Item no 11

Report no

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 2011-12

Economic Development Committee
31 May 2011

1 1.1

Purpose of report The purpose of this report is to outline the proposal for an Edinburgh entry in The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

2 Summary 2.1 Clipper is the worlds longest yacht race, and has the worlds largest matched ocean racing fleet. In 2010 the City of Edinburgh was offered a private sector sponsored entry into The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. This year, the offer has been renewed. The Clipper Race pits entries from major cities or regions all over the world, over eight international race legs. As a result, the competition attracts significant international press attention. Events at each port along the race enhance the profile of the participating cities and regions. Edinburgh has the opportunity to exploit this sponsorship offer to promote the attraction of talent, students and tourists to the city. The aim is to enhance, in an extremely cost effective way, our wider efforts at targeting Generation Y. It is proposed that a proactive internet and social media campaign be designed to drive traffic from this target group to the city website: www.edinburghinspiringcapital.com. This effort will be reinforced through a series of unique port activation events based on Edinburghs reputation as a festival city. report

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3 Main

The Market Context Generation Y

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'Generation Y' is the marketing term for a segment of consumers typically born between 1980 and 2001. This is an important group within the Edinburgh tourism market nearly 50% of the citys visitors are under 35 years old. The aim would be to persuade more of this international element to visit or to consider studying in Edinburgh. According to Bea Fields, author of Millennial Leaders 1 , Gen Y typically has a bias towards extreme sport, outdoor events,

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night life, film, social media and video games. The Clipper Race would then seem perfect as the basis for pitching to this grouping, particularly if supported by precise, consistent messaging; social media and other digital technologies. There are four main market opportunities: 3.2 The recruitment of overseas students: There is a huge world market for students coming to Edinburgh to study. Currently there are 11,000 foreign students (check this) in the city. They come from all over the world, drawn by the excellent reputation of Edinburghs Further and Higher Education Institutions. This market represents an important flow of invisible exports, creates a pool of potential knowledge workers and builds an international alumnus of new Edinburgh Ambassadors. It is noteworthy how much goodwill this last benefit generates for the city internationally. Currently Edinburghs respective alumni bodies number 500,000 former international students. The retention of talent: This is an important economic development aim because people with the high level skills sets that the city needs to retain its international competitive position, often come here initially to study. Edinburghs enviable quality of life very often persuades them to stay on once they have finished their studies. It is the relatively high level of education attainment within the workforce which has given Edinburgh the productivity that the city enjoys. Generation Y tourism: As stated above, close to half of the tourists visiting Edinburgh are under 35 years old, so this is already a significant market. The festivals, culture, tailored nature of the Citys retail and general quality of life all act as a magnet. Edinburgh is considered cool, cultural and contemporary. The Destination Edinburgh Marketing Alliance has put a strong emphasis on this market through its Visit, Study, Live and Work agendas. For example, the city campaign, This is my Edinburgh focuses on this group. Generation Y is expected to continue to be a priority for Marketing Edinburgh (ME). Increasingly this market is being accessed through internet and social media related promotion. Considerable effort is being put into driving new traffic to www.edinburgh-inspiringcapital.com and related social media channels because this is the way that this target group sources and shares its information. Wider investment effects: The student body, combined with Edinburghs reputation as a Festival City also has a wider impact on investment. It is easier to recruit and retain international talent if the quality of life of the city is seen as high. Certain inward investors place great emphasis on this. It is extremely unlikely that many of the retailers and service companies that locate in the city would do so were it not for the talent pool and the citys contemporary image. The attraction of the young to the city is therefore important in maintaining a virtuous cycle of talent and investment.
The Clipper Race

