Introduction
GWS Personnel Motorsport participates as a team on various Australian Motorsport competitions. They are “competitors in the Australian Manufacturers Championship for Production Cars” (GWS Personnel Motorsport, 2011).
The manufacturers bring forward different types of production cars to the racetrack made by different producers. “The championship takes in circuits throughout Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland including Eastern Creek, Sandown Park, Wakefield Park, and Morgan Park Raceway (GWS Personnel Motorsport, 2011).
There are the six-hour and the twelve-hour competitions. The sport is a high adrenaline activity for the drivers and the enthusiasts. The enthusiasts find the speed and competitiveness of the sport very exhilarating. Some of the event sponsors include, “The Shire Conveyancer, Spinifex Australia, Rogue Lager and Briffa Smash Repairs” (GWS Personnel Motorsport, 2011). It is upon the GWS Personnel Motorsport to generate interest in the sport and to earn a support base from fans in order to turn it to their advantage.
Creative Strategy Theory
There is a unique need to develop advertising ideas that stand out from the multitude of advertisements that compete for attention in our cities. Conventional advertising can be a frustrating experience for the advertising team when a carefully developed advertising campaign ends up obscured by other advertisements that compete for attention.
Creative advertising uses normal advertising tools in new and refreshing ways that guarantee a lasting impact. It gives an advertising campaign fresh impetus. It requires the expansion of communication methods to appeal to the target audience in new and unmistakable ways.
The need for creative advertisement comes from the nature of advertising. Advertising aims at creating a bond between potential clients and a supplier.
This requires regular changes in approach since people change. Failure to keep up with changes in the society may lead to an advertising campaign becoming ineffective despite its budget and the planning process. Marketing is never a stagnant process but one that changes with time (Ferrell & Hartline, 2008). This escalates the need for continual creativity in the development of advertising campaigns.
According to Levinson, Levinson, and Levinson, (2007) the purpose and assessment of creative marketing is the generation of profits. This view summarizes the objective of all marketing campaigns.
The role of marketing is to establishing profitable relationships with clients. If an advertising campaign does not result in better profits, then it misses the point. While a marketing campaign seeks to propose to potential clients and beneficiaries the benefits of a product or service, it must in return promise a return of value to the party offering the product or service.
Creative marketing requires multidisciplinary teams (Nash, 2000). It also draws from different fields such as psychology, sociology, and economics (Ferrell & Hartline, 2008). There are concepts from different fields that describe human behavior. They seek to determine their motivations and reasons for making their choices. An understanding of the underlying theories is crucial for the development of a creative marketing strategy. An appreciation of the social process is invaluable in the development of an advertising campaign.
One of the key aids to the success of a marketing campaign is the branding process that the product goes through. For established brands, the main requirement for an advertising campaign is incremental innovation.
On the other hand, for new ones, brand positioning takes centre stage. Branding increases the chance that a consumer will reach for some product or service because they recognize it and associate it with something they like. It is the experiences they have with the product or the testimonies they have heard about it that make them desire to associate with that product (Holt, 2004).
A strong brand makes it relatively easier to introduce new products under the existing brand name (Yadin, 2001). A brand is the permanent residence a product has in its niche market. Its building is a painstaking exercise that all marketers cherish and fear at the same time. Branding is essentially a marketing issues but it is not limited to the marketing department (Randall, 2000).
Advertising is a developing subject area. An understanding of the elements that constitute advertising will be of great benefit to GWS personnel Motorsport. By combining aspects of consumer dynamics, psychology and human behavior science, GWS Personnel Motorsport will have a distinct advantage in the preparation of its advertising strategy.
The purpose of this plan is to look at all the facets of advertising and to apply them to the process of developing an advertising campaign for ESW motorsport. It should provide EWS Motorsport with a competitive advantage within the motorsport industry. “Consideration of longer-term prospects for motorsports underlines the need to strengthen existing markets” (Aston & Williams, 1996)
Creative Concept
Creativity is a process necessary in the development of new ideas. The important issue is not the “newness” of the idea but it is in the innovative application of it to answer existing problems. It normally results in a quicker and more efficient way of doing things.
