Being a copy cat isn't so bad when it works

I was reading a discussion on PointBuzz about the now-defunct food festival that they ran the last few years, and some of the comments were along the lines of, "They do it this way at that place." That got me to thinking...

It's a relatively small industry. There are successes and failures. Sometimes, though rarely, there is real innovation. But the thing is, if it's me in charge, the first thing that I would do is look around, find a "best in class" example of the thing, and then use that as my starting point for what I would do. I'm not suggesting that what works in one place automatically works in another, because wisdom should make the difference obvious. But I don't understand the instinct to reinvent stuff, or exercise the hubris of believing that you know better.

Does this track with anyone else? In software, I rarely see problems that haven't been solved somewhere. Someone usually has a story or there's some open source project or whatever. Most of the time, we're composing solutions from smaller solutions.

In my experience, it was frowned upon to look at the competition and suggest we try something that was working so great for them. I would even get negative looks when talking about looking at other parks within our chain to see if any success they had could be adapted to our operation. I blame the fact that we were labeled "The Best Amusement Park" as to why we did not look outside our gate. We were clearly doing everything correctly and had no room for improvement. It drove me nuts. Now I work for a company that not only pays attention to the industry, it will invent something new to keep up or leap ahead of everyone else. I went from one extreme to another.

Jeff:

But I don't understand the instinct to reinvent stuff, or exercise the hubris of believing that you know better.

I see this quite often and it's quite annoying. I'm a "field worker" for a company that most office types use as a stepping stone to better careers at better companies.

It seems every young hotshot who comes through the revolving door of "Director of something or other" immediately looks for something they can change and stamp their name on. Why? Because when interviewing to leave this "stepping stone" job, the most common question is "Tell me about a time when you made an improvement, or cut costs, at your current job."

It's the grunts in the company that have to learn new procedures every time this happens.

Sirloindude, as a guy who actually works in the offices of our employer, is this correct? Because it sure seems this way.

Jeff:
Does this track with anyone else? In software, I rarely see problems that haven't been solved somewhere.

As a long time Engineer, I always remember something one of my early Mentors said to me: "80% of Engineering is knowing where to find the answer".

Can you make something better? Can you make something new? Of course. But most of it has been done before.

Cedar Point had something great with Brews and BBQ but they really ****ed it this year by trying to elevate the experience. It's really disappointing. It was a great way to spend a Saturday evening prior to the change.

Tommytheduck:

Sirloindude, as a guy who actually works in the offices of our employer, is this correct? Because it sure seems this way.

That hasn’t been my experience, but I offer the following qualifiers:

• I’m not in leadership, nor have I been around and involved in enough yet to have the level of exposure of my counterparts.
• My team is literally my boss, my teammate, and I, and my boss and teammate are exceptionally humble people who have no qualms whatsoever about finding better ways to do things and learning from others.

That said, in my dealings with some of the operating departments, I’ve seen other exceptionally humble leaders who really just want to find the best way to operate. I’ve not seen egos, but rather a very collaborative spirit and a desire to work together to achieve a goal. It’s been incredibly refreshing.

Now, and I preface this by saying that I love my previous airline, I had a great time working there, and I would still recommend them to anyone, I did see what you referenced. It was hardly universal, but there was an unhealthy amount of what I call “corporate arrogance” that manifested itself in a number of ways. One was a belief in the company’s unmatched superiority and what appeared to be little desire to learn from others, both inside and outside of the company. I use the qualifier “appeared” because I never sat in meetings discussing the strategy of the company, and the highest I got was a management role in the operation. Even at that level, though, there were some glaring issues that could have been resolved by studying the methods other airlines used to operate (including one acquired by our airline, for that matter), but if it wasn’t a matter of believing our own company to be superior (maybe it was cost-related or some other issue), it sure felt like it was a mindset that we were the best and could solve all our problems by studying ourselves and no one else.

I’d go into greater detail on examples, but it’d be a much longer post than it already is.

The bad ticketing structure was there initially, but then they upscaled it and whacked all the fun and variety out of it as well on the food and beer end. On top of the bad ticketing structure.

Probably something a guest survey or research team could fix, you know.

Especially after the whole park went cashless it should have been much easier to sell individual food at each booth. Just treat it like the food truck festival thing, just run internally.

I mean Knott's seems to be handling the Boysenberry Festival better and better every year, it should not be hard to semi-replicate that, hell even use some of the dishes and use Bysenberry, cause it would be very unique over blah bbq and etc, that is now available elsewhere in the park.

