


	IFRA XMA Cross Media Awards 2008 projects





	Company: South West Media Group Ltd
	Project name: Mod My Motor

	Topical category of the project

	C: Cross media communities for special interest groups (e.g. travel, young audience, gardening), that are a platform for new advertiser target groups

	General information about the publication

	The Herald Express is South West Media Group’s Torquay-based daily newspaper. It serves a wide surrounding area of coastal and inland communities in South Devon which attracts millions of tourists each year to swell its 100,000-plus resident population. The Herald Express was born out of the rivalry between two evening papers, each of which produced local editions for Torbay – an area which includes Torquay, Paignton, Newton Abbot and Brixham – and first appeared in its own right as a title on Monday, July 13, 1925, when the two sensibly decided to amalgamate. We produce three separate and individual editions for each of the three main areas of our location, the most recent of which – a Brixham edition – has proven hugely successful and coincided with a period of great change in the fishing port. The Herald Express prides itself on being at the heart of the local community, including promoting and supporting our commercial partners and advertisers. In an increasingly competitive and fractured market, we have to find ways of delivering that service to existing and new consumers which are innovative, pioneering, refreshing and, overall, eye-catching. Three of our most projects – Mod My Motor, The Nigel Green Recruit and Yes Factor – tick all those boxes. All departments of the newspaper have been brought together to work as one unit, including our editorial, online, advertising and newspaper sales teams. That has enabled us to deliver a first-class, modern service to our advertisers where in-print publicity/promotions/coupons have been run alongside and complemented online coverage and texting capabilities to yield hugely successful results. As a result we have reached new audiences and achieved impressive increases in newspaper sales and revenue streams.

	Project description

	We named the project Mod My Motor because we wanted to engage with a very specific target audience with whom the language would resonate. 'Modding' is the process of gradually adding features to ordinary cars which is a hobby favoured by young drivers. It is a multi-million pound industry made famous by the MTV show Pimp my Ride. We liked the alliteration of the title and, once the theme tune for the campaign had been commissioned and produced, it became instantly memorable and, therefore, effective. A lot of the feedback we have had from readers and those who entered the competition suggests the theme tune, logo and tone of the campaign captured the spirit of fun and uniqueness we desired.

	The basic idea of the project

	Mod My Motor was a competition in which we invited readers to submit their cars to win a makeover worth over £5,000. Over a three-week period they sent in pictures of their cars and also a brief reason as to why they should win. Once all the entries were in we produced a 12-page supplement and also featured the cars on our website - www.modmymotor.org - when readers were asked to vote for the car they felt most deserved the prize. This was a project devised to engage with a younger audience and to develop commercial relationships with a revenue stream not present in our in print or online portfolio of products. The prime audience target was young people aged 17-30 for whom modding is a way of life. We were also careful, however, not to alienate our traditional readership and were careful to keep the competition fun and open rather than specialised and unfamiliar. The website www.modmymotor.org was designed and built by our web team to support the campaign and to generate some viral impact. This was a determined project to gain a new element of readership and a new group of advertisers in the motoring category who do not ordinarily consider regional press or their online equivalents. We targeted companies that could provide car modification services as sponsors and advertisers. Marketing the project included working through communication channels at local colleges and social website databases with a registered user group, in line with our age target - such as Facebook and Smileonthetiles - and the distribution of flyers throughout our readership area in clubs, bars, schools and colleges and shops. In all our promotional material and in all the editorial pieces which appeared in the Herald Express we included all the sponsors' logos and provided many links to them on our website. They will get exposure above and beyond what they could usually expect from their investment and are ensured that, by getting involved in this project, that the right groups of people are hearing their message.

	Used media channels


	Newspaper		Merchandising

	Event(s)		Mobile Services

	Online		Web-TV / Video

Other:

Printed flyers/entry form

The implementation

We began a viral campaign to launch the competition some weeks before its actual launch. We included various teaser adverts in-paper and on our website - www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk - to create as much pre-launch interest as possible. When we launched Mod My Motor we did so concurrently online and in paper. Our website was designed to change with the various aspects of the competition, explaining its concept and advising how to enter at first, before then displaying all the entrants and explaining how to vote. We did the same in-paper, launching the concept and explaining the prize, before collecting the entrants and producing the supplement.
The campaign utilised the combined strengths of both the advertising and editorial departments. Advertising sourced companies to get involved in the project and got them on board, while editorial ensured a high level of exposure for them in return for their investment. As well as being featured in all the pre-publicity, each company will be featured in a video 'advert' to appear on modmymotor.org and also an editorial piece slowly revealing the finished car as they complete their section of the work.
Voting for the winner tied together all our potential revenue streams and connected the media channels open to us. The in-paper voting coupons generated newspaper sales, while the text voting option drove people to our website, which in turn gave more exposure to the competition's backers, generated a high return of revenue and allowed us to build a large database for future campaigns of this type.
We also made residents of South Devon aware of the competition via various interviews on a local radio station, Palm FM.
The winner was revelaed concurrently online and in-paper and when we finally reveal the finished car we will do so with all the razzmatazz associated with Pimp My Ride to create a truly memorable event.

Image(s)

Dont miss_supplement.jpg (863 KB)

MMM_frontcover.jpg (529 KB)

Modify my Motor logo final.jpg (1292 KB)

modwin.jpg (566 KB)

launch.jpg (846 KB)

Links

www.modmymotor.org
www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk

Project results

We experienced a year-on-year newspaper sales lift of 2.7% on the day we published the supplement containing the photos of the 123 cars which were entered. Throughout the week of voting coupons appearing in-paper our week-on-week sales were up 4.5%. The website attracted 1,355 unique users over the course of the campaign.
During the voting process we received over 12,000 votes, of which half were by text and generated substantial revenue with a 25p charge for each vote. The number of texts suggests we had engaged very successfully with our targeted, younger, audience, but the spike in newspaper sales also showed our traditional print audience were willing participants also.
We gained the support of 10 businesses to provide the modification for the prize and pay for the privilege of being involved in what has become a very high-profile project.
We have attracted interest from major car modification shows such as the Street Life show at the NEC in July and national companies like Speed Culture are now major supporters of the event. To date over £10,000 of advertising/sponsorship revenue has been generated and a further £5,000 of modification work has been donated.
The sponsors have asked for us to retain and develop the website into a permanent forum for this niche culture of the motoring industry, offering sustainable revenue for us to do so.
The winner of the contest was a 23-year-old single male from one of Torbay’s less affluent neighbourhoods, fitting perfectly our advertisers' preferred target social group, even though the voting process was entirely fair and open.