How do they do it?

I think Joe Natoli has the perfect job for his congenial personality. After four years as Beach Baron’s president, Joe has now been marketing director for three years. We had a chance to talk this past weekend about the tremendously successful “2024 Rod Run to the End of the World.” I wanted to get the scoop from an insider’s point of view. This was the 40th anniversary of the Beach Baron event and my question was “How do you do it, and how do you keep doing it year after year”

“We really killed it this year,” Joe said. “We had to stop registration at 900 cars — we just don’t have any more room on the field — and that’s two participants per registered car. Plus, we had 40 club cars from our Beach Barons. We had 7,000 spectators that came through the gate Saturday, and that doesn’t count children under 12, free, plus active military, also free.”

Okay, and may I add the hundreds of locals who pulled up folding chairs in front of their homes and just sat with friends to watch the action unfold. As Joe said, “We saw so many people along the sides of the road. I saw one set up including an end table, a coffee table, and chairs!” One neighborhood group I saw had a roadside barbecue going.

Slow Drag

The Slow Drag in Ilwaco was also a huge success this year. I spoke to Phil Allen, a member of the hospital foundation about their sponsorship of the event. “I was there with others at the finish line for the slow drag: the hospital board and foundation are part of the Ilwaco Marketing Association and we had two 10×10 shelters set up. We’ve been part of the sponsorship team for 16 years”

“Even before the event started there were several of us in teams of two walking through the crowd selling raffle tickets to support the hospital. We’re raising money to replace the operating room lights. As we walked through talking to people, I was amazed how many didn’t know much about our hospital. There have been so many great improvements in these last years. We gave out pill cases and little mementos with the hospital logo. Two of the radiologists and a nurse were there too helping. The crowd was wonderful.”

Art decisions start now

You’d think the Beach Baron’s could just sit on their laurels and take a breather for awhile after such a rousing success. But no. When I ask what has to be done now, Joe says, laughing, “Well, first we start with Prozac! We’re already preparing for next year because art and design decisions have to be made now. This week we’ll have our usual debrief — we’ll share things we heard from people both good and bad. We’ve never put on a perfect show and we never will. There are always things we want to improve.”

“People will say, ‘Well, we were really good here, but we lacked something over here.’ We’ll go over the budget too. Like this year we ran out of apparel at 3 p.m. on Saturday — our goal is to run out at noon on Sunday. A couple years ago we ordered too many T-shirts so we’ve cut back, but we ran short this year. So all that takes planning. Sometimes it just depends on the weather. If it’s cold, we know we’ll sell more sweatshirts. We print T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts.”

“Right now what we’re preparing is art. We’ve got pictures of the winning cars — we gave out 150 trophies — so we’re working of the art for the T-shirts. Then it goes to a committee. We have to print flyers, posters, merchandise. We try to have all that done before the first of the year — all the design and art work. Then there’s something called the ‘Yellow Book’ which includes all of the car shows in the area in the PNW. So we’ve got to get ads and copy ready for them, so the art work is primary right now. Hopefully we’ll have it done by October or November — December the Yellow Book guys go into print.”

Future ideas

Joe also talked about the fact that the Seaside car show was originally on Labor Day weekend and was in competition with Rod Run. For a variety of reasons, when the Peninsula officials asked the Beach Barons to reschedule to the weekend after Labor Day that worked better. But then Seaside rescheduled for that same weekend again. Now Joe and others are trying to schedule events so that there can be a “week of car events.”

“I have a cousin in Hawaii and they have three car clubs and they coordinate so that there’s one show on one side of the island then events during the week and then another show on the other side of the island on the following weekend. That’s what I’d like to see here. Something that allows us our weekend and the Seaside car clubs their own weekend with events in between so that we can convince people to stay for those ten days.’”

Seems like coordinating those efforts from a marketing perspective makes a lot of sense for the coast. It would give a financial boost to both communities. Although Beach Baron’s can’t totally quantify how much money their event brings into the community, it’s no doubt a large number. “All the hotels are full for our weekend,” Joe said. “though sometimes I just want to say to our local businesses, ‘Don’t get greedy.’ I’ve heard some are charging $400-500 a night with a two or three night stay minimum; the price of a bag of ice doubles. Don’t hit up our people — let’s keep it affordable for everyone.”

Joe continues, “For instance we had one elderly handicapped fellow who drove over from Kelso to help at the event — he comes every year — and he couldn’t find a reasonably priced place to stay. Alyson Myers, who is reopening the Moby Dick, offered him a ground floor room that fit the bill. [Thanks, Alyson! Note there are wonderful changes happening at the Moby Dick — more next week about the story of the team renovating and re-enlivening local mover and shaker Felice “Fritzi” Cohen’s dream place. See her obituary in the Chinook Observer: Jan. 30, 2023, tinyurl.com/Fritzi-Obit.]

Rod Run Registration begins April 1

Perhaps it’s worth reminding people that the Beach Barons support so many community projects with the monies they take in annually. “We give to Camp Victory, we provide money for scholarships, we give to local churches, and the chambers of commerce. We have an easter egg hunt with 150-200 kids and their families every year and feed everyone a lunch. Every kid goes home with a stuffed animal.”

“At Christmas, the Department of Health and Human Services gives us the name of seven families and we go to work gathering all sorts of things for them: clothing, pillows, blankets. We get groceries from Fred Meyer. Jack’s Country Store throws in a canned ham and cases of water.”

“We’re a nonprofit,” say Joe, “but we run things like a business.” That sounds right — for forty years they’ve been doing a magnificent job organizing all the millions of details and decisions that go into this event. They’re like a finely-tuned machine — maybe like the engine they build every year that becomes the focus of the raffle fund raiser. “This year we made a 520 horse-power engine and we sold 4,000 tickets at $5 apiece. We always tell people, if you win and want the engine great. If the wife says no and she picks up the phone, maybe she’d rather have $2,000!”

Registration for 2025 starts at the stroke of midnight on April 1st. “We’ve got folks who have us on speed dial trying to get that first number!” The Beach Barons are already Number One in my book!