Victory Motorcycle’s goal for 2012 was to share its brand’s new look and attitude in a powerful yet efficient way. The main challenge was to capture a piece of the media landscape dominated by a well-known competitor. Victory used emerging technology, targeting, and communications to gain market share and get “butts on seats.”
Victory’s target audience was Motorcycle Enthusiasts (MEs): men between the ages of 35 and 54 who ride either a major competitor’s bikes or a starter motorcycle. Victory developed a two-pronged location and context-based mobile strategy. The brand first used a targeted approach to increase awareness, and then promoted the physical experience — test rides — to help push Victory into MEs’ consideration set.
The “Ride One and You Will Own One,” creative was introduced to showcase Victory’s challenger-brand attitude. Victory clustered MEs by identifying their hobbies, motorcycle registrations, and frequent travel activities. The brand mapped tiles across 40 key demographic areas to identify “hot squares” that matched the profiles of its target audience. These characteristics shaped the media plan and dictated where Victory would direct their campaign. Mobile was a key component that encouraged MEs to sign up for test rides, which are strongly correlated to sales. This mobile-mapping strategy provided great coverage of the target through location-enabled ads. Location-based targeting was not new, but targeting specific contextual locations and situations and then serving ads only when they became hot with MEs was an industry first.
But while this data was interesting, Victory wanted to reach the MEs when they were in a situation that would perfectly move them into the consideration set. Victory drafted a list of locations (e.g., repair shops, motorcycle rallies, and military bases) that offered contemplative moments. The brand couldn’t afford to advertise or buy major sponsorships at all of these locations, so instead it served ads around these areas and became the premier mobile sponsor. For example, Victory served ads around military bases to attract active-duty soldiers (a prime segment of the target audience). This approach complemented the brand’s hosting of demo tours and test rides near military bases and offering discounts to soldiers.
Victory used mobile location-based ads to reach customers where no other association was offered or available. The mobile strategy also prevented waste: ads could be released on a dynamic basis so that they would only reach military bases during major events or when the weather was perfect for a scenic ride.
“Ride One and You’ll Own One” generated 26 million impressions with MEs. Mobile geo-targeting contributed to a 73 percent increase in mobile engagement year over year.
The app’s location-based mobile strategy delivered “butts on seats,” resulting in a 1,650 percent return on investment for Victory. The campaign helped drive nearly $9.8 million in sales in the first five months of the year.
Year-over-year test ride sign-ups increased by 68 percent. In addition, 2,851 riders took the online challenge to test-ride and added Victory to their consideration set. Historically, one out of five test rides leads to a sale of a Victory motorcycle.