The creative idea developed for the GWS Personnel Motorsport is to come up with a series of advertisements that pass on the thrill in the racetrack to the enthusiasts to keep them interested in the race, and to attract new fans to motorsport. The issues we delved into in its production include the target audience, objectives, strategic approach, message content, and style.
Target Audience
The target audience for GWS Personnel Motorsport advertising campaign includes motorsport enthusiasts and sponsors. The practice of advertising revolves around preclusion of the targeted persons. It is impossible to target everyone (Trotman Publishing, 2001). There is a large fan base of motorsport enthusiasts throughout Australia.
They provide the motivation all motorsport teams need to keep improving the sport. They range from young teenagers to senior citizens. Speed and winning races fascinate them. For the young motorsport enthusiasts, it is their dream to be in motorsports. Meanwhile, for the older ones, it is about nostalgia. These individual lovers of motor sport are the primary audience that the advertizing campaign hopes to reach.
When GWS Personnel Motorsport attracts enough fans into its fan base, then it will become more attractive to sponsors. The role of sponsors in motorsports is to provide funds for the development of cars and to prepare the drivers and racing teams for motorsport competitions. Their motivation is to get an opportunity to associate themselves with a successful brand for their own business ends.
These small influences in advertising have the ability to influence the buying choices (Sutherland & Sylvester, 2009). They are a secondary target because they come to a motorsport team that already has the right publicity and following. To target them directly does not work. Each team must prove its worth and attract a fan base after which the corporate sponsors step in.
Objectives
To reach the motor sport lovers, GWS Personnel Motorsport has the following objective.
“To share the thrills of the motorsport experience”
The thrill of high-speed driving is what appeals to motorsport lovers. The objective of this campaign is to share those thrills with the motorsports lovers, to make them have a feel of the experiences behind the wheel. This will appeal to them at an emotional level, allowing them to connect with their dreams and fantasies.
For the sponsors, they will be monitoring the levels of interest that the advertising campaign generates. They will be willing to sponsor the GWS Personnel Motorsport team because such sponsorship will provide them with the much sought after publicity. In particular, they will feel that GWS Personnel Motorsport is a strong brand within the motorsport fraternity if we associate ourselves with winning the events we participate in.
This will entail having, as part of the GWS Personnel Motorsports advertising campaign, the thrills of winning. While the advertising campaign does not directly target sponsors, it nevertheless has them in mind and shall seek to attract them to GWS motor sport to the elements they find desirable.
It has not escaped our knowledge that sponsors do not just base their decisions on the claims but on the facts about the team and its realistic chances of projecting the required image by actually performing well in the motorsport events. We reckon that being a winning team alone without a matching advertising campaign will also make the team unattractive to sponsors. That is why we must project the correct image and work equally hard to produce the best possible performance.
Strategic approach
The idea we have for an advertising campaign is a simple one. We call it, “thrills behind the wheel campaign”. We intend to put the motorsport fan behind the wheel. We will achieve this by advertisements providing thrilling views and snapshots of thrilling driving situations shot from behind the wheel. The concept will vary among various advertising media in order to appeal to different motorsport enthusiasts.
The variations include a magazine option, a television variation, online advertisements, and billboard option. The magazine option will feature a two-page spread. When the reader opens the page, his hands will appear to be holding the steering wheel of a real GWS Personnel Motorsport-racing car.
On the top half, there will be breathtaking views of some of the thrilling views a motorsport driver encounters in the process of racing. The television option will take advantage of the possibility of motion, and show a high-speed moment behind the wheel of a GWS Personnel Motorsport-racing car overtaking a rival racing car in interesting territory. The sounds will be real sounds inside a motorsport cabin to make an auditory impression.