Jeff, it totally tracks with me. I rarely want to reinvent the wheel, though I do understand the desire to. You don't want to be accused of copying or having a lack of imagination. But I think when you're putting on your first event of its kind, it's okay to copy someone else's idea just to get the thing up and running with minimal issue. Then, you see how your audience did with the event, what went well, and what didn't go so well, and you make changes for the following year.

Chances are, no one knows you're copying. Chances are, no one cares that you're copying.

Exactly right Jephry. Do your research on what works and implement it. Then fine tune things as needed for your particular situation.

As long as what you have copied works, no one will care that you have copied it.

Jeff:

But I don't understand the instinct to reinvent stuff, or exercise the hubris of believing that you know better.

This is rampant in education, to a much greater degree since Covid. My department seems to have three camps. One camp is complacent. One camp says nothing is working but have no ideas on how to fix it. Yet they claim they know better since they have a Master's degree in Math. The third camp is willing to go to professional development conferences, actively involved in Facebook education groups, and willing to try new ideas for the sake of student achievement. Unfortunately, the third group is by far the smallest. Fortunately, those in leadership also fit in the third camp. Some of my colleagues are in deep trouble once AI improves.

When it come to making YouTube videos, the "experts" say that when you see something that works, go ahead and copy it, but add your own twist, or personality, to it. Make "the thing" better, or at least different. I think this would work really well in the amusement park food, and/or park food events.

Or just steal someone's video and record yourself reacting to it. That inexplicably seems to be a great (and the absolute laziest) way to be successful on YouTube.

Could you imagine trolley parks not installing the newfangled LA Thompson invention just because they don't want to be copy cats? ;)

In government we borrow from proven practices and techniques all the time. More often than not, others are borrowing from us because we do like to try new things...but we don't take offense at it. Rather, we consider it a point of pride. "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery."

In reality, who cares if Epcot did a great Food and Wine festival and Cedar Point does one? Does Cedar Point's in any way impact Epcot's? No, of course it doesn't. Disneyland was an improved version of something similar Are we all critical of Disneyland because it wasn't the first amusement park...or are we complimentary because it is considered one of the best?

In reality, who cares if Epcot did a great Food and Wine festival and Cedar Point does one? Does Cedar Point's in any way impact Epcot's?

The main discussion is why CP could not make it work when the festivals do so very well at Epcot, and even within their chain at Knott's.

At CP they kind of copy it, but then always put some ass-backward operation mentality over it and run it into the ground. Who remembers the Winterfest try?

I also find this crazy cause they fully turned the Chuckwagon spot into a stage and multi-purpose area for exactly this. You have truly fully fixed Frontier Town in looks and rides, and it is one of the best-themed areas in the whole chain, and you kill the great show there, then the festival with food and entertainment, that gave it so much extra character.

Let's also not even mention the gutting of Town Hall, the apparent half-almost-done things for it, and just leaving it empty. As the crown jewel of your chain and the 2nd oldest park in the country, you can't even finish a museum about its importance.

...and how difficult would it have been to partition off the building and put a Guest Services office in the "lobby" instead of forklifting a stick joint into the side yard...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

They have done very successful food festivals at Knotts for quite some time. If it were up to me, I would have no problem using those as a model. As far as copying what another one of their parks do, how many of their customers have been to any of the ones at Knotts? Not all that many I would surmise....

I would imagine that a food festival would not work very well at a park like CP due to the lack of locals. I see a food festival drawing a large crowd of locals, especially visitors who can pop in for a few hours after work. If CP had a large community of locals they could spend a bit of cheddar of a good quality chef to come in and run the festival. They could turn out some killer small portions and sell them at various tents all over the park.

Tourists traveling multiple hours aren't doing so based on a food festival, well, the majority of tourists who are traveling for a theme park anyways. You could argue that happens at Disney for their various Epcot festivals, and I'm sure it does because Disney has umpteen other things going on for someone traveling there. They do their festivals, along with marathons, and after hours events, and turn it into a reason to visit. CP would need to generate the same level of buzz to gain travel based on festivals, and I'm just not sure it is in their budget, or in their business goals to do so.

Knotts, Carowinds, Valleyfair or Great America on the other hand...... Shoot, even Dorney could probably do a great food festival.

But what about Sandusky? Sure, they could copy Disney, do a huge food festival for a month or so, set aside a chunk of CapEx and make it happen. Hire a solid team of culinary experts, set up events, tastings, concerts, do a couple runs, 10k/half marathon, have an after hours event or 3, fireworks, special drinks, etc. Advertise it beyond belief and they would probably do really well. I know I would show up. But do we think that they really have the event management prowess to make something like this happen???

They had all of that. It was great. The run weekend never came back after the pandemic and they tried to reinvent the food festival which bombed.

Well shoot, I suppose my, well Disney's, great idea is a dud. Oh well.