RAC cuts through the clutter

A MOVE back to the brand is the defining feature of the RAC’S latest press advertising campaign.

Whereas recent RAC press campaigns (think the Alfred Hitchcock campaign of February-April focused on RAC membership), this new campaign has a tactical ‘call-to-action’ approach that focuses on the RAC brand strength.

The campaign’s press/outdoor advertisement displays the bottom half of the RAC emblem without the company name, along with a caption ‘Call the State’s largest car insurer now for a competitive quote’.

According to RAC retail general manager Tony Pick-worth, the current state of product parity in the insurance industry required that the RAC take a new direction.

“We wanted an advertising campaign that made a claim no other WA insurance company could match – that the RAC is the market leader,” Mr Pick-worth said.

“As the RAC is the largest private car insurer in WA, we felt that this [campaign] idea achieved those objectives.”

Preliminary on-line campaign research was undertaken to ascertain whether, without the inclusion of the company name, people would recognise the logo as an RAC advertisement.

The findings showed that 77 per cent of the research participants identified the logo correctly.

Brand Agency partner Colin Mackay-Coghill was behind the marketing strategy for the new campaign and has a clear set of objectives to achieve.

“Our philosophy is to lead the way and try and take a confident market-leader approach,” Mr Mackay-Coghill said.

“Being the largest private car insurer in WA [RAC], our buying power is large, which means we can reinforce this position to the public.

“People are bombarded with so much information in advertising every day, so we have taken a creative approach, in giving the target market credit for being media savvy.”

Mr Pickworth believes the campaign’s simplicity will effectively arouse attention from the public. 

“We believe the big logo campaign cuts through the advertising clutter and will therefore get noticed,” Mr Pickworth said.

 “Furthermore, we’re running the advertisements as full page, which gives them even more visual impact.”

Generally RAC’s press campaigns are reactive, which results in a significant turnaround in advertisement campaigns.

The RAC tends to introduce a new press campaign every three months in order to maintain and renew the target market’s attention.

This latest campaign was implemented via outdoor and radio advertisements in early August and is set to wind-up in December.

As the main purpose of the campaign is to increase call centre enquires, the RAC Call Centre telephone records will be examined, in order to determine its effectiveness.