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BYRON SHARP GUEST EDITORIAL ON PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION THE BENTLEY BOYS RIDE AGAIN PROPERTY MARKETING KERRY MCCABE PROFILE VALOS ON BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR THE CMO INFOGRAPHIC: CONNECTED LIVING CIRCA 2025 CASE STUDIES: EBAY, HEINEKEN, TAUBMANS

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BRAND

THE BENTLEY BOYS

RIDE AGAIN Almost a century on from Walter Owen Bentley’s dominance of European motorsports, Ian Lloyd Neubauer heads to the sands of Abu Dhabi to find the reincarnation of the Bentley Boys, along with the reincarnation of the brand’s vision.

All images courtesy of Bentley Motors

W

hen legendary WWI aero-engineer Walter Owen Bentley started making grand touring cars in the 1920s, he figured the best way to market them was to enter them in races. The decision set in motion one of the most successful chapters in motorsports history, with Bentley winning France’s iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans five times between 1924 and 1930.

His cars were piloted by the Bentley Boys – a group of wealthy, bombastic aristocrats and playboys who gravitated towards the brand because it was the fastest, the loudest and the best. Men like motoring journalist Sydney Charles Houghton ‘Sammy’ Davis, submarine

commander Glen Kidston and diamond dealer Woolf Barnato, who won Le Mans thrice – a record that remains unbroken today. The Bentley Boys were the toast of London society – an unbeatable team whose devil-may-care attitude and unrivalled success on the racetrack personified the air and optimism of postwar England and became part of the brand’s pedigree and prestige. When you bought a Bentley, you bought a piece of the Bentley Boys.

In 1931, Bentley Motors fell victim to the Great Depression and went into receivership. Its new owner Rolls-Royce axed the racing program and sent Bentley in a new direction, focusing on its luxury, comfort and handcrafted wood and leather interior – a finish found nowhere else in the automotive world.

Coupled with the astronomical cost of buying one, Bentley’s demographic morphed from gentlemen racers to silver-haired gentlemen and the brand became something of an antique. But in 1998, Bentley’s new owner Volkswagen turned back time and repositioned the brand as the high-performance muscle car it used to be. And for that it went back to

MARKETING | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014 | www.marketingmag.com.au

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Le Mans – the oldest, most famous and influential motorsports endurance race on the planet.

But there’s something innately unsatisfying about reliving former glories – even when one does so successfully as Bentley did when it trumped BMW, Lotus, Ducati and countless other racing thoroughbreds at Le Mans in 2003.

“We have won Le Mans six times now. We have nothing to prove there,” says Bentley marketing director Robin Peel. “Anyway, the field’s really crowded. Both Porsche and Audi have a strong presence there,” he adds, in reference to two other Volkswagen-owned marques the Germans probably don’t want to again see upended by an old-world British saloon.

MULSANNES AND MIRAGES Fast-forward 10 years to a blisteringly hot morning.

It’s 13 December 2013 and Guy Smith, the pintsized British driver who led the team that last stole victory for Bentley at Le Mans, is back behind the wheel, though this time in a very different beast to the Batmobile-like Bentley Speed 8 he piloted in 2003. In its place is a pearl-white Bentley Continental GT3 with black and green racing stripes, a formidable carbon fibre wing and a 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbocharged engine that emits a growl so deep and guttural it makes the hairs on your neck stand on end.

“When the engine backfires and the exhaust pops, it really gets the blood pumping,” Smith says of the souped-up, dressed-down version of the twodoor grand touring coupé. The car was introduced in 2003 as the first Bentley to employ mass-market manufacturing in a risky but successful move by Volkswagen to create a more ‘affordable’ grand tourer (the starting price for a Continental GT in Australia, for example, is $375,000, whereas a flagship Mulsanne will set you back $662,000).

Marking an even more radical departure from the past is the location Bentley chose for its return to production car racing: Yas Marina Circuit on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, 150 kilometres south of Dubai. Boasting the longest straight of any Formula One circuit in the world, a pit lane set directly underneath the main grandstand and 21 twists and turns that career around sand dunes, mega-yachts moored in the Yas Marina and the 500-room Yas Viceroy Hotel, Yas Marina Circuit is arguably the most phenomenal racetrack on earth. Mercedes Formula One team driver Nico Rosberg told the UK’s Autosport magazine, “Every corner is unique”, while two-time world Formula One champion Fernando Alonso said the track is so varied it leaves drivers “no time to breathe”.

