also some things within my own life that I'm super excited to share. And I promise I'm gonna reveal a whole bunch of that in Episode 100, which is next, so stay tuned. I'm so excited. I hope this episode has really got your creative juices flowing. Why can't you be the number one market in the world to host divorce parties? Like why can't you be that, any college town with a whole bunch of hours could do that, right? So think about that. Think about what are events that maybe you don't normally think of that you can make a thing and make your town be the place for that thing. Just really interesting. 

And with that thought, I hope you have found this time that you've spent with me useful. I always, never, ever, ever take your time for granted. I'm always cognizant of that. So thank you all so much for making the time to take the time. I'll talk with you soon.