Genmar tries new ad campaign
MINNEAPOLIS – Genmar Industries – known for a willingness to think outside the marketing box – is testing out a new approach to advertising its Triumph boat line.
It has launched a Web site at toughboats.com where visitors can watch a series of five videos of “real-world” product tests. These tests involve dragging a Triumph boat sans trailer behind a pick-up, dropping a boat from a helicopter, ramming it into a tree and other over-the-top trials.
The Republik, an ad agency in Durham, N.C., launched the campaign for Genmar in an effort to demonstrate that Triumph boats are the world’s toughest, The New York Times reported in a Dec. 1 article.
This campaign comes in the wake of Genmar’s own efforts to advertise the Triumph brand, touting the boats’ “environmentally friendly, unsinkable and shock absorbent” qualities – efforts that the agency told Genmar were too diluted, according to the newspaper.
The campaign’s budget of about $250,000 was described as “economical” by The New York Times, reflecting the relatively cheap process of creating online video; however, the campaign also involves television commercials and print ads. Among the other reasons for using the Web to launch the campaign is the ability to track its results.
The TV version of the video will play on cable channels like FLW Outdoors – to which Genmar Chairman Irwin Jacobs is closely tied – while the print ads are scheduled to run in 11 regional and national magazines, the newspaper stated.
Other tests are also being planned, such as pushing a boat down a ski slope and putting a blind captain behind the wheel, it added.
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