The San Antonio Zoo has had guide books. Like most zoos, they just kind of fizzled out over a couple of generations. I think that they’re a pictorial history and I wish that they still had them. San Antonio had, I put out with the help of one of my… Read More
Do you have any advice for the neophyte zoo director about the importance of marketing zoos and what are the most important aspects do you think of marketing your zoo?… Read More
Well, marketing of a zoo, you know, you can do it in so many different ways. You can think in terms of marketers who are expert at that. And that’s all they do. They get on the phone and they call and they do all these things to sell a… Read More
Get around the community and let people know who you are. We know that certain audience has come to the zoo with the children or the kids. Read More
People listened to them, but some of the kids would put the key in, turn it on and run to the next box and turn it on. They weren’t listening to the thing. Now we have more sophisticated ways of doing audio tours. I just recently went through the Biltmore… Read More
Did the San Antonio Zoo have a guidebook?… Read More
Do they have a place in the zoo?… Read More
I think they do. They’re better now than they were several years back. Read More
The first audio tours that we had, do you remember the key that you put in the box?… Read More
And I think that’s a problem that zoos have. They have to come up with some gimmick that takes care of that. They’ve done it in certain areas. Read More
Mammals are easy, you know, naming exhibits spaces is easy, but getting the people to stop and take a look at the beauty of even a snake, you know?… Read More
I have friends who won’t even look at a snake and it just bothers me that they can’t understand that this is just another animal that you should know something about. Now, when you talk about signs, we’re now in a more techno age with iPads and all these different… Read More
I can tell you very quickly that the way I see the visitor having a more meaningful visit is the signage and the style we use in presenting that exhibit with a fantastic signage system. And it’s happening in zoos. I’m very impressed with some of the commercial, the companies… Read More
They walked in, the first thing they saw was this gigantic hippo exhibit behind glass with the hippos in it and the fish swimming around in the exhibit. They just were in awe. They turned around and they looked at the reptiles along the wall and they passed it one… Read More
Those animals are so important that they understand that there are these reptiles and amphibians in the world, just as much as when they looked at the hippo, but why aren’t they taking the time to at least read the descriptive information?… Read More
When we talked about visitors and you’re going out and talking to those visitors, asking them questions, what can be done to make the visitor connection more meaningful?… Read More
Is it in exhibitry or programming?… Read More
What can make that connection more meaningful that they wanna come back?… Read More
And I said, what?… Read More
Oh, well you have to do that. And the keepers told me, “Yeah, we have to do that every election day.” And I called them back and I said, “Wait a minute, you want me to send six people down so they can drive people to the polls?” I said,… Read More