Laffy, Inc. an Advertising Firm (A Scholastic Partnership of Communications Students at UConn) is a segmented simulation incorporation which is proposing several mock advertising campaigns.  As a five people partnership we offer an energetic, slightly unconventional, dedicated attitude, and work professionally up to the highest potential. In our proposals Laffy, Inc. dedicates itself to the advertisement campaigns of the BMW X5, Premium Travel, Gattaca, and Apex Leadership.   We assure you that the material is original and the sources are cited, credited and documented where necessary.

Creative Plan

Goal

To increase awareness of BMW’s X5 SAV, educate and create anticipation and interest for the release of the vehicle for September 1999.  We plan to do this with a six-month campaign through a series of progressive visual manifestations of various features of the X5.  We plan on using three different mediums; print, out of home, and television along with and correlating with the BMW website already established.  The campaign is named “Are You Ready?” for the teaser style ads which is proposed, building up to the release of the SAV. 

Strategy

The “Are You Ready?” philosophy.
Laffy, Inc. An Advertising Firm created this “Are You Ready?” tagline to put sense of anticipation and excitement to our audience.  We plan on accomplishing this by releasing three pre-release print advertisements each showing a slightly more detailed picture of the vehicle compared to it’s previous ad.  We will review the ads in great detail in the creative design section.  We plan on releasing the first in June and our final ads will run throughout November.  We have chosen a six month campaign because we feel as though with the excitement that is built with the pre-release of the SAV in combination with the “Are You Ready?” tagline attached to the ads, the audience will be classically conditioned to remember the luxury of the X5. And a six-month campaign is adequate time to form this priming.  After the six month campaign the target audience will be primed and have top of mind recognition with the BMW X5 “Are You Ready” ads.  The goal is that the audience will easily recognizes the SAV and automatically and subconsciously recognizes it’s prestigious features, which have been already described.
Attached in appendix section is a client/reaction profile, which is to be presented to BMW before the campaign is created and proposed.
 

The “Are You Ready?” campaign will utilize three distinctive mediums, print (magazine), out of home (billboard), and television.  Those have been chosen for two specific reasons.  First in combination with all three and having all ads being similar to one another the frequency of the ads will be grater and our message of “Are You Ready?” will be of more familiarity to our audience. 

Second the high reach and life span of magazines plus high frequency of Billboard plus the high reach and frequency of television will be adequately cover our target audience to it’s highest potential with the budget that is proposed.  Radio has not been selected for the reasons that BMW hasn’t used radio in the past so why start now? 

As for print, three distinct magazines have been chosen, Car and Driver, Motor Trend and Sports Illustrated.  Car and Driver is “edited for upscale car enthusiast.  It examines automobiles and automotive topics, giving roughly equal attention to domestic and import product”, (SRDS Consumer Magazine Advertising Source 151).  Car and Driver’s circulation is 1,246,718 (SRDS).  Motor Trend is “a contemporary world car magazine, providing evaluation of automotive products from the econo car to the exotic" (SRDS 165).  The circulation of Motor Trend is 1,206,059 (SRDS 165).  And the third choice of magazine is Sports Illustrated, which is the ultimate sports enthusiastic magazine.  Although circulation facts are not submitted to the SRDS, SI is among the leaders of circulating magazines, (just look in any doctor’s office).  See budget for advertising cost.

The second medium, out of home, specifically billboard is used mainly because of it’s high frequency.  The billboard ads will directly correlates with our first two print ads.  See creative designs section for further details.  Using a six month contract that starts in July with the 3M Media company, “a company that provides freeway bulletin located on major arteries in with the highest traffic counts nationwide” (SRDS).  X5 billboards will be places in Houston, New York City, and Los Angeles.  These three areas are among the top five traffic areas in America.  The selection of 3M Media is based on the fact that 3M owns billboards in all three areas of the chosen cities and a possible reduction in fees could result of this.

The final medium is television.  Out of all mediums TV has been proven to be the most efficient for cost/thousand, attitude and behavior changing, and reach and frequency.  For these reasons television has been chosen along with the fact that BMW most compete with other luxury automobile companies that advertise in TV. 

To reach our target audience to the highest potential advertisements will be placed on prime time Monday through Friday (8:00PM-11: 00PM) and late night (11:30PM-1: 00AM) on network and cable.  ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and ESPN will be the chosen broadcasters.  Pre release ads will be released starting in June and a special minute long ad in September.  All ads will then run throughout the rest of the six-month campaign.  Please see time line and designs sections for in depth detail and explanation.

The network programs we have chosen to advertise on are “Frasier”, “ER”, “Providence”, Felicity”, “NYPD Blue”, and “Law and Order”.  The cable shows that are targeted are “Sportscenter” (primetime/late night editions) and CNN nightly news (aired six through eight).  These shows are chosen from a combination of high Nielson ratings (attached in appendix section is a list of AC Nielson season ratings) and match the X5 target audience with the programs target audience.  See budget for information on reach, frequency, and network pricing.
 

