By now every child (and the overgrown children that most adults are…) should know that iconic toy racing brand Scalextric are in the process of preparing a launch date and promotion campaign for their all-new Silverstone branded Formula 1 set (featuring Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen). Naturally we in the office have been getting as excited as anyone else about this – the only difference being that we’re thinking of promotional campaigns…so here’s how we think it should go!
Our plan for the campaign is in three different stages – essentially a teaser then a spectacle then product release.
The teaser part of the campaign whilst simple would, given the iconic nature of F1 be extremely successful in our opinion. Fully working F1 car mock ups (the real things are far too powerful and expensive to be used) would be commissioned, painted in the correct livery and dispatched to all major cities in the UK.
Once there our staff in the area would start making calls to local radio stations suggesting that there were F1 cars “loose” in the city and that the first 10 people to photograph them and text the images (as we’d expect they’d use mobile cameras) to a certain number would receive something “highly desirable”– we use inverted commas as, at this point, we would not want the public to know who, or what was being advertised. Winners would, however, receive advanced sets of the new Silverstone kit. This activity would create a huge amount of buzz and would prep the country perfectly for stage two.
Stage two (consolidation) would see a series of events held in open areas around the country (Hyde Park in London would be an example). These events would be advertised using traditional print and media methods. The content of the adverts would simply ask people to turn up at the relevant venue at a certain time to take part in a world record attempt.
This would record attempt, it would transpire on arrival, would be to try and build the largest and longest Scalextric track in history (and if you don’t believe there’s a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for this, why not check? You’ll be surprised…). In order to facilitate this we would have prepared a static Scalextric Roadshow.
This Roadshow would be geared not just for a serious record attempt (with all the hundreds of sets that would require) but would also feature prize raffles (winning tickets getting VIP trips to the Silverstone Grand Prix itself – and, given the pull of this kind of prize it may be prudent to advertise it independently) and racing competitions on normal size tracks – with the competition winners being crowned “Regional Champions” and going forward to a national finals that would be hosted and sponsored by Scalextric. On winning the national championship they would receive the title “UK Champion” as well as having their very own Scalextric car designed and put into production for them…along with prize money and an oversized trophy of course!
This roadshow activity would take place in the week immediately prior to release so that it was still fresh in the mind when the release date came round. Release day itself would see the unveiling of an ad campaign utilising numerous cranes on building sited around major cities. Each advertisement would need two cranes – one lifting what appeared to be a section of track and the other what appeared to be an F1 car. Both cranes would have billboards attached to them reading “Scalextric Silverstone: Out Now…For The Child In All Of Us”.
We reckon that’s a winning strapline and a winning campaign!