Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Most float centers have people float naked as the day they were born, but most ads and promotional videos and stuff show floaters in bathing suits. What’s up with that? Well, obviously fully nude images on Facebook or something will probably get flagged, so how do you deal with this situation? Nude models? No?
Ashkahn and Graham break down the problem, their own frustrations with it, and how they’ve dealt with it at Float On.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Welcome everyone.
Graham: Hey, welcome back if you’ve been here before too.
Ashkahn: Yeah and if you haven’t, welcome for the first time.
Graham: So, uh, that’s Ashkahn over there.
Ashkahn: Yup this is me.
Graham: Today’s question is-
Ashkahn: Yeah what is it Graham, what is it?
Graham: Yeah, there we go. I was just waiting. I was just going to kind of give you more cues. Today’s question is, “I’m about to start doing some more Facebook ads. What’s your opinion on people wearing bathing suits in a float tank on ads?”
Ashkahn: The age old question.
Graham: Age old.
Ashkahn: Since I guess the era of photography.
Graham: I mean, I’m an age.
Ashkahn: And float tanks. Basically people get into float tanks naked.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: But you don’t want to just put out nudie photos in your advertisement-
Graham: Necessarily, you don’t necessarily want to put out nudie photos.
Ashkahn: Some places probably won’t even let you put out nudie photos in your advertisements.
Graham: So there’s this sense I think where you do actually want to show people floating because you want to show what? The float tanks are big? You kinda want to show someone’s whole body as well. Like I think sometimes the concern is that people who have never heard of floating feel like floating is done in these little capsules and people think it’s really claustrophobic. And so being able to show just that an entire human can fit in there and stretch out and it’s pretty spacious, is a nice way to advertise for the float experience.
Ashkahn: And usually people hire very tiny models when they-
Graham: Yeah like five feet is the-
Ashkahn: They get the shortest person they can and they put them in the float tank and use that for photography.
Graham: As a side, I was looking at the Pop Up Float, you know Peter Marsh’s tank. Peter Marsh is, I don’t know, like seven feet tall or something, he’s one of the tallest people in the float industry. The ads for it have him standing next to the float tank. It kind of makes it look like really small and it was like, it’s the first time I think where I realized the opposite of that. Like if you don’t put something small next to a float tank and you put a giant it seriously, it makes it look a little more diminutive. So yeah. Okay, end of anecdote.
Ashkahn: Okay.
Graham: So the instinct to do that totally makes sense. Show that float experience and have you know a person inside being able to represent it. And I also really don’t like misrepresenting the float and having people wear stuff inside.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s always weird. It always weird to me to see bathing suits on people in pictures of float tanks.
Graham: So we’ve kind of gone two routes. We’ll take pictures and I guess both of them are the same route, which is we don’t like showing bathing suits on people. Along with this, I guess it’s also worth mentioning, there’s another feeling that not only are bathing suits used, but it’s often like bathing suit models, both male and female that are used in the floating experience rather than kind of more common everyday body types. So that’s maybe mixed in here too. Either way, those are both things, showing bathing suits, showing just models are kind of things that Float On has tended to stay away from. Instead we either go the closeup route, you know, show the face of someone floating and stuff like that. You can even figure out ways to do some nice foreground background stuff where you can kind of show the length of their body and make sure you can see their face and their toes without actually showing the nudity. And illustration is the other way that we’ve gone about it.
So actually kind of illustrating not too graphic, but kind of the representation of human beings floating without needing to actually take pictures of nudies of different people in the tank itself and put those out there. But you can also blur things out. I mean even that like Mental Floss, they did a video at a center and it’s one of my favorite videos for that reason. It’s like kind of a bigger guy who’s going into float and one of the mental floss guys, and he just gets straight buck naked and goes in and they blur it out. They blur out his junk and stuff. But it’s very obvious that he’s both not a model and not wearing any kind of clothing on his body. And that actually makes me really happy. So I’d say even blurring it out is better than showing a bathing suit in my opinion.
Ashkahn: Yeah and it’s just hard. I mean we’ve shown bathing suits before just because there’s only so much you can do. Like the morning news segment comes in and you don’t have time to orchestrate a like tasteful, certain camera angle or something like that. They just want to show two seconds of someone.
Graham: Like we’re going to be wearing this bathing suit. Is that okay? Great. Don’t care.
