Rain beating down on a rusting tin roof, choking gas light fumes, and the sound of urine hitting a plastic bucket. These are the abiding memories of my childhood holidays.  It’s perhaps no surprise then, that my relationship with the caravan is not an easy one.

Want your entire family to share in the aftermath of last nights curry? Well you made the right choice with a caravan. Not only will they hear it, but they’ll get the full visceral experience as the entire structure resonates in sympathy with your digestive distress, and the fragrant aromas waft gently into the adjacent kitchen. Ever wondered what it’s like to breath in some freshly exhaled air? Well wonder no more as you sleep in  overcrowded conditions which are probably illegal for livestock. Want to know what it must feel like to be the target of  rabidly focussed and universal hatred? Have your curiosity satisfied as you hook up your caravan and dawdle along a single carriageway ‘A’ road at 45mph.

I know things have moved on a bit since I was a kid, but I still don’t get it. I really don’t.  You could stay in a hotel or a  bed and breakfast…or maybe rent an apartment, a house or a cottage. Something with civilised facilities and structural integrity that transcends cardboard. But no, you have a better idea for your holiday. You’re going to drag a tin box across country, park it in a field and voluntarily subject yourself to the kind of living conditions which Bob Geldof has been trying to stamp out for the past 30 years.

People who buy caravans can’t possibly own calculators. If they did, they would quickly realise that for the same money, they could spend many weeks each year in a nice hotel where there are proper beds, room service, toilets that work and some walls. Oh, and room to swing a cat.  Spend £20,000-£30,000 on your ‘home from home’ (assuming you currently live in an allotment shed)  and you  lose about half of that in depreciation the second the smirking salesman ushers you off  his forecourt into your whole new world of pain. It just seems crazy.

And all this is quite puzzling  because most caravan owners appear almost pathologically  preoccupied with saving money.  They just seem to go a funny way about it, as I found to my cost when I had one of my first publishing failures.

A caravan salesman approached me with a book he’d written. It was called ‘How To Get A Great Deal On your Next Caravan’ and comprised inside information on what discounts were available, what negotiating tactics to use – that kind of thing. I knew it would save anyone who read it thousands of pounds. I knew there was nothing else like it on the market at the time. I also knew it would sell thousands of copies at £9.95.

Pretty soon after that, I knew something else. I wasn’t nearly as smart as I thought I was!

The book was a dismal failure. It wasn’t because there wasn’t a need for it. Who doesn’t want to save thousands on a big purchase? Nor could it be down to a lousy advertisement. It was almost exactly the same as an advertisement I’d written for car buyers which had been a big success. The only conclusion I could come to was that caravan buyers were too tight to stay in a hotel and they were too tight to buy the book. False economy in both cases, but that’s how it was.

Perhaps it was the childhood holidays that did it, maybe it was the book failure, or it could even have been the hours spent fuming in a queue of traffic headed by a Scrooge Wagon, but I have a confession to make, of which I am not proud. Whenever I see a caravan overturned, its contents spilled on the road and reduced to matchwood, after checking that the owners are okay, I find myself smiling. It’s not deliberate,  it just happens. And if I’m in polite company, I have to restrain myself from breaking into song.  If  I’m alone or  with the family (who are accustomed to such indiscretions)  it’s a different matter and the full Freddie Mercury can ensue…

Duff, Duff, Duff…Another one bites the dust.
And another one gone and another one gone…

I got to thinking about all of this the other day while stuck in traffic on the main road through Lincolnshire which terminates in the mobile home magnet that is Skegness. When I reached the front of the queue, it was no surprise to find a caravan holding things up. But what did take me by surprise was the brand. This was no ordinary caravan…this was a Marauder!

At first I laughed. It’s hard to think of a less appropriate name for a caravan. I’m not sure how much raiding, plundering or pillaging the average caravan owner gets involved in, but I bet it’s not much. The more I thought about it though, the more I came around to the idea that this might not be so silly after all – particularly if you’re selling to men.

Buying a caravan is a milestone in a man’s life. I know this may sound harsh, but it’s a point at which he is effectively telling the world that he is surrendering. It’s a metaphorical white flag. He is giving up. None of us  grew up yearning for the day when we would take delivery of our very own  caravan. They did not adorn our teenage bedroom walls. No, we wanted a Ferrari, an apartment overlooking the harbour in Monaco and another in New York. Maybe a Barbados villa for the winter as well.

Taking delivery of that caravan is a resigned acceptance that none of that is ever going to happen. We have become what we never thought we would become. We have settled for second best, and we don’t really like it. We need something to soften the blow, and maybe…just maybe, buying a Marauder might allow us to hold on to a little bit of the dream. Yes, it’s a caravan…but it’s a Marauder. We are still just a little bit dangerous.

The makers of the Marauder are not the only ones to recognise this need in their customers. A quick scan of  a caravan website (I quickly deleted my browsing history to avoid any embarrassment later) reveals similarly implausible brands  like the Buccaneer, the Maverick and the Crusader. There are several more, all seemingly more connected to the fading dream than the contemporary reality. What is a red blooded fellow most likely to buy – one of those…or a Sprite?

So what’s to be learned here? Well product names are crucially important and not something to be rushed or finalised without a great deal of thought and research. We need to think less about the actual product and more about the wants, needs, dreams and aspirations of the people we hope will buy it. You’re not a maverick or a buccaneer if you buy a caravan, you’re really not. But in the privacy of your own thoughts, you hold on to the faint possibility that you just might be. And if someone comes along with a product which reinforces what may be little more than a subliminal hope, you will be far more likely to hand them your money.

Whatever product or service you offer, it’s well worthwhile revisiting the names, titles and brands you use and examining how they fit in with what your customers really want – what they secretly aspire to be, or the way they want the world to see them. What you discover could be both shocking and highly profitable.