New Zealand Gliding Grand Prix 2006

January 21-29, 2006 Omarama

The GP was a very professionally organised and marketed event.

It was a pioneer in many ways and provided an opportunity to test marketing
ideas which were not new but to this day not fully explored. For the
organisers it was a success in demonstrating how the sport can be taken to
the public through television and associated media.

This report serves to give an overview of the event and outline key
processes involved in putting it together. It does not cover the competition
but rather the marketing opportunity it provides.

I have also included some personal observations and some suggestions and
things to consider if we are to stage a marketing event such as this in
Australia.

Event OverviewOne of the key goals of this event was to significantly
elevate the public awareness of gliding. This event did two things, capture
it for TV and then used this to attract spectators to the field for a public
event. I will address these two initiatives separately. Firstly the use of
TV technology.Using state of the art TV , filming and animation technology
spectators were able to see for the first time live footage of the
competition and pilots in action. The TV footage was a combination of live
footage being captured from the gliders and a helicopter, and also animated
footage displaying the position of the gliders and individual competitor
information. The animation was very realistic and information displayed both
interesting and informative. The suppliers of the various technologies were
leaders in there fields and instrumental in bringing the America's Cup to TV
and capture for TV such events as Bathurst and Tour de France. It was a very
professional presentation.

Each of the 11 gliders had three cameras, one looking at the pilot and the
other two capturing different angles. Cockpits were also wired for sound.

The vision from these cameras was being relayed back to the control centre
at the field by a relay mounted on a helicopter that followed the field at
height to maintain line of site communications.

The following illustration demonstrates how the various technologies worked.

This illustration was published in the Souvenir Programme.



The second helicopter was fitted with the latest gimbal mounted gyro
stabilized camera. Controlled by the operator seated in the back of the
helicopter the camera was capturing vibration free footage of gliders racing
and close ups of pilots in flight.

A documentary film company was also engaged to capture the competition. They
were drawing footage from the helicopter, and glider cameras and ground
filming crews. I spoke with the producer on a couple of occasions over the
weekend and he was very happy and eagerly looking forward to taking it to
the US the week after to seek interest from National Geographic, Discovery
Channel and the American and British TV networks.

In summaryThe advancement in recent years of information transmission,
animation and image capture technology and the integration of them is
perfect for our sport. The quality of the TV presentation was outstanding
and has enormous potential to significantly build awareness of the sport. It
has some very positive flow through to attracting corporate sponsorship and
equity to the sport.

Suggestions for consideration

.. This area is very specialised and not to mention expensive and should only
be managed by a suitable person with appropriate knowledge. Peter Newport
through his company Aerosports is looking to offer this as a bundled product
to Australia. I would strongly recommend looking at this as an option.

.. This would allow Australian organisers to concentrate on sponsorship,
among other priorities.

Public EventThe public were invited to attend the last three days of the
competition and were entertained by glider aerobatics, skydiving,
hang-gliders and model gliders, and the launching of the competition gliders
heading off on task and their return. The feature was watching the
competition live on a huge TV screen. During the competition excellent
commentary was provided by Gavin Wills with the help of a couple of local
pilots. To keep the public entertained at other times commentary was
provided by a well known personality and also on field attractions such as
craft stalls, sideshows, food and alcohol outlets.



Regrettably the public days were very poorly attended with numbers being
estimated at only 1,200 people over the three days. They were budgeting for
15,000. The reason for its failure to attract public attendance was not the
marketing of the event, this was very well done, but rather Omarama's
proximity to a sizable population base. Omarama has avery small population
and is 3.5 hours from Christchurch (population - approx 350,000) and 2.5
hours from Queenstown (population - approx 9,200).

A entry ticket cost of $35 was also sited as a deterrent.

During the days there was a lot of dead time where nothing was happening on
the ground or in the air while the wait for conditions to be right for the
launch of competition gliders.

Suggestions for consideration

.. Have a well prepared program of activity through the day. Combination of
entertainment and things to educate people about gliding.

.. Have only one or maybe two public days. Complete the GP competition on the
Saturday and focus on the Sunday as a public marketing day. The public don't
need to be aware the competition finished the day before. Do the GP
presentation on the Sunday with the public. Have competition pilots do short
tasks or sprint races close to the field with the intent to entertain the
crowd. Talk to a pilot while flying the task to explain tactics. Interview
the pilots.

.. Layout of the public area is important, insure this is close as possible
to the grid / launch point. Obviously it is wind direction dependant but
provision should be made to display the comp gliders close to the crowd
while the gliders are being prepared. Stage this if necessary.

.. Have a late model glider set up so spectators can actually sit in it and
have instruments simulating a variety of things. Vario squawking lift with
the vario moving and the Altimeter winding up and the ASI fluctuating. Have
some prerecorded radio chatter. A task could be running on a IPAQ. Put a
parachute on the spectators back and basically give them the feel of being a
comp glider pilot while introducing them to the sophistication of the sport
but at the same time showing them how a glider fly's. Friends and family
could take photographs. Have www.soaring.org.au displayed so it appears in
cockpit shots.

The following suggestions are in relation to using the TV technology to
maximise entertainment and education.

.. Have comp pilot take the crowd through the preparation process for a race
from pilot briefing to glider prep. Some of this could be pre-recorded. Prep
of glider shouldbe live.



.. Have suitable non competitor pilots entertaining the crowd with regular
aerobatics. Have one of these aircraft rigged with the TV equipment and have
the pilot talk the crowd through the different aerobatic manoeuvres. Smoking
wing tips would be eye-catching and draw attention to the field.

