Real Fun vs. Fake Fun
Guess which one camp has
Erec Hillis from Camp Champions (who just also happens to be amazing and our friend) has a framework he’s been working on. We’ve talked about it a few times now.
The kid who shoots an arrow has a story. The kid who watches archery videos does not.
He calls it Real Fun vs. Fake Fun. And it’s brilliant. Real fun is active, social, unscripted, and leaves you with something to retell. Fake fun feels fine in the moment and produces nothing.
The Distinction in One Image
Two kids. Same age. Same Tuesday afternoon.
And we’re totally aware that archery is the most bland, and prototypically-generic camp example there is, but whatever. It applies nearly everywhere, so here we go.
One shoots an arrow for the first time. Misses the target on the first try. Hits the third ring on the fourth try. Tells the story at dinner.
One watches three hours of archery videos on a phone. Has nothing to say about Tuesday at dinner.
In some technical sense, this is the same activity. But it’s more a proxy for how kids operate in much of the world right now. One produced a story. One didn’t.
The difference is whether something happened to the kid that the kid can tell someone about later.
What Most Camps Sell
Often, camp marketing names the activity. We have archery. We have swimming. We have drama. (remember to take out the We’s). The pages of the website are organized by activity area. The Instagram carousel is organized by activity area.
The marketing that moves a parent is the story the activity produces.
“We offer archery” is the activity.
“On the second day, a kid who has never picked up a bow before will hit the target and turn around with that grin every camp pro knows” is the story.
Same camp. The second sentence is the one a parent forwards to a friend.
Why Camp Specifically
Camp is a Real Fun factory. The conditions are baked into the model. Kids together for weeks. No screens. Counselors who care more about the kid than the performance. Activities that have to be done, not watched.
Erec runs his staff training the same way.
Typical camps spend staff training week running sessions about camp. The kind of thing you sit in a room for. Lifeguard certification slides. A behavior management talk. Group games. Active session on homesickness. He runs those too. He also does something considerably more.
One day in the middle of staff training is a full mock camp day. Start to finish. Flag raising. The regular meal schedule. The regular activity blocks. Torchlight at the end of the day. The staff are running camp, with each other. Lifeguard training happens during the swim block. Ropes training happens at the ropes course. The classroom sessions on communicating with kids still happen too, but most of the week is camp itself.
His framing: most camps run on we’re going to train you on these things. Then camp starts and you double up the time actually doing them. He doubles up during staff training itself. Train and do, in the same week. By the time summer starts, the staff has already done it.
That is Real Fun applied to staff training. The counselor who has actually run a torchlight at the end of a mock camp day walks into the real torchlight on opening day with a story. The counselor who only watched the torchlight slide deck does not.
Try This
Pull up your last newsletter or the homepage of your website. Read it once.
Count the sentences that name an activity (we offer archery, swimming, drama). Count the sentences that describe a story the activity produced (the kid who hits the target for the first time and turns around grinning).
That ratio could be your marketing problem.
Take the most activity-heavy sentence and rewrite it as a story. One sentence. The version a parent could imagine their own kid in. That is the version that sells camp.
You got this,
Jack & Doug