Dealing with the media and naturism.

As a company we are always looking for ways to sell and market our products. It’s a way of life for any business and with experience of owning my own business in the past it can be a difficult and sometime’s an unrewarding job.

But when the nude body is in the equations it’s a completely different ball game! Magazines, radio stations, TV and newspapers always seem to want some type of story for the media and Samantha and I have had our fair share of calls from the press.

When Samantha and I decided back in 2007 to open Vassaliki Naturist Club the naturist media H&E, BN, Naturist life and the many European naturist magazines gave us plenty of coverage in their magazines with articles and adverts we managed to get a good number of bookings subsequently from the active naturist market. But our vision has not been to just sell to the already converted. We believe that naturism is one of the best ways to relax when on holiday and a superb way to make new friends.

Vassaliki is a small unimposing resort so offers the first time naturist a perfect opportunity to enjoy their first naturist holiday. So we decided we needed to try and sell to the unconverted. How? I guess we needed to get our resort in the main media. During the summer of 2006, Studland naturist beach in Dorset (near were we used to live in UK) was getting bad press both in our local and in the national papers. I wrote to our local paper with the news that a young couple from the area were leaving the UK to set up their own naturist resort in Greece and that naturism was still a thriving and popular lifestyle.

This was the start of our involvement with the media. First the Daily Mail ran a half page story in April 2007 which caused a tidal wave of calls and emails. We had a bidding war between rival magazines wanting our story and constant calls from radio stations wanting interviews. Samantha and I had become overnight celebrities and we were in Greece trying to not only to open our resort but deal with the barrage of calls.

The interest was too much; we were dealing with a monster and did not know where to turn until we received a call from the lady who wrote the piece for the Daily Mail offering us an agent to deal with all the requests. She was an angel and listened to what we were prepared to do; she went through all the requests for interviews and came up with a plan to offer us the best exposure without jeopardising our business.

We sold our story to four magazines, Women, More, First and Living Abroad, plus see set up a few radio interviews which were to be done over the phone. We then had a call from ITV’s “This Morning” programme who asked if they could fly us back to London to be on the show with Fern Britain and Phillip Schofield. They wanted us to sit nude on the sofa and talk about our change of lifestyle and naturism. We declined the offer on the grounds we did not have time to travel back and that we would not be comfortable being nude in a TV studio. We offered to go nude if they filmed on our resort but we guess that either their budget was limited or they didn’t have the balls to do it – excuse the pun!

Since the initial wave of calls we have had a steady stream of media requests. Many are turned down due to time scales or the lack of direction but we have managed to get the attention of a large mainstream tour operator. We are now the only naturist resort being sold by this large corporation.

We have employed a professional designer to do our brochures and exhibition stand. This was a big step for us as we have been doing all the design work ourselves. We are now working toward bringing our website in line with the brochure and to offer a quality front to our business. I love my job of marketing our resorts and educating people about our naturist lifestyle. Not only to get people to visit our resorts but to encourage people to continue with naturism by attending and supporting other naturist clubs and activities. We hope the more people using the resorts and clubs, the more new facilities will become available to us all.

One thought on “Dealing with the media and naturism.

  1. Thank you for sharing your story and experiences with us. Sometimes you get nothing from your advertising and sometimes a bit too much! Congratulations on being able to handle it and get started off right. I have a Christian group we hope to expand worldwide, but still small in the States. But with your experiences, we may have hope yet.

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