Discover Boating’s Welcome To The Water campaign builds momentum
The recreational boating industry has reignited Discover Boating to build participation, and ultimately, increase boat sales. Discover Boating's two-year vision is to build awareness among non-boaters by utilizing the passion current boaters have for life on the water. Discover Boating aims to enlist current boaters to help grow boating – their natural enthusiasm attracting new prospects to increase the quality and quantity of leads.
Campaign highlights include:
A new Facebook application has been developed for North America providing an electronic invitation boaters can send to family and friends to join them out on the water – building awareness and participation. Available on Facebook.com/DiscoverBoatingCanada, the boat trip planner provides a customizable tool customers and clients can use to share the boating experience and encourage non-boaters to get their feet wet. Trip invitations are posted on guests’ Facebook pages and newsfeeds expanding awareness for the boating lifestyle. Captains and their “crew” are also entered into weekly contests to win prizes. Discover Boating Canada's Facebook fan page currently has 12,000 fans.
Available on DiscoverBoating.ca, the new Get Off Your Dock Guide to Boating offers interactive features to communicate key lifestyle benefits of boating while walking through the boat-buying process. Continuing to support lead generation, the boat selector tool is featured, as well as a financing calculator, maintenance tips and more. Available in English and French, the Get Off Your Dock Guide offers another option for information on how to get started in boating. The Guide can also be linked to via your website.
As smartphone usage rapidly grows, the Discover Boating team has created a new mobile website adaptation of DiscoverBoating.ca. Users are automatically redirected to this new mobile site when they access DiscoverBoating.ca (in English or French) via their smartphone. The mobile site supports lead generation and offers a concise version of key interactive content currently available on DiscoverBoating.ca, including boat type information, boat show finder, financing calculator and more.
The Canadian Dealer toolkit has been updated to include Welcome to the Water video available for free at www.discoverboating.ca/tools and fr.discoverboating.ca/outils. Under the Web Content section, the 60 second version of the Welcome to the Water television commercial has been adapted for stakeholder use by removing the call-to-action to visit DiscoverBoating.ca. All Discover Boating stakeholders can utilize this video without having visitor traffic leave their website.
Discover Boating brought home the prestigious Gold Effie for Best Small Budget Campaign for the 2010 Making Waves’ interactive Facebook campaign. An Effie is one of the most coveted honors in advertising and is awarded based on marketing results. Carl Blackwell, chief marketing officer for Discover Boating says, “This is a tremendous honour for the recreational boating industry and testament to the dedication of Discover Boating staff and our marketing partners to provide the best work possible for the industry. In spite of economic challenges, Discover Boating focused on the most efficient and effective ways to promote boating and we’re thrilled to be recognized—alongside some of the top brands in the world—with a Gold Effie as one of the most successful North American campaigns of 2010.”