Laffy, Inc An Advertising Firm has incorporated the Creative Design section for the purpose of explaining the specific advertisements and rationalizing those advertisements in detail.  First to be explained is the print ads, second the billboard ads and finally the television ads.  All of the advertisements will possess the slate gray background in which BMW has used throughout their recent years in advertising.  The “car loves the rode love the driver loves the car…” will also continue to be on all the X5 ads.  The difference with the X5 ads compared to BMW’s current ads will be the idea that the X5, because it is unlike any of the previously released automobiles by BMW, will be shown in metallic maroon.  Reasons behind this are to insure that the ads will be more eye-catching than the previous BMW campaigns but at the same time they will be easily recognizable as BMW ads.  The BMW logo will also appear in one of the corners of each magazine ad and billboard.

The first print advertisement is called the “Blur” ad.  The strategy behind this ad is to make it seem as though the SAV is traveling at high speeds, hence the “Blur” name.  In this ad the viewer is able to see that the vehicle is part of the SUV class and is a BMW but will not be able to recognize any of the distinct features of the car.

The second advertisement is the “Veiled” ad.  The strategy behind this is to show the actual shape of the vehicle but at the same time not show recognizable features.  Picture taken from the unveiling ceremony at the International Auto Show in Detroit.  The difference between the two is that the “Veiled” advertisement shows the general shape and some characteristics of the vehicle where as the “Blur” ad features are tough to detect.

The third print ad is the “Water glass” ad.  The strategy behind this advertisement is the same as the previous, to vaguely show the design and some features of the automobile.  With in this ad it is noticed that we’ve included “Coming in September”, this will increase awareness and give a prospective purchaser of the vehicle a realization of when the car is released, hopefully building even more anticipation for the X5.

The fourth advertisement is the backbone for the campaign.  It will be a four-page fold out describing the SAV in full detail.  Exterior and interior pictures will be shown. The idea of the ad is primarily to give all the details of the vehicle as possible.  By this time in the “Are You Ready” campaign the interest is built and possible buyers will be exited to see what the vehicle looks like from the inside out. 

The fifth print ad will simply be section taken from the four-page fold out.
Next choice of media is Out of Home, specifically billboard.  The billboard designs are to be almost exactly identical to the first two magazine ads, the “Blur” ad and the “Veiled” ad. Reasons for this are the greater frequency of ad equals greater top of mind awareness.  The only difference will be that the billboards will have a “ticker” on them that will count down to the release date in September and after the release the “ticker” will be removed from the billboards.

The third media is television.  To understand and further explanation refer to the TV storyboards for the individual ads. 

The first TV ad to be released nationally will be the “B-2 Bomber” commercial.  In this ad a top secret B-2 Bomber is being compare to the BMW X5.  In this commercial the X5 will be moving at a speed across a dessert plain and is compared to a B-2 Bomber whistling through the sky.  The SAV will also be blurred out much like the “Blur” magazine ad, this will be done to hide the features of the vehicle, correlate with other ads and build anticipation.  In the closing seconds of the ad the “car loves the road loves the driver loves car.” will appear across the bottom of all ads to keep consistency with other BMW campaigns and a “ticker” will appear in the waning seconds of all the TV ads through out the entire pre-release portion of the campaign. 

The second TV commercial “Welcome to the Team” will be a localized commercial designed for NY Yankees fans, and comparing introduction of the X5 to the five series line with the introduction of Roger Clemens to the World Series Champs line up. In this ad the car will be hidden behind the infamous Roger “the rocket” Clemens.  The X5 will be noticeable but at the same time no features will be depicted.  Reasons behind airing this ad is primarily for the New York audience especially for the NY City businessman.  Even though this advertisement might upset some Boston Red Sox fans, they will still get the idea of the commercial. 

The airing of the commercial during the All-Star Game will not only reach the local area (The all star game is at Fenway Park this year), but also nationally.

The final TV commercial “Sinatra” will be one similar to the final magazine advertisement.  A first person point of view from the driver seat will give the audience an idea of luxury that the X5 possesses, and Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life” will be the choice of music.  The choice of Sinatra comes from the idea of Sinatra himself being a high-class entertainer would have a target audience of the upper middle and higher social classes.  The tune “That’s Life” is a Sinatra classics and has a carefree style to it, which is very similar to the driving experience of the BMW X5.  The song will be licensed from Reprise Records for a cost of which would not be released to Laffy, Inc.  The main comparison in this commercial would be Sinatra's suave voice and tune to ultimate suave driving experience of the X5.

To reiterate the overall “Are You Ready” strategy, all advertisements will have in background the slate gray appearance that is currently being used throughout all the BMW campaigns, along with the “car love the rode loves the driver loves the car…” Each ad will also show the SAV in a dark maroon color, each will posses the “Are You Ready?” tag line and BMW symbol.  The pre-release billboards and television ads will have a ticker at the bottom left corner of them, which will be counting down until the release of the vehicle.  In conclusion we at Laffy, Inc. hope that you enjoy the ads almost as much as we’ve enjoyed creating them.