INDUSTRY NEWS continued
diver may forget a paragraph from a training manual months later, but re- membering Dive Man standing outside a wreck saying, “Know your limits,” is a different kind of learning reinforcement. Beyond skills, the comics also introduce divers to the larger diving lifestyle: con- tinuing education, purchasing and main- taining appropriate equipment, supporting their local dive shop, finding dive buddies, traveling, and exploring new environ- ments. The goal is simple: keep divers learning and keep them excited about diving. Recruit
flyer never could. We even set up a couch at the front of the store, in view of the whole sales floor, and placed Oceanic Comics right on the couch cushions. Browsers, parents, or friends waiting for a student’s rental appointment have to pick one up just to sit down. Once they pick it up, they never put it down. Retain What began as an educational idea quickly became a way to solve one of our industry’s biggest challenges: retention. American Dive Zone has spent very little on marketing to get people in the door. Much of our business has grown organically through social media, Google reviews, referrals, and community engagement. However, we began to notice something familiar to many dive professionals: students
For prospective students on the fence, the comics reframe scuba diving as a journey with a story, not just a certification card. The books have opened up conver- sations with “just browsing” customers in ways that a printed
complete their Open Water certification, celebrate the ac- complishment, and then life gets in the way. They move on to another hobby or simply become too busy to dive. We wanted to change the perception of scuba diving from something you “complete” into something that can become part of your life. There is always another skill to learn, another local dive to make, another piece of equipment to understand, another destination to explore and another group of divers to meet. This comic book series gives us another way to tell that story. It encourages students to continue growing in their training, participate in local diving, travel with other divers, and remain connected to their dive community. Put Your Dive Business in the Story Oceanic Comics is also developing custom editions for dive shops, instructors, training programs, travel operators, con- servation organizations, and others in the dive industry who want to be part of the story. A custom edition can incorporate a dive shop’s people, logo, educational messages, destinations, courses, QR codes, staff members, even a shop mascot, into a comic book your customers will want to read, share and keep. You can even personalize the superhero concept itself: imagine you or your staff becoming Dive Man or Wave Woman. A shop could use a comic to launch an upcoming trip. A conservation organization could use a superhero to teach divers how to treat the underwater world with respect. Instead of handing someone
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