A working vacation

The recreation vehicle industry is putting the pedal to the metal. Sales are up: Dealers sold 471,000 units in 1996, capping a fifth-straight banner sales year. And its prime market, empty-nesters and retirees, is growing nicely. Things seemingly couldn't get any better. But rather than sit back and enjoy the prosperity, the industry has de-cided to chase new business.

In February, the Go RVing Coalition, a non-profit group that includes RV manufacturers and their suppliers as well as dealers and campground operators, began a $15 million, three-year television and print ad campaign to promote the joys of RV ownership to first-time RV buyers - specifically, married couples between 30-49, with children.

Building on the success of other industry promotional ef-forts, the industry figured the time was ripe for its first national advertising program, says Gary LaBella, vice president of public relations for the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, a member of the Go RVing Coalition. "Through our public relations efforts, we had done well in increasing top-of-mind awareness and the industry was very healthy - the last three years have been the best we've had in two decades. We were poised, given the aging baby boomers, to go after an even greater share of consumers' discretionary time and income," he says.

Two studies commissioned in 1994 to study RV owners and consumer perceptions of RVs pointed toward baby boomers as a possible growth area. (Forty-four percent of RVs are owned by those 55 and older. People between 35-54 own 39 percent.) "Traditionally the core market has been the 50-plus crowd. We've always had the family as a secondary market, but we're trying to focus now on bringing younger people into the market. At the same time we're trying to show people that getting away from the rat race can be a great way to connect with your family. It's almost a necessary thing nowadays. We're trying to reinforce that you need to make time to go away with the kids while they're young," LaBella says.

Bearing the tagline, "Recreation Vehicles. Wherever You Go, You're Always At Home," both the TV and the print spots invite prospective RV owners to visit an RV dealer or call 1-888-GO-RVing to receive a videotape that details the different types of RVs and their features, and offers trip tips and other information.

For 1997, the ads are scheduled to run in three waves through the end of summer. TV ads are airing on cable outlets such as Nickelodeon and The Discovery Channel and broadcast programs like Good Morning America. Print ads are running in magazines like Good Housekeeping, Parents and Country Living.

To develop the ads, Eisner & Associates, Inc., a Baltimore, Md.-based advertising and public relations firm, undertook a textbook bit of account planning. "We really had three distinct planning tasks," says Joseph Bruce, executive vice president, director of strategic planning, Eisner & Associates. "First, we needed to thoroughly understand what makes the RV owner tick. Then, after developing a profile, we needed to determine how many others fit the same profile. In other words, what is our potential market? And finally, to bring it all together, we crafted a message strategy which really speaks to the target.

"The key question became, how can we position RVs to make the purchase of them attractive to baby boomers now? Not only do they represent more short-term business but it's building the market for the long term, because the more people who are introduced now, the more people will stay with it," Bruce says.

Out of step

The first step was to look at syndicated databases to compare baby boomers who own RVs with those who don't. There were no significant differences in demographic categories like income, education or family size. But some interesting findings emerged from the responses that target consumers gave to various psychographic questions and phrases. Baby boomers who owned RVs were much more likely to agree with statements like "I feel alone in the world," "I feel slightly out of step with the rest of the world," or "I don't feel fulfilled in my everyday life."

"What began to emerge was a picture of a typical RV owner as a person who is slightly out of step with everyday life, who feels held back by the system," Bruce says.

To find out more about RV owners firsthand, the agency formed teams and rented RVs to visit campgrounds around the country. (It wasn't just account planners and their significant others out there testing the RV waters. The agency creative people took the plunge as well. "We got the creative people involved in the process so they were seeing it for themselves. That makes all the difference in the world. They aren't just getting a research report," Bruce says.)

Once at the campsites, to get the conversation going, the Eisner groups told their fellow campers that they had rented their RVs and were trying them out to see if they enjoyed the RV lifestyle. Those turned out to be the magic words. "That was a great opener to get people talking because then they wanted to tell you all about what it was like, how wonderful it is, how much they enjoy it and why they started. They almost became salespeople themselves," Bruce says.

"Sometimes you're doing research and trying to get people to talk is like pulling teeth. This was just the opposite. Getting to know them turned out to be amazingly easy. You drive in and almost immediately people would come over and ask if they could help or if you needed to know where the nearest 7-11 was."

RVs give fulfillment

The Eisner teams discovered that owning an RV gives people the kinds of fulfillment that they don't regularly get in their day-to-day lives. The fulfillment comes in four areas:

1. It provides a chance for a real connection with the family. "For them, the family RV vacation was about small things, building a fire together, going fishing. They looked down on the family vacation to Disney World, because that's not being with your children. That's like giving your children over to the Disney process. When they went away with the family they wanted to be with the family," Bruce says.

2. It's also about getting back, but not all the way back, to nature. The RV experience brings people close to mountains, woods and water but also lets them sleep and eat in comfort.

3. Taking a vacation in your RV also lets people control their lives - at least while they're on the road. "You can decide to stay another night at the campground or you can go on. You can make decisions about what you want to do and when you want to do it," Bruce says.

4. Hitting the road in an RV also fosters a sense of acceptance. "Everyone shares in this love of the RV experience. You drive in and you are automatically accepted as part of the group. It's like democracy. You can have a pop-up camper next to a Winnebago. The people are helpful, kids play with each other. There are people who meet every year at the same campground to see each other again."

Lasting friendships

The resulting television and print ads heavily emphasize the quality-of-life aspects of RV ownership. Taglines for the print ads include "Imagine staying in a town where the biggest crime committed was that steak you burned last night" and "Funny how you never hear about the lasting friendships people made at the Motor Lodge." Accompanying visuals show a variety of RVs ensconced in idyllic settings from a mountain lake to a shoreline at sunset. The TV ads, including spots titled "Seashore," "Campground" and "Lake" echo the print ads.

The agency also conducted focus groups with RVers, non-RVers and people who had visited a dealer in the past two years but hadn't bought an RV. "That was to supplement and confirm what we were learning in the 'real world,' if you will. I often find that focus groups are a way to confirm what you think you're learning when you go out in observation mode," Bruce says.

"We did take the print ads back in to check on visuals. We were pretty sure our concepts were right. We weren't testing for concepts so much as testing visuals, testing language, just to be sure it was ringing true in the way that it looked and sounded."

Internal debate

The agency will measure the effect of the ads through pre- and post-wave testing of agreement to a variety of statements related to RVs. "We're not expecting the advertising to sell RVs," Bruce says. "What it will do is change perceptions of who RVs are for. We'll measure agreement with statements over time about who RVs are for and what RVing is all about."

Getting agreement to invest a great deal of money in an ad campaign that focuses more on the RV lifestyle than the vehicles themselves was no easy task. "When we presented the idea we said we're not selling recreation vehicles, or talking about how big they are, how many beds they have. We're selling the experience of it. The RV is a means to an end, not an end in itself," Bruce says.

"We went through a lot of internal debate," LaBella says, "about whether it was the proper role of the various industry associations to form a coalition and do this campaign. Some companies would rather spend their money promoting their name rather than contributing to an industry fund. In the end, we knew that we're much better off uniting to compete against other industries that are after people's discretionary time and money."