.. Run a crowd competition for a couple of spectators to go for a flight and
on there return interview them on the stage. One of the people could be an
insider so we could insure all the right and important messages are
communicated.

.. Have a spot landing competition. Ground Cameras and under fuse cameras
showing the main wheel touching down as close as possible to the point.

.. A winch launch display again talking to the pilot.

Event Background

It is important to understand this event was a 'commercial operation' not a
gliding club organised event. It was the courage and vision of initially one
person Peter Newport that saw this event come together. Peter through his
company Aerosports Ltd staged the event.

Peter took up gliding as a sport only a couple of years ago and clearly has
become obsessed, as we can all appreciate, and now operates a Gliding
business from Omarama.

Peter's business background is in marketing and TV production. He could see
that our sport was well suited to TV and had the contacts to explore it.

Peter single handily pulled together the appropriate people to stage the
event with little to no help from gliding clubs or New Zealand Gliding.

Organising the Event

Peter employed the services of professionals to fore fill key roles to
ensure the event was of a very high standard that would attract sponsors,
media and the attention of the public.

The following is the key areas of management to insure the event is
successful from a marketing perspective.

.. Event Organiser - Ingrid Temple of Event Management Ltd, was responsible
for almost all aspects of the event other than the competition. These
included - sourcing, procuring and managing all ground services (PA,
amenities, food outlets, merchandising, money management (EFPOS and Credit
Card facilities for entry payment and purchases), Stall holders,
infrastructure providers and ticket sales.

.. Ingrid said a very important thing learnt was to insure the people
responsible for the managing of the marketing value of the event have close
dialogue with the people managing the competition to insure everything works
harmoniously over the public days. Respectively the two management teams
have different priorities but they need to work together.



.. Media Relations / Marketing - Victoria Murray-Orr of EveNZ, was
responsible for production of all marketing material, public relations and
media management.

.. The marketing of the event commenced in September 2005 with focus being at
this stage of introducing the event to the media. It was a process of
education of what gliding was and achieved through a constant feeding of
press releases and media briefings . Once they felt the media realised what
gliding was they then, and only then, could they start to educate them about
the competition and the event and ultimately get there attention.

.. A variety of marketing initiatives were used, these included

.. Print material (souvenir program, brochures and posters) - posters and
brochures distributed through catchment areas. All professionally designed.

.. Editorial - a pre planned flow of press releases were distributed to media
outlets up to and during the event. Certain media outlets were targeted such
as prominent papers and magazines. They received very good newspaper
coverage.

.. Radio - there media education strategy attracted quite a few
opportunities.

.. TV - Channel 3 had a TV crew there all weekend capturing stories for the
news, did a live cross to there equivalent of Today on Friday morning and
did a segment for there Current Affair style program after the Friday night
news.

Merchandising included posters, souvenir programme, T shirts and baseball
caps. Wireless transacting terminals were used for EFPOS and Credit Card
purchases.

DL Marketing Brochure

Souvenir Programme

.. Bus advertising - they only used one bus but had a very good response to
it and suggested if they realised the interest it would have created they
would have done three of them.

.. Community awareness & involvement program - Invited schools to participate
in a design a poster competition.

.. Web site - www.gp06.com - a well designed interactive site with good
information. During the competition streaming video was added. The site
received an extraordinary amount of hits, coming from all over the world.
This is a testament to the interest in the contest but I think particularly
the technology being used to display the event.

It should be acknowledged the media interest and coverage was not by way of
good luck it was by way of planning and professional management.

A media centre was set up providing services for journalists to use and also
to conduct post comp press conferences.

.. Victoria felt they started the marketing of the event too late and
highlighted importance of educating the media not just promoting the event.
Professional press releases are important.

Sponsorship

Being a first time event gaining sponsorship was very difficult. It was an
unproven event, the sport had no profile or TV image, and while some
potential sponsors were interested they sited this as the reason for not
committing funds on this occasion and adopted a 'wait and see' approach.

Most of the financial support was received through grants. A $10,000 cash
prize was donated by a prominent NZ company (Anaro Investment Group) and a
$2500 sponsorship deal from Aviation Co-op.

In Summary

The true cost of the event and the amount of dollars received through grants
and sponsorship was not made available by the organisers. Peter did explain
that most of the suppliers of professional services agreed to a 'Success
Basis' agreement, and for this they would be favoured suppliers for future
events. I understand some were paid a small amount to come on board but
final payment would be based on the success of the event. After the very
poor gate takings the financial success was riding on securing a TV and or
Documentary contract.

The success of the Omarama event should not be judged on the ticket sales
but rather the milestone it achieved in building awareness of the sport.
This is yet to be measured but it was unanimously agreed the sport had just
been catapulted into a marketing medium that will revolutionise the sport.



Peter Newport will be providing an estimate of what it would cost for
Aerosports to provide the technology and equipment required to take the
competition to TV and Documentary producers.

By outsourcing this expertise, whether it is Aerosports and another local
organsation, it allows the local organiser to concentrate on the following.

I feel the local organising committee is combined effort of National (M&D
and or Marketing Officer) and the hosting club. The following is a suggested
break up of responsiblilities and who should manage.

.. Gaining and Managing Sponsors - National

.. Marketing of the event - National

.. Ticket Sales - Club

.. Media Management - National

.. Coordinate infrastructure requirements - Club

.. Competition Management - Club