SALEM, NH – This year, the Greater Salem Chamber of Commerce sought to do something new that would replace its traditional expo event while still effectively promoting area businesses.
Chamber President Donna Morris came up with the Great Yeti Quest; an interactive, two-week event that incentivized residents to visit up to 46 participating businesses in the hopes of winning raffle prizes in exchange for posting photos with a 7-foot plastic yeti print.
“The enthusiasm was amazing,” Morris said. “The businesses were decorating them and having side raffles and having fun with it.”
The event ran from Jan. 19 to Feb. 2. To celebrate the conclusion of the event, participating businesses and chamber members were invited to a reception called the Blizzard Bash on the evening of Feb. 3 at the Tuscan Market cooking school room.
There will be someone dressed as a yeti mascot, a display of some of the decorated wall yetis and food and drinks. The idea is to thank the participating businesses, who each paid a chamber member rate of $250 to participate in what Morris said was essentially an inverted expo. A small handful of non-members participated and paid a little extra.
Morris said if those nonmembers become members in the next three months, the difference in the rates will be a credit towards their membership costs.
Next year, Morris hopes to grow the scale of the event and throw a bigger Blizzard Bash outdoors at Tuscan Village that will be open to the public.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll have 100 yetis out there next year, with about 10 posts per business per day,” Morris said. “I’m really pleased with it as a first-time event and we’re figuring out how to make it bigger and better because it has tremendous potential … to drive customers to local businesses.”
Traditionally, the town hosts the Greater Salem Chamber of Commerce Biz Fest, which is structured as a traditional expo, where participating businesses pay a table rate to attend the one-time event and promote their businesses to attendees.
But as COVID cases skyrocketed over the winter, a large-scale event seemed off the table.
“Our idea was ‘let’s flip it.’ What do businesses want? They want customers through their doors,” Morris said.
The concept of the scavenger hunt was fleshed out after Morris made a wooden cutout of a Bigfoot silhouette for the woods in her backyard.
“From there, it just started snowballing, ha ha,” she said.
The idea was for people to take pictures with each yeti, most of which were customized by participating businesses to give each yeti a unique, branded appearance, and post them on the chamber’s Facebook event page.
Each photo post entered a customer into a daily raffle for a stuffed yeti doll and a chamber travel mug. And each post was also counted as a raffle entry for a grand prize of a cruise vacation to Alaska donated by Cruise Travel Outlet of Salem.
Morris said they had a couple hunters determined to hit each location to maximize their chances at winning the cruise.
The winner will be drawn at the Blizzard Bash on Thursday.
The event was sponsored by Pentucket Bank.
Just for fun: You can check out the flurry of yeti-hunter selfies on the Greater Salem NH Great Yeti Quest event page.