Ashkahn: And you’re like, “Okay.” So I think it’s impossible to completely avoid in certain situations like that, but if you’re creating the media and you’re spending time doing-
Graham: Yeah for like Facebook ads for example.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Then you have a decision and you have the ability to find some creative ways of not showing bathing suits but not having things be distasteful I guess.
Graham: And a couple of nice things come if you managed to do that. One is that you don’t have to put up with a bunch of questions of people asking if they should bring their bathing suits in or just bringing them anyway, and sometimes floating with bathing suits you don’t realize until afterwards and they have like a plastic bag with swim trunks in and you’re like, “Oh you don’t need to wear those.”
Ashkahn: You’re alone in there.
Graham: I actually think there’s something kind of appealing about just being totally by yourself. I think the same kind of thing that appeals to being in the float tank in general also appeals to the idea of being just completely yourself, without that clothing attachment and stuff like that in there too. So I don’t know, I think it just advertises as both a more true experience and maybe a more pure float experience leaving out the bathing suit.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean so, good.
Graham: Alright, if you want to come host the show with me, just go to floattanksolutions.com/new cohost and we’ll be a filling the slot and taking some applications over the next week.
Ashkahn: Yeah that sounds good. Sounds great.
Graham: Alright everyone, thanks for listening, floattanksolutions.com/podcast is actually where you want to go to send us questions. But definitely do both.
Ashkahn: Who’s messing up hosting now huh? Not even giving the right website.
Graham: All right, bye everyone.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Customers Who Overstay Their Welcome (Rise) – DSP 149
Graham and Ashkahn sat down with Mark and Jennifer Gurley at Rise to talk about an issue that can seem scary for float center owners, especially those who haven’t worked in customer service. What do you do about the customer who takes advantage of your generosity and overstays their welcome? How far is too far? And what are the appropriate steps to take when you have someone who won’t respect your boundaries?
Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences from the handful of times it has happened at Float On over the years and how it’s worked out and compare notes with the Gurleys and their float center.
Should I Filter Tap Water When Filling My Tanks (Rise) – DSP 148
Graham and Ashkahn got cornered at Rise with a question from one of the attendees, a float center owner named Gina. And even though the event is over, it’d be a shame to not share this episode. They answer all her questions and concerns about municipal water systems and the levels of filtration that should be done when using water straight from the tap (which probably almost everybody does), they also talk about what you really need to worry about in your tap water.
How do you do All the Things? (Rise) – DSP 147
This episode from Rise comes at you recorded live with another very special guest, Rick from Float St. Louis. Not only does he work in a float center, he’s also releasing a float themed quarterly magazine called Third Wave Magazine. While he was a bit tight lipped about the magazine, his choice of question may speak to just how demanding it has been on him lately.
Listen to him chat with Graham and Ashkahn about how to do all the things and when doing too many things is too much.
Live at Rise Float Gathering! – DSP 146
Graham and Ashkahn are coming at you LIVE (well, recorded live) from the Rise Float Gathering! They managed to wrangle Jake and Kevin, the organizers of Rise and the founders of Float STL in St. Louis. Check out this episode where they talk about bath robes, hosting events, and just how amazing this industry is.
Book Recommendations for Float Center Retail – DSP 145
Lots of float centers sell different books, usually about floating. Float On even publishes a few of them (through our Coincidence Control publishing company).
Graham and Ashkahn give their recommendations for books to sell and provide a list of the ones we have available at Float On. They also discuss how well they sell as well as the tertiary benefit to having them around as resources for your floaters on coffee tables and as conversation starters.
Latest Blog Posts
Back to the Basics
I arrived in Paris a few days ago for a little workcation. Naturally the first thing I did was hunt down a float tank center and book an appointment. Surprisingly, floating seems to be almost entirely missing in France: noticeably more obscure than in Germany, Spain,...
The Profitability of a Float Tank Center
This post is kept for historical purposes, but our current knowledge of float center finances is best found in our Industry Reports. Download them free for real data on float center profits, or ask us about how our Business Plan can help you understand your own float...
Four Simple, but Important Lessons We’ve Learned About Float Room Construction
1 - Put your shower directly next to the float tank. Don't leave even an inch of room. Essentially you want an airlock but for salt- a saltlock. That way they go from their shower directly into the float tank and (more importantly) from the salty float tank straight...
Let’s Go Make a Better World at the Float Conference
For those of you who didn't make it out to the Float Conference this year, I'm posting up the introduction to our program. Although Iwrote this for the conference, I think it will be obvious that the sentiment is industry wide. -- Welcome to the 2nd annual Float...
