Smith Mountain Lake business is up 20 percent from last year due to new brand, some say

By Ray Reed

Published: June 22, 2008

Smith Mountain Lake’s restaurants, stores and amusement owners say a new brand and TV advertising brought them more traffic than usual for the season’s first big weekend over Memorial Day.

“We had a number of customers say they came here to have dinner ‘because we’ve seen your advertising,’” said Gill Smith, owner of Fallon’s Restaurant on Moneta Road/Virginia 122.

Smith said he ran commercials on Roanoke and Lynchburg stations, using as a tagline the lake-area Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan: “Smith Mountain Lake: It’s closer than you think.”

Smith said he estimates business is up about 20 percent this year. As a “wild guess,” not based on data analysis, he credits some of the increase to the slogan.

“With the price of gas, anything close by is a good thing,” Smith said.

People from Roanoke and the Lynchburg area probably account for much of the new traffic, said Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce.

Too, some of the traffic may be attracted by continuously increasing kinds of recreation available at the lake, from parasailing to drive-in movies.

It’s almost a serendipity that $4 gas had a role in the “It’s closer than you think” brand’s apparent effectiveness, said Linda Nardin, the chamber’s marketing director.

“Its story and message are becoming really more relevant.”

The slogan was chosen in March for ads the chamber was using in its first major venture into TV advertising.

A gallon of gas cost Virginians $3.18 in March, said Windy VanCuren, spokeswoman for AAA MidAtlantic in Richmond. Last week, the state’s average price was $3.98.

Travel during the Memorial Day weekend was 3 percent below the holiday’s 2007 volume statewide, VanCuren said, but more than 800,000 Virginians were on the road nevertheless.

“A lot of people are trying to focus on one-tank trips, and Smith Mountain Lake would fit into that,” VanCuren said, although AAA didn’t have data on specific destinations.

Smith Mountain Lake’s target market for advertising reaches from Charlotte, N.C., to Washington, D.C., using cable TV in the metro areas and network stations in smaller cities, Gardner said.

The chamber was able to finance the new TV campaign largely because the wine festivals it sponsors in September had good weather and high attendance the past two years, Gardner said.

About two dozen wineries participated in the tastings, and several corporate sponsors backed the event.

Other businesses on the lake are venturing into TV advertising and including the “Closer than you think” slogan in their copy, Nardin said.

Roy Enslow of Bridgewater Marina, which rents boats from its dock in the Bridgewater Plaza shopping center, said he noticed more customers over the Memorial Day weekend were from nearby zip codes.

Enslow said he felt the slogan “is definitely having an effect.”

Other businesses near Hales Ford Bridge, including a gift shop, arcade and miniature golf course, said the Memorial Day weekend had “exceeded their expectations” and “much of that they attribute to this campaign,” Gardner said.

The businesses now are waiting eagerly for the July 4 weekend.

“Here at the lake, it’s very important to have a strong summer season,” Gardner said.

She touted the beach at Smith Mountain Lake State Park as a $4-per-person way to spend a day at the lake, and listed a number of other water-based forms of recreation.

It’s now possible to get a restaurant to deliver a barbecue picnic lunch to your group at the beach, Gardner said.

More elaborate outings can extend to waterfront condos, which can rent from $100 to $300 per night, and even weekend houseboat rentals.

People have held family reunions or other get-togethers on houseboats, Gardner said, and that happens “all the time.”

“Yesterday at lunch I met this group of ladies who had rented a house boat. This was their last day, and they were having the time of their life,” Gardner said.

The lake’s 500 miles of shoreline and many coves mean there are “plenty of little places you can go in” with a houseboat, Gardner said.

Forms of recreation continue to sprout at the lake. A parasailing excursion started up in the last two years, and there’s a boat version of the neighborhood ice cream truck, too.

Coming up soon, probably in August, will be a drive-in theater showing first-run movies, said Bob Craig, who plans to operate the Mayberry Drive-in Theater and Diner at Moneta.

One of its features will be digital sound, allowing viewers to tune in the movie’s audio track on their car’s FM radio.

It will be able to accommodate 210 cars, and have playground equipment in a grassy area in front of the 26-foot-high screen, Craig said.

A home-grown hit is on the theater’s agenda in its first few weeks, Craig said. He plans to show “What About Bob?” a movie starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, which was filmed mostly at Smith Mountain Lake.

A larger part of his business plan involves a diner, Craig said.

He plans to move a 1950s-style, but modernly built, diner from Chesapeake onto a site on Virginia 608 near the Downtown Moneta development.

The Chesapeake owner sold his site to a drug store, Craig said, and the structure built by Starlight Diners in Florida will be hauled to Moneta in three pieces, Craig said.

When it’s finished, he plans to keep the diner open for three meals per day, plus serving concessions during the movie showings.

The daytime menus, Craig said, will include cheeseburger pizza, Moravian chicken pie, and a movie-themed dish: fried green tomatoes.