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Clipper Round the World Yacht Race starts in the UK this summer, and provides a unique marketing platform for international promotion at 14 high profile ports of call in Asia, North and South America, Africa, Europe and Australasia. As stated in the summary, Clipper is the worlds longest yacht 2

race, and has the worlds largest matched ocean racing fleet. In addition to the corporate and destination sponsorship, the Race generates revenue through crew recruitment amateur sailors who are ordinary people (some with little or no sailing experience) who often want to achieve the extraordinary - to take on the challenge of a lifetime. All the crew undertake a comprehensive training programme and each boat has a professional skipper. 3.7 During the 6-8 day stopovers in each race port, sponsors and partners utilise the stimulating sporting background of the race for port activation. This takes the form of shore side networking events or conferences to promote the respective cities to international investors. Edinburgh has been offered free access to 10 sailing days which would allow for onboard receptions. These are opportunities for targeting potential sponsors. Last year, Edinburgh, through private sector sponsorship, hosted a trip around the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbour for city investors. This was a unique way, at little cost to the Council, of getting to know new investors and thanking those that are already located in Edinburgh. In 2010, Edinburgh Napier University also used the Clipper in Singapore to entertain new investors for its institution; and Queen Margaret University entertained alumni in the stopover in Ireland. Last year, the port activations generated a wider awareness of the city because there was considerable press interest in the race itself. Indeed, a documentary of the race was filmed and broadcast on Discoverys Quest channel for 6 consecutive weeks. Edinburghs entry featured extensively in the programmes. The series will be repeated and broadcast by other major international channels in the future. Further publicity was generated by a BBC TV journalist who was on the Edinburgh yacht for two race legs. This year the offer of private sector sponsorship for an Edinburgh entry has been renewed. Although like last year, this sponsorship is to remain anonymous, the intent of the donor is to promote the city. In return, the Council is being asked to work with other sponsors to ensure that the port activations are as successful in raising Edinburghs international profile as possible.
The Opportunity

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Unlike many international locations, Edinburgh only has a very small budget for international promotion. This resource has had to be further reduced because of the Councils current financial challenges. At the same time, the growing jobs gap in the city makes it imperative that we continue to encourage investment into the city and attract and retain talent and tourism. Typically, sponsorship of the boat costs 1 million per world race. For Edinburgh, the Clipper is therefore an incredibly cost effective opportunity. The question is how to maximise the benefits of this extraordinary offer. Both the Economic Development Service (EDS) and Marketing Edinburgh see the main focus as the promotion of the City to the international under 35s. This is because the race connotes energy, youth and challenge. The next sections propose how this could be most effectively be implemented.

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Early ideas on the port activations and promotion of the city brand

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Social media, mobile marketing and web related promotion: To effectively target the international under 35s market, messaging will focus on social media marketing channels like Facebook and Twitter. These platforms are already highly accessible over mobile devices. These are the platforms on which Generation Y typically accesses the majority of its information. Social media is very effective at organically building awareness, follower numbers and loyalty through peer recommendation. This approach also provides significant opportunity to capture rich data on this group. The Edinburgh Inspiring Capital websites will provide back-up to this social media and mobile driven activity. This strategy has already been tried and tested on other campaigns. This Festive Season, the Edinburgh Sparkles website was visited 17,983 times by 16,100 absolute unique visitors and 1983 repeating visitors. This compares to 6,270 absolute unique visitors of the Edinburgh Sparkles 2009 website. This is an encouraging jump in traffic. Interestingly, most overseas visitors came from the US (33.5%) and New York and San Francisco are important targets for port activation on the race. According to Google analytics, the Edinburghs Invest Website was the top performing element of the City portal for the month of March. Overall the site received 11,105 visits during March (up 2,103 from Feb) of which 7,341 were unique visitors (up 1,275 from February). Visits to the Invest pages totalled 22.88% of all traffic to the edinburgh-inspiringcapital.com website. Average time per user spent on the site was also up six seconds on last month. This increase in traffic coincided with the Councils attendance at MIPIM. Both leaps in traffic numbers are therefore due to wider, eye catching consumer or investor events. The challenge for Marketing Edinburgh and the EDS though is how to keep creating these new events to increase web traffic. It is proposed that the seeding of this social media take place as soon as possible to create initial interest. This would be delivered through the Brand's existing social media accounts, and also by digital advertising through Facebook (Facebook can target according to country, city, age band and interest). Separate social media accounts would be set up to handle all the Clipper messaging and to cross sell with other Edinburgh activity such as the City Festivals. A social media game could be created and seeded through a viral marketing company which would help reinforce messages sent throughout the internet. There will also be a dedicated tracking of the race on www.edinburghinspiringcapital.com. Search engine optimisation will be undertaken before the race starts to ensure that the City web content is highly visible on Google and other search engines. Pay Per Click advertising (PPC is the right hand side paid for listings on Google) and Google Content Network banner advertising, will also be commissioned to acquire more traffic to social media activity. Microblogging, primarily using Twitter will also be implemented. These are short updates, transmitted a number of times each day from the boat. A dedicated blogger would be identified as our man/woman on board. This messaging will be consistent throughout the race. Images and videos will be posted on the EIC Brands Flickr and YouTube accounts. There is also the 4

