A National Events Review
Major benefits of membership in the Mercedes-Benz Club of America (MBCA) are the subsidized events, core elements designed to bring members together for fun, friendship and learning. These subsidized events are StarFest®, StarTech, Tri-O-Rama, Gemütlichkeit, Western Caravan, Southern Treffen, Heimatfest and StarTrails. They are a significant part of the MBCA heritage and have facilitated much of the enthusiasm that club members share.
In partnership with the Peachtree and Central Georgia sections, the Alabama Section recently hosted StarTech 2013. Highlights of the event included a visit to the NASA facility in Huntsville, an afternoon at Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum and a tour of the Mercedes-Benz United States International factory in Vance, Alabama. Congratulations to StarTech 2013 organizers for a terrific event.
The MBCA developed and implemented all of these subsidized events during the last century and in the past few years, but member participation has waned. Recognizing the importance of remaining a contemporary and meaningful membership organization, your board members initiated an in-depth evaluation of the MBCA subsidized national-event structure. An independent automotive strategy consulting organization, AMCI Global, evaluated the structure, content and implementation; acomponent of the analysis was a statistically representative survey of club members. Here are some of the highlights:
- Forty-nine percent of survey respondents said they joined the MBCA for the total range of benefits that the club offers. Twenty percent joined to receive our award-winning magazine, The Star.
- Sixty percent of survey respondents are employed (51 percent full-time, 9 percent part-time).
- The majority of MBCA members have not attended either a regional or national event in the past two years. On average, 86 percent of respondents attended three local gatherings in the past two years.
- Of those who haven’t attended national events, 55 percent indicated that the events’ locations were inconvenient, and 36 percent indicated that they were not yet members or could not take time off work to travel. The cost for event participation was ranked as least influential by 42 percent of the respondents.
- What factor(s) would influence attendance at a national event? Forty-nine percent of responses indicated location as the most influential, while 56 percent ranked the type of event as a first or second influencing factor.
- After ranking activities at national events from most to least interesting, 40 percent of respondents identified defensive driving as first or second most interesting.
Survey respondents also indicated that travel to an event location consumes additional vacation and family days. Combined with the duration of the event, participation is difficult for employed members. AMCI’s subsequent recommendations included limiting national events to a maximum of three days, permitting flexibility in national-event content, selecting venues near major membership concentrations and centralizing event-planning responsibilities. The results of this study were an important part of April’s board meeting; your Regional Director may have already shared many of the details with you.
In the April-May issue of The Star, I promised you that the result of this analysis are actionable and that board members would do something with the findings. A review of the current MBCA Bylaws and Standard Operating Procedures, the MBCA Rule Book and the Event Planning Guide is underway. Suggestions for a contemporary national-events structure that accommodates and effects meaningful updates while preserving the MBCA heritage are being developed. The board will consider specific recommendations at an interim meeting in August.
Drive happy,
Steve