Billboards will use the same concept of the magazine spread but will take advantage of the larger space available. In addition, a mock steering wheel modeled after a real GWS Personnel Motorsport steering wheel fitted to it will provide a three-dimensional effect. The online advertisement will include a slide show giving several views behind the wheel.
Message Content
The message the advertising campaign will send out is that it is thrilling to be behind the wheels of a GWS Personnel Motorsport and it is equally thrilling to be part of the winning team. IT will take on the following taglines.
Feel the thrill with GWS Personnel Motorsport
The thrills of the being in the winning team
“Feel the thrill” will be the rallying cry in the advertising campaign. We feel that the tagline is simple enough to communicate and to remain embedded in the minds of motorsport enthusiasts. We believe that when combined with the visual and audiovisual components of the various advertising media, it will provide the emotional appeal and satisfaction of being inside a motorsport-racing car.
The second tag line, “the thrill of being in the winning team will attempt to make it appealing to be associated with the GWS Personnel Motorsport team. If our performance matches it then it will be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Its intention is to attract both sponsors and enthusiasts to seek to be associated with GWS Personnel Motorsport. We would like potential fans to ask themselves, what it would be like to be behind the wheel of a GWS Personnel Motorsport-racing car.
Style
Tone is an important part of an advertising campaign. It provides the connection required to make it an effective advertisement campaign. It makes sense for us to use a “high risk” mood for the campaign because motorsport enthusiasts generally seek out high adrenaline situations to identify with. In fact, many of them would invest a fortune just to be behind the wheels of a real motorsport-racing car.
Sponsors, also, are business people who appreciate the place of risk in their lives and will identify quickly with an ad campaign that portrays risk as something to face and conquer. Indeed, the process is thrilling. The colors we will use for the advertising campaign are earthy and rocky colors. These colors present the mood of toughness and emphasize the toughness of the situations a motorsport driver faces – tough as rock. Through digital processing of the pictures, we will produce the ideal images for the advertising campaign.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the “feel the thrill” advertising campaign hopes to attract fans and enthusiasts and by doing so, to attract sponsors who will provide funds for further development of the GWS Personnel Motorsport team. They will provide much-needed funds for expansion of the team’s fleet and for maintaining the cars.
We will seek to connect with motorsport enthusiasts at an emotional level seeking to answer their quest for thrill by participating in the motorsport events as fans. The campaign may actually attract new interest from such persons who have not previously identified with motorsports but realize it answers their need for thrill.
We realize that pictorial representations of the thrilling moments and their arrangement will form the basis of the advertisements. The defining characteristic of these pictures will be the degree of thrill they evoke. It will necessitate a careful scrutiny of all the pictures we have taken in the past from behind the wheels. Using digital processing, GWS Personnel Motorsport will enhance the mood elements of the pictures to bring them to the required thrill levels.
Reference List
Aston, B., & Williams, M. (1996). Playing to Win: The Success of UK Motorsport Engineering . London: Institute for Public Policy Research.
Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2008). Marketing Strategy. Mason OH: Cengage Learning.
GWS Personnel Motorsport. (2011). Home. Web.
Holt, D. B. (2004). How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding. Boston, MA: Havard Business Press.
Levinson, J. C., Levinson, J., & Levinson, A. (2007). Guerrilla Marketing:Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Nash, E. L. (2000). Direct Marketing: Strategy, Planning, Execution. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Randall, G. (2000). Branding: A Practical Guide to Planning Your Strategy. London: Kogan Page Limited.
Sutherland, M., & Sylvester, A. K. (2009). Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why. Australia: Allen& Urwin.
Trotman Publishing. (2001). Advertising. Surrey: Crimson Publishing.
Yadin, D. L. (2001). Creative Marketing Communications: A Practical Guide to Planning, Skills and Techniques. London: Kogan Page Publishers.