idea studies
Helping to “Discover The Drive”
There are three golf car companies that control 98% of the fleet market at the 16,000+ golf courses in the U.S. Over the last five years, Burris has been instrumental in working with two of them to introduce all-new vehicles.
Timing
1
Timing was probably the key to the launch. Although Yamaha postponed the introduction approximately 30 days, we were still able to launch The Drive™ away from the industry’s show season in the first quarter, in the process getting the jump on the competition by almost three full months.
2
Even prior to the actual unveiling we attempted to freeze the market by dropping pre-advertising—or “teasers”—into media and direct mail. In addition, Yamaha invited editors of key trade publications for advance viewing and test drives so that their October and November issues could carry edit about the new car.
3
Our positioning of the new fleet golf car was, from the first, all-new from the ground up. We felt the media advertising had to be as new and distinctive as the product itself, so our primary ad units were a 16-page mini-booklet, which was inserted into top industry publications, and a series of small space ads highlighting one or more key features.
4
The job of the sales support materials, or collateral, was critical as well. We needed to romance the target audience and at the same time pack a technical message to support our superiority claim. We used basically three separate collateral pieces, integrating them in such a way that all three were necessary to gain a true understanding of the product.
For instance, the “Playbook” presented a 10,000-foot view of The Drive and tied it to the overall brand. But on virtually every page of the Playbook we referred the reader to a specific location on the accompanying CD-ROM that would give more detail, more support for the claims being made about the product.
Also packaged with the Playbook was what we called the “Workbook,” the information necessary for actually choosing the specific model and color and more for The Drive.
In other words, the Playbook was designed to make you want The Drive, the CD-ROM supported your desire with hard facts and “57 Reasons”—in detail—why The Drive is superior, and the Workbook helped you choose just the right fleet for your course.
All of this information was also available online at the web site, discoverthedrive.com.
5
Finally, it was absolutely critical to our mission that everything, everything, from the collateral to the web site to the advertising and point-of-purchase to the demos, that everything be available, up and running on launch day.