Monday, June 02, 2014

How to Market a Boat

Imagine you are RS Sailing.

You are launching a new boat, the RS Aero.  You hope it could be the most successful single-handed sailboat since the launch of the Laser.

How do you go about developing a marketing campaign?

Do you tease your potential customers, like Volvo appear to be doing with this ad for their upcoming launch of the new Volvo XC90?





That's it for now. Just slow panning shots of the high end luxurious interior featuring such details as a gear lever made from crystal glass as well as a diamond-cut engine start-stop button and the tablet-like touchscreen control console that is "virtually button free."

Nothing about engineering or performance or safety or how it feels to drive or anything that's really important.

Geeze they aren't even revealing whether the cargo compartment is large enough to accommodate a (dismantled) Dynamic Dollies Laser dolly. Come on people.

It certainly looks like RS Sailing are going the "tease marketing" route with the RS Aero. So far we have only seen two videos spotlighting the hull (it's really light) and the foils (they are really shiny.) And a few shots of it sailing (it looks really fast on a reach.)

Speaking purely personally I am hungry for more details. Where's the beef? How about some video of it punching upwind through waves in 25-30 knots? And going downwind in big waves too? And comparative data on how it performs on all points of sail vs the Laser? And more techie details about the mast and the sail and the control lines etc. etc. etc. ?

Instead of doing a Volvo-style tease let's have some old-fashioned Ginsu knife style marketing.




Show us the RS Aero doing the metaphorical equivalent of slicing bread so thin you can see through it.

Show us the RS Aero doing the metaphorical equivalent of cutting through a tin can.

Wait. There's much much more!

Promise it will last for ever.

Offer us the matching fork and the 6-in-1 tool and the unique spiral slicer.

Guaranteed in writing for 50 years.

Do it.

Don't tease me.

I will buy it.


5 comments:

Unknown said...

I second that emotion!

O Docker said...


Sounds like the RS Aero is NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES !!!

Tillerman said...

Full disclosure: George of West Coast Sailing went to the UK a few weeks ago to test out the RS Aero. He promised (on the Dinghy Anarchy forum) to write and publish a full report on his experience and he has been taking flak from some "anarchists" because the report wasn't immediately available. Yesterday he posted that his report was now "being submitted for publication" and said, "I originally had used the words ginsu, and some other crazy stuff in there, but toned it down."

That intrigued me. How could you possibly write about the RS Aero and include the word "ginsu"? I was planning to write a blog post anyway about how RS Sailing are "teasing" us with the slow trickle of showcase videos about the RS Aero, so when I saw how I could also throw in some Ginsu knives, I couldn't resist doing so. George probably had something totally different in mind.

O Docker said...


I think if you call George in the next fifteen minutes, he'll throw in a full explanation of the Ginsu reference absolutely free.

Anonymous said...

My mother always said, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

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