Range Rover road tests Web promo

Land Rover has launched www.rangerover.landrover.com, billed as an early step in the public awareness programme for the new Range Rover and the first online launch campaign in the history of the brand.

Land Rover director of global marketing John Edwards says: “The new Range Rover is a premium luxury off-road vehicle and having an online presence is essential. The website aims to build relationships with current and potential new Range Rover customers, as well as informing the curious.”

The first phase of the launch campaign began in early October and involved the use of an unbranded teaser site, www.perfectlymade.com, which made no reference to the identity of the new vehicle.

Its purpose was to engage visitors with luxury product stories and images that contained hidden messages relating to the new Range Rover, encouraging them to register and find out more information.

The latest website will evolve over the launch period. Visitors will be encouraged to register their details in order to gain access to the site’s “Inside Circle” – a group that will be able to access exclusive website content and receive regular e-mail updates.

As with the launch of perfectlymade.com, the unveiling of www.rangerover.landrover.com will be supported by a pan-European online campaign, with 500 ad slots appearing on sites such as T.com, Bloomberg.com, Economist.com, CNN.com, Eurosport.com, MSN.com, AOL.com AltaVista and Yahoo!

The target market is high earning, men aged over 45, who are time starved, but highly selective about the sites and specific areas of those sites that they wish to visit.

Media has been bought against specific areas within websites, such as rugby results pages.

As part of media selection criteria, media owners were also asked to offer hybrid deals, including elements of cost per click.

Rowan Avis, digital account director of Mdigital, which bought the space, says that the aim was: “To make sites more responsible and transparent for the media they are selling, and to see who had the confidence that they would deliver. The challenge has been to develop a highly-targeted campaign that allows us to build an in-depth profile of our recipient target market.”