Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - March/April 2014 - 3

can enjoy what we have come to enjoy as Pennsylvania
sportsmen and women.
I have asked Steve Kralik, a current Pennsylvania Fish
& Boat Commission employee, to be our marketing
coordinator, and I am confident that he and our staff will
lead us into new areas that will show you that we are serious
about delivering the best services and goods to meet your
expectations. Steve has already lined up some surprises that
we will be announcing on our website dedicated to this effort
at www.AnglerBoaterThankYou.com. I can't promise you a
fish on every cast, but I promise you that our staff and I will
be out there on March 29th on the early opening day of trout
season in the southeast and on April 12th for the statewide
opener to show our thanks and appreciation for your
business. We will be partnering with others since we share
you, our customer, with many other businesses throughout
the Commonwealth. We want to learn what's important to
you. Remember, we are all in this together.
See you on the water.

Your Director,
><(John{(°>

photo-Andrew L. Shiels

anglers to buy a license or boaters to pay a fee to register
their boat, so it really doesn't matter if less people fish or
boat, because all we have to do is raise the fees and that will
insure that our agency's place in government continues
to exist. If you want to learn more about my view of this
approach, you can find it in a previous "Straight Talk" titled
"A Fishing License Decrease" at www.fishandboat.com/
images/people/exec_dir/straight_talk/2010_07_08_
decrease.pdf.
My continued view is that we need to begin running
government more like a business and not take our
customers for granted. We continue to lose market share
in the field of recreation, because we now have to compete
with other sports for a share of your time. That's why I
sent a team of our staff to a Sports Marketing Conference
last year to learn more about the techniques that other
professional sports teams use to retain their current
customers and recruit new ones. One of the things they
learned was that we have to continue to add value to the
products we deliver to you. If we don't, you will decide to
spend your leisure time and money doing other things.
Hyden says innovate or evaporate, aka change or die.
You become what you think. So, we put on our thinking
caps and began evaluating our programs with the goal of
improving services and goods to get more people fishing
and boating in Pennsylvania.
We are a public service agency, and we have always
prided ourselves in providing the best services that we
can with the funding we have been allotted. Our views
have been mostly product focused through our resource
conservation and recreational service programs. We need
to do a better job focusing on our customers' expectations
in order to recover the market share we have lost to other
sports and activities. Our best form of advertising is
our customer. PWOM (Positive Word of Mouth) starts
and ends with you, the angler-all 1.1 million of you
(2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and WildlifeAssociated Recreation). When you sit around a campfire,
on a stream bank or even at a cocktail party and the
conversation turns to fishing or boating, it is our job to
make sure that you had a positive experience. Then, you
can be an angler and boater recruiter to others, so they

Get questions answered.
Share your ideas.
The mission of the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat
Commission is to protect, conserve and enhance
the Commonwealth's aquatic resources and
provide fishing and boating opportunities.
PFBC website: www.fishandboat.com

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Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * March/April 2014

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http://www.fishandboat.com/images/people/exec_dir/straight_talk/2010_07_08_decrease.pdf http://www.fishandboat.com/images/people/exec_dir/straight_talk/2010_07_08_decrease.pdf http://www.fishandboat.com/images/people/exec_dir/straight_talk/2010_07_08_decrease.pdf http://www.AnglerBoaterThankYou.com http://www.fishandboat.com

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - March/April 2014

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