Page 6 - Arkansas 811 Magazine 2022 Issue 1

“The Direction” Finds Greers Ferry Lake
This past October, Mark Stowe, creator of “The Direction” an outdoors show designed to promote damage prevention by delivering the 811 message to a massive outdoor audience came to Arkansas and filmed a fishing show. He left home in Taylorsville, Kentucky heading to Greers Ferry Lake to meet up with Vinny Vickers long-time employee of CenterPoint Energy for some serious fun and fishing.
It was a typical Arkansas fall, the weather a bit cool and a rainy last day. But that didn’t stop Mark and Vinny. They figured since the fish were already wet, a little rain wouldn’t hurt them at all.
Mark said, “Every episode we do is fun. But this Arkansas trip was really fun. I’m convinced that a big part of the audience we need to reach with the safe digging message are men and women who love the outdoors. When you show them something they are interested in and throw in the 811 message you’ve made a connection that they otherwise might have overlooked. I often am asked why I have 811 plastered all over my boat. My answer is that there are a lot of folks
like me that are hard to reach through traditional methods. Landscapers, fence builders and irrigation people and most all of us like the outdoors. This is just another way to reach the hard-to-reach stakeholder.”
4 • Arkansas 811 Magazine 2022, Issue 1