Roominess Campaign

Background

The new Skoda ‘Roomster’ was launched in the UK in Autumn 2006 and the car signalled Skoda’s first move into the MPV market. The Roomster is designed to be spacious yet compact, and this ‘roominess’ formed the basis of the creative brief. Skoda’s technical development chief Dr Harald Ludanek said they wanted to create ‘the roominess of a house’. The aim of the campaign was to drive people into the showroom to take a test drive, and ultimately to purchase a new Roomster. The car is an original addition to the existing range and consequently opens up the Skoda brand to a new type of driver.

Idea

To communicate the core message of ‘roominess’, archibald ingall stretton came up with a number of different creative executions. There were two main versions of the direct mail piece. The first (sent to 86,000 current customers, prospects, people who had registered interest through the microsite www.roomster.skoda.co.uk and cold prospects) was a sticker with the words, ‘Baby Somewhere on Board’. The creative was based on the instantly recognisable yellow ‘baby on board’ car sign. This met the brief perfectly because it not only carried the message of space with the Skoda tone of voice, but also considered the difference in target audience - young families requiring extra space who would be attracted by the fundamental Skoda values of economy, quality and value.

The second mail piece, sent to 14,000 current customers and prospects, was in the form of a Frisbee, labelled, ‘In-Car Entertainment’, the message being that the inside of the Roomster was so spacious you could play Frisbee in it. Online creative continued the ‘In-car entertainment’ theme, but this time the idea was based on there being enough room to play hide and seek inside the car. Online ads ran in sites such as yahoo.com, msn.com and autoexpress.com.

The magazine insert, of which there were 1,200,000 in core titles such as Auto Express and Motoring Leisure, consisted of a drawing of a spread-eagled cat and was based on the old saying of there being ‘enough room to swing a cat’. One month before the launch of the car, a third mailer was sent to people who had registered interest through the microsite. This comprised of a letter whose copy was typically A4 sized but placed in the centre of a large A2 sheet. It also contained a full product brochure.

Results

Response is still being monitored, but as at mid-December there had been 649 responses to the Baby Somewhere on Board mailing, 53 responses to In-Car Entertainment, and 589 responses to the Swinging Cat insert.

Target Audience

The Skoda is aimed at a younger audience than the typical Skoda driver - males aged 35 to 45 who have families, people who use their car as a workhorse and don’t see it as a status symbol. They use their car on a daily basis, doing the school run, getting to work and at the weekends, doing the shopping, loading up their bikes, going away with the family etc.

Size

Baby on Board mailing: 86,000; In-car entertainment Frisbee mailing: 14,000; Swinging cat insert: 1,200,000

Our Thoughts

The Roomster looks like two completely different vehicles sellotaped together in the middle. This campaign, though, is single-minded. If you’re going to send people something, the trick is to send them something they might actually want to keep. The Frisbee fits that bill. In several hundred homes it probably still survives to tell the roominess story while the letter and cat have long since been binned.