The track received similar acclaim from drivers who amassed there in December for the Gulf 12 Hours

– a two-part Le Mans-style endurance race restricted to Gran Turismo class production like the Lamborghini Gallardo, Aston Martin Vantage and Ferrari 458 Italia.

The cars are heavily modified for optimum speed with better aerodynamics, larger brakes and wider tyres, but must adhere to strict specifications such as a minimum weight of 1.3 tonnes, two front seats and two-wheel drive steering systems.

“The fact that these are road cars modified for racing is what makes Gran Turismo racing so interesting,” says Mohammed Jawa, a McLaren driver from Saudi Arabia. “So there is an appeal for people who know nothing about racing, but who recognise the cars, and an even bigger appeal for spectators who actually own one of the cars.”

Yet the question remains: why did Bentley, a brand as European as Louis Vuitton and Champagne, choose a little-known race on the edge of the Arabian Desert for the Continental GT3’s eagerly anticipated test race?

Collectively, these buyers represent an ilk of owners not seen since the Roaring Twenties.

BENTLEY BOYS 2.0 “We chose this event,” says Peel, “because it has global appeal and because it matches our long-held tradition of ‘gentlemen’s racing’.”

Yet, if one reads between the lines, the choice of Abu Dhabi can be understood to be the launch of a poignantly targeted marketing plan. Bentley’s largest market is the US, followed by Europe, though its fastest growing market is China and then the Middle East. In the latter two regions, a significant percentage of Bentley’s customer base are under 30 – young, flamboyant, cashed-up motorheads, who could easily

www.marketingmag.com.au | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014 | MARKETING

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CONNECTED LIVING 2020s CIRCA

Research by the Pew Internet Project finds that experts are united in the expectation that embedded and wearable technology will comprise the next revolution in digital technology. Across homes, workplaces and cities, a global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centres in a world-spanning information fabric known as the internet of things.

Strategic research consultancy, Frost & Sullivan forecasts the market potential of this 'connected living' paradigm at USD$731 billion into the next decade.

$731 Billion

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

MY

31%

$111 Billion

Connected home

K

Health

$20Bn Energy

$8Bn Media and Entertainment

$76Bn Automation and control

$5Bn

Infographic created by Marketing and Pete Duncan (collectedpixels.co.uk). Sources: 'The Rise in Connected Living and what it means for ICT', Frost & Sullivan analyst briefing, May 2014; 'The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025', Pew Internet Project, Pew Research Centre, May 2014.

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54%

17

25m Cloud servers

$392 Billion

Connected city Transportation

$80Bn

$28bn 2012

Governance

2020

$32bn 2012

2020

$94Bn

Banking & Financial $26bn 2012

Education

$99Bn

2020

$36bn 2012

$118Bn 2020

www.marketingmag.com.au | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014 | MARKETING

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CASE STUDY

Raising the bar for co-creation CAMPAIGN: THE NIGHTCLUB OF THE FUTURE CLIENT: HEINEKEN AGENCY: INSITES CONSULTING

OBJECTIVES

BACKGROUND Heineken is a Dutch company ranked the third largest brewer in the world. The legacy of Heineken’s design credentials led the brand to pursue its roots in design. In 2011, Heineken’s aluminium bottle, which was available in exclusive bars and clubs internationally, won the Cannes Lions design prize. Since then, the brand has strengthened its position as a premium brand in the world of clubbing by imprinting design as a key part of its brand DNA. A global research project was born using the InSites Consulting community approach (known as consumer consulting boards, or CCB), with 120 club goers living in the 12 trendiest cities (including Sydney)

on the planet, working together as a source of inspiration and a springboard for ideation for the design team.

The design team for the project was crowd-sourced from the four global design capitals of Tokyo, Milan, Sao Paulo and New York. Young, up-and-coming designers submitted their portfolio to Heineken via their Facebook page. Finally young designers for the project were selected using live PechaKucha events in each of the four cities. The resulting multi-skilled design team of 19 emerging product, graphic, fashion, interior and motion designers, worked together with Heineken’s senior design team and a senior team of well-known, established designers.