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potential for using foreign language messaging over social media and foreign language targeting of digital advertising and PPC.
Port Activations

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Edinburghs port activations last year were inevitably of a smaller scale than some of the other entries. Several of the other race entries had significant resources at their disposal; one boat, a budget of 2 million over two years. As Edinburgh does not have this scale of resource, the Council will have to think carefully about how the city differentiates itself from the extensive port activation other cities are able to stage. Given the tight budgets within the EDS and ME, we will need to be very specific about the demographic which will be hosted at these events. The audience who are attracted will be determined by a venues location, ambiance and reputation. One idea, which fits in well with the market that Edinburgh is attempting to access, is to target local night time and other contemporary cultural and sporting venues as sponsors for a port activation Party on the main legs. Invitation lists to the event might include leading bloggers, and cultural press may be targeted for these events. It is proposed that we make contact with an influencer in each of the ports selected someone who knows the audience we are trying to access as they will be able to help create the right guest list Competitions will be run for a chance to participate in the ten corporate sailing days available at each port. Linked to a Facebook campaign, this will have the effect of driving up website traffic, expanding the database of potential Generation Y customers considerably. The venues themselves will project contemporary images of the city itself and a promotional film will be produced for You-Tube. This focus in areas like New York and Singapore will differentiate our offer from the other race entries, while building on the citys differences from the rest of the pack. It is proposed that the Edinburgh port activations be focused on up to five hot spots. These will be key markets which complement the citys own brand values for example New York, San Francisco, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro or, alternatively, Singapore, the Netherlands or one of the Australia/New Zealand stopovers. This will also help to conserve resources. Edinburghs festivals are a unique selling point with Generation Y. Festivals Edinburgh has agreed that they will make efforts to showcase international festival acts at some of the ports to add to the cultural image that Edinburgh is attempting to engender. This will contribute to wider city promotion for the Cultural Olympiad and other Festival events planned from 2012 - 2014. The Fringe and Hogmanay are particularly important as sixty percent of Hogmanay customers are already from outside Edinburgh. It is anticipated that a number of Edinburghs universities and colleges would also put on port promotions aimed at student recruitment and international sponsorship. Half of the visited ports are target areas for the HE/FE sector.
The brand design and collateral

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Design ideas which provide a greater emphasis on the citys contemporary feel, and appeal to the target audience are being evolved from the yachts previous 5

look. The brand design will be easily transferable to other materials, such as T-shirts or posters which will also carry the website address.
Key performance indicators

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The following are the recommended key performance indicators: Increase in traffic to social media/web sites of 20%; Increase in the recruitment of foreign students from specific target cities; A similar level of media coverage to the previous race.

Management

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It is proposed that Marketing Edinburgh would manage all aspects of this programme including the recruitment of the new web and PR support and the port activation co-ordinator. Implications

4 Financial 4.1

Last year, the EDS and DEMA absorbed the support of the port activations events into its mainstream work. This was so that the Council support for the Edinburgh entry was cost neutral. Although this led to some good investor events, particularly at San Francisco and New York, it did put a strain on other economic development activity. This year, with the offer of renewed sponsorship, EDS recommend that dedicated resources be provided to ensure that the port activations are as successful