What Will You Discover? Go RVing?
�??What Will You Discover? Go RVing?�?� is the theme of the current round of television, print, Internet, TiVo and cinema messages that will tug at the hearts and pocketbooks of families. The commercials were well received by industry leaders at the Outlook 2006 breakfast during the National RV Show in Louisville . The print ads not only attract attention to the lifestyle, but show buyers there is an RV to fit any budget.
The industry is making a sizeable investment in Go RVing. But all of it will be wasted if dealers, manufacturers and suppliers don’t leverage the exposure to promote their own firms.
A long-held principle suggested that Go RVing should build awareness and dealers should sell specific units. But new thinking suggests a local tie-in is essential to dealer success.
Look how McDonald’s leverages its partnership with Disney when family movies are released. The restaurant chain spends millions advertising the movie and the Happy Meal toy kids can get only at their stores. It would be silly to think a family could walk into a McDonald’s and not see related posters, counter displays, uniform buttons, plastic cups and street-facing banners. Yet that’s how Go RVing is treated by many of our dealers.
Raff Vinton, with Two By Four Communications, suggested last year that Go RVing has been greatly misunderstood and strategically underutilized by the RV industry. Vinton strongly feels dealers must ride the coattails of lifestyle marketing and enhance what consumers are experiencing when they view Go RVing ads.
That means using Go RVing images in local advertising, placing Go RVing posters around the dealership, sending Go RVing postcards to customers and prospects, and placing Go RVing images on the dealership’s website. Best of all, it doesn’t take a high-priced ad agency to create compelling, targeted messages.
For $225 dealers get access to an industry-only section of the website where they can build quality print advertisements, design direct mail pieces, download high-resolution images and gain access to leads generated by the Go RVing website �?? of which more than 4.3 million were downloaded in 2005.
With the Go RVing program spending $66 million to promote your industry, how much will you spend to leverage that exposure and bring gold to your dealership?