The project aimed to develop a relevant and impactful understanding of club design by understanding the needs of clubbers and co-creating a visionary nightclub concept to enhance the nightlife experience.

The Heineken team needed to understand whether creative concepts from the design team would be relevant to club goers. The challenge was in making certain the research approach was sufficiently engaging to ensure the participation of young and trendy clubbers from around the world, to allow for relevant and honest conversations, to act as a briefing, a source of inspiration and springboard for ideation for the design team.

STRATEGY A three-week consumer consulting board with 120 clubber participants was chosen as the inspiration point for the designers for four main reasons: First, longitudinal online qualitative research makes it possible to conduct a global project, in which clubbers were

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‘followed’ over a longer period of time, in a cost- and time-efficient way.

Second, the current generation of youngsters (Generation Y) are ‘digital natives’. The web is their second home.

Talking to and working with other people in the online space feels natural to them.

The asynchronous connection in a community allows participants to join the online discussion when and where they want, fitting their lifestyle.

Third, today’s youngsters are empowered by their parents and they start to expect that from brands as well.

The CCB connected trendy clubbers with an aspirational brand and facilitated the co-creation of a nightclub. The CCB comprised people who were interested to participate and who could inspire the design team with interesting stories: design-savvy youngsters, living in one of the 12 trendiest cities on the planet, going to a club at least once a week and non-rejecters of the beer category and Heineken.

And fourth, the online nature of a CCB allows for extensive gamification to make the activities fun and engaging, resulting in extremely rich discussions.

EXECUTION To engage participants over the course of three weeks, InSites Consulting took them on a journey (Schillewaert, De Ruyck, Van Kesteren, Ludwig, 2010).

On the community platform they shared ‘their current clubbing experiences, ‘the role of clubbing in their routine’ and ‘their view on the ideal nightlife journey’, and gave feedback on the designers’ first sketches.

Activities included questions, reviews, (photo) diaries and discussion battles. To develop a holistic view of their needs, a movie metaphor guided the participants through different weeks – from selecting actors in the ideal nightlife journey, to scenery and a scenario for the perfect night out.

also emphasising frictions clubbers encountered during their journey.

One example insight was the frustration associated with waiting at a bar for the bartender to serve you. Using this insight, the Heineken team joined the online community to co-create a solution comprising a bar where clubbers tapped a bottle-shaped icon on an interactive bar surface, which activated pulsing, concentric circles to attract the server’s attention, indicating your place in queue. When the beer was served, the bar tender tapped the icon to close it, showing the order was filled.

The nightlife journey To communicate outcomes of the research to designers in an impactful way, InSites Consulting looked beyond traditional reporting. Twenty-eight key learnings were drawn from the analysis, each linking a challenge for the design team to needs of their audience. These learnings were integrated in a ‘Nightlife Journey Map’ – spread over six touch points – reported as an interactive infographic app, which provided a vivid, but structured visualisation of a service user’s experience (nightlifejourney.com).

The app guided designers through the six phases of a night out, conveying information about the role of specific scenes in the night and clubbers’ expectations in specific moments, while

RESULTS Heineken’s pop-up concept club travelled around the world allowing clubbers to have a taste of the new co-created nightlife experience. The commercial outcomes were: › more than 13,000 visitors to the Heineken pop-up club in Milan during Design Week › in best-practice markets (Netherlands, the UK, Czech Republic, Poland), this has led to a sales increase of Heineken of up to 40 percent › the ‘Designed for the Night’ marketing program increased Heineken’s on-premise visibility in premium club venues – the most well-received design objects were produced and provided to owners of trendy clubs and bars, serving as ‘branded utility’ for Heineken › 250,000 views of Heineken design and community journey on the website Coolhunting.com › 533 news pieces on the club and 14 in-depth interviews › more than three million views of the Heineken design and community journey on Vice TV and more than 21,000 views of open design exploration movies › 70,000 online views and 600,000 in print in Wallpaper* magazine › visitors rated the Heineken Concept Club a nine out of 10 and the experience was “a surprising and innovative action” of Heineken, and › InSites Consulting was awarded the CCA Co-Creation Award 2011 and Best Presentation at the 8th International Conference on Design and Emotion 2012. M

www.marketingmag.com.au | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014 | MARKETING

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