This is a transcript of Mad Mariner's MadCast, the podcast that covers all aspects of boats and boating. In this segment, we interview Dusty McCoy, the chief executive at Brunswick. He talks about social media and what it holds for the future of the boating industry with Mad Mariner Contributing Editor Diane Byrne.

When you headed the Brunswick Boat Group earlier this decade, one of the changes that I thought was pretty interesting was that you opened up lines of communication between the various boat brands and that hadn't been done before, so what drove that decision and how did you make it happen and what effect did it have?

McCoy: The reason we focused a lot on it beginning back in 2000, 2001 was we knew we had the best boat building talent in the world within the entire Brunswick suite of brands and what we wanted to do was ensure that good things we were doing in one brand could be done in another and another and another so that we would continually get better. And it was a part of a longer term plan then to really rethink our product development activities and ultimately our manufacturing activities. So by making ourselves common and doing what we did well in one place, something we could do well in every other place, we began to develop a common language, a common way of looking at things which then permitted us, Diane, to move to the next level, as I would call it, in how we were going to work.

So today as we sit here in 2009 things we began to do and talk about in 2001 are coming to fruition. As an example, we now have for our fiberglass stern drive an inboard product for several brands, a common product engineering activity. So what that does is we can now engineer on platforms and ensure that the common engineered elements in boats are done well and done across all of our brands which will, of course, improve quality and ultimately cost for the consumer. This has also then began to enable a big change in our manufacturing footprint.

So as we sit here in 2009, our manufacturing footprint has moved from that was brand based with multiple models to model based with multiple brands. And again, that gives us great efficiency, better quality and ultimately an ability to react to consumer demand and dealer input on consumer demand in a much different way. If we're making similar models in the same plant, we can be much flexible even though it may be different brands and much more able to act quickly and responsive to consumer demand. So that's why we started and it's a journey we're still on. It's a journey we'll stay on the rest of our business life but we think it's helped us a lot.

In late 2005 that's when Brunswick Corporation announced that you would take over as chairman and CEO of the entire group of companies. Once you did, it seemed that among your priorities was to increase communication with the dealers. Why did that seem to be one of the things you really wanted to act quickly and how did your approach differ from previous corporate approaches?

McCoy: Well, first in terms of communication with dealers I've had responsibility for the boat business since late 2000, so the way we thought about dealers and communication as a base matter didn't really change. However, the rate and level and what we commuted about-- communicated about did need to change but the reason it needed to change was because the marketplace was changing so quickly. When I got the great opportunity to be-- to have this job in 2005, it just so happened to be about the time-- timing is everything in life-- that the marine industry began to go into a bit of a downturn driven by economic conditions. Had nothing to do with the marine industry and as we thought about it and looked at we said, "One of the things we really need to do is ensure that we're doing everything we can to help our dealers be successful."

And that caused us then to begin to ask both ourselves but more importantly dealers, "What can we be doing to help you make more money, be more efficient and be able to server consumers better?" So one of the things then that arose out of that fairly quickly was a program we Brunswick Dealer Advantage because dealers began to tell us-- we have to buy computers, phone services, we look for medical plans, retirement plans. Some of us have excess real estate we don't know how to deal with, everything it takes to run a business and we were a nearly $6 billion company in sales. We said, "Gosh, we're doing all that and we have great providers of all those sorts of services. Perhaps we could use our providers and leverage it into helping our dealer network."

So that's how-- for an example-- we came up with Dealer Advantage and that's a program that's continuing to run but it gave us a great way to communicate with dealers and it caused we and dealers to really begin to talk about what we ought to be doing together and how to make their businesses more successful. So it was driven by changes in economic conditions and then our desire to react to those conditions as best we could and to be the best partner we could be with our dealers.

How did the Dealer Advantage Program translate into the communication with the consumers? Did the boat brands and even the dealer networks themselves change how they spoke with their current clients as well as potential clients or did they start reaching out more? How did it have an impact on the boat buying public?

McCoy: Dealer Advantage was just one of a suite of things that we did with dealers, so let me jump to then the real connection with consumers that we're all working on. For instance, one of the things we provided in Dealer Advantage access to folks who were very good at developing websites and social communities through websites as an example. But what is apparent as we go through the industry and the difficult economic conditions we're going through is that we need to rethink and understand how consumers connect with brands and with boating in general and perhaps even on a broader framework how dealers-- I mean, I'm sorry-- how consumers really connect and begin to understand and gather information about product brands and lifestyles they want to participate in.

And the first thing that we began to understand is that our dealers in a great majority of the cases have great communications in their market with their consumers and really understand their marketplace and understand the sort of people who come in and buy the product that they're selling. So one of the first things we began to do then is say, "We need to start listening to the dealers and help them communicate with consumers better." So we began to focus very much on not only doing large boat shows in cities or regional boat shows but also conducting, sort of, a local little hometown boat show. And we began to fund and participate in little weekend boat shows, if you will, with our dealer network as a way to get closer to consumers.

And then what we began to understand is we actually now need to instead of thinking of communicating and contacting with consumers, is establishing a real dialogue with consumers so that we can hear back from them as to how we're doing but more importantly what they want from us and what we ought to be doing to satisfy their needs. Now, we've been doing CSI studies and all the things that everybody in the industry has been doing well for a long time and we had a pretty good concept of the quality of our product and the quality of our dealer network.

But this industry's changing and the economies of the world are changing and the way people buy and think about activities are changing so it's very important that we all get very good at listening to consumers and asking them questions, hearing their answers and then reacting. So one example of things we've done, we've surveyed lots of consumers around-- I don't want to give away too much competitive information but for instance one of our brands is looking at going into a size and style of boat that we've never been before. And through a lot of communications with consumers as well as dealers together we began to develop a product plan and a design of this particular product that was actually different than we had done before but as we began to show it after we consulted consumers and we were beginning to show mock ups of finished product, we were beginning to see we had a homerun.

So the key here is-- for our industry-- is we've got to learn to connect with consumers better but as the world changes and people watch their money more carefully and the make harder decisions about what recreational activities they're going to participate in, we really got to be good at hearing them and that's what we'll be working a lot on.

Now, it's interesting to note considering you've touched on the web briefly a minute or two ago that you started a blog on a Brunswick website called joystickboatcontrol.com. Now, can you tell us briefly the purpose of that website and then also what led to the decision to create the blog there?

McCoy: First we have a couple of technologies out, Zeus and Axius, that permit joystick control of twin engine boats that is actually just remarkable. I've been a boater for a very long time and what you can do with joystick controls is beyond my realm of imagination even four years ago, the ability to move a boat sideways and stick it into a spot. One example I've given is you have a boat that's 33 feet in length and there's a space between two other boats like parking car that's 36 feet in length then it's not problem. You're going to put the boat in there but just moving it sideways.

The website then has been our effort to begin to tell and communicate with the consumers about what the joystick technology actually is, what it does and what it enables. I've done what I call half a blog internally at Brunswick for a while now and I call it half a blog because what I've said to the folks who work with me in the company, I try to talk about events that are impacting us every two weeks to a month and I'd love your responses but I won't have time likely to respond to each one of you and therefore what I'll do is try to gather up similar comments and write a piece about it the next time I write. And I've been doing that for a while and it's been remarkable because what I began to see is there were so many good ideas in our employee population and our employees thought about things so deeply and much better than I in many cases that I really enjoyed the feedback I was getting.

So then as we formed the joystick boat control website, it occurred to me, "Why don't I start blogging about this in the hope that I can eventually develop an appropriate dialogue with people who want to know more about it, who use it and who importantly then can begin to tell us what we might do differently, what features we could add." So I started the blog on that website to deal specifically with these wonderful technologies we have so that I can begin to have a dialogue with consumers about it.

Besides blogging you've also recently started using Twitter which I think is really interesting because blogging and tweeting are things that most CEOs don't do but even among the ones who do, typically it's a ghost writing situation where say the head of marketing or someone else in the company is actually the one sending the information out but as I understand you're the one who really is at the keyboard on the blog and on Twitter. So why have you decided to personally take all this under your own control?

McCoy: Well, first you can tell I'm on the keyboard because I've done a couple of tweets that I had misspellings in.

That happens to the best of us.

McCoy: I read it a couple of days later and I go, "Oh, what was I thinking?" Or, "How could I not type that word right?" The reason I'm doing it myself is if you listen to my speaking patterns here I write, sort of, the way I speak and each of us is unique in the way we communicate and I just felt it was important that if I was going to communicate through these mediums then I ought to be the person actually doing the communication.

It's not to say I don't get a lot of help from inside the company. A couple of folks will give me ideas and even drafts of outlines and drafts of ideas and then I go off and start playing with it to, sort of, make it my own words. But again, I think if we're going to communicate it's important that we really communicate and there be no misleading of who one is communicating with. I'm the fellow writing it so if there are mistakes or problems or if editorially there are issues then I ought to be the one responsible for it and then I'll always be prepared to respond.

Okay, now specific to Twitter, what are the types of messages that you've been sending and that you intend to send in the coming weeks? One of the things that is, I think, probably simultaneously the beauty and the frustration of Twitter is that it's only 140 characters, so you have to be really brief. So how are you using that to effect?

McCoy: Right now to get started I am tweeting only about the joystick technology and events in and surrounding publicity, about the joystick technology and I will do that and limit myself to that sort of subject matter for a few more days and weeks as I get used to this new communication tool and so therefore I-- it's pretty limited communications right now and I'm not actually going on everyday. As I begin to get more comfortable then I will probably begin tweet about a lot more going on in Brunswick and things we're doing across all of our businesses and the tweet will eventually move from one dedicated to joystick boat control technology to Brunswick and all that we're doing in Brunswick across all of our businesses.

The 140 characters have been a real problem for me. My initial training is as a lawyer and I write as verbosely as I speak and the first few times I was, like, "This is not enough space." So I've-- I'm teaching myself. I got to think shorter. It's very conversational. Think more like you're sitting on a barstool with somebody and you're communicating that way then just quick, short open and get to the point. And I'm learning and I've got a long way to go in order to be effective.

I did  a little reading. It said, "Don't expect you're going to get 1,000 followers when you do the first tweets." So I did it and I was actually traveling overseas and I looked and I had two followers and I said, "Oh, this is great." But I looked this morning and there are 113 people and you know what? I don't know 113 people who actually care about what I say, so it's fun. And as I develop the subject matter more and begin to get a little broader I'm really looking forward to having real-time communications on Twitter with people about Brunswick and all that we do.

Now, what about other social media outlets like YouTube and Facebook and things like that? Are you using them or are any of the Brunswick brands in the marine division using them?

McCoy: I'm a babe just learning to swim, so I can't get in a race yet but I hope to eventually. Actually, yes, and let me give you an example, our Sea Ray boat business does an event called Aquapalooza. One of the really fun things has been to watch the growth of Aquapalooza from being an idea that a fellow named Rob Noyes had in our Sea Ray business to it becoming the largest on water fun party in the world.

And what we began to notice was through a lot of social communication sites on the web, there was this massive communication and people sharing videos, sharing experiences, sharing pictures, so the party just kept getting bigger. And we weren't doing a lot to make the party bigger, we were just holding the party. So what we began to understand-- that's one of the first places we saw the real power of boaters and people talking to non-boaters and people who want to understand boating, talking to each other and bringing themselves together.

Now, we're a 165-plus-year-old company and we tend to be pretty conservative but we've made some decisions recently that we'll be talking to our entire employee population about, about opening up social websites even more than we've done in the past so that a lot of our really great employees who love our company, who understand our products can use these social websites more in order to talk to people. So it's something we're going to be doing more of and we think it's important to our future.

Now, some people believe that the economy may begin turning around as early as this fall for the marine business. Do you share that outlook and even if doesn't occur that quickly do you see the turn around whenever it does come as perhaps having an impact again in the way that communicating is going on internally and with consumers?

McCoy: The first part of the question, because I'm CEO of a public company I'm pretty careful about not predicting, so what I tell everyone there's a lot of people a lot smarter than me who have some very good and informed views about when the economy will get better. So the when is not something that I'm very focused on but I-- but then I-- we are very focused on the activities we must undertake when it occurs. So it's going to occur and the when matters a little less. And the answer is, yes, it's pretty clear that savings rates have gone up, people are worried more about their retirement, their nest egg, if you will, and people are going to spend money carefully and wisely.

And my judgment is that a-- that boating and a boating lifestyle is the greatest recreational activity a family can undertake. And over a period of time a family can change its relationships, its ability to have fun, it's outlook for weekends on and on and on by engaging in boating. And I think probably more than ever in our industry's history we're going to need to be great communicators with consumers and establish dialogues with consumers over the coming months and years. As the world works through a different economic climate and as people think about their dollars differently and think about their recreational activities differently, I actually think there's a great opportunity for us. And actually the economic difficulties that the United States and the world has been through and its impact on the marine industry is probably going to proven to be a very good thing for us because it's made us all rethink things and do things differently and one of the things will be how hard we work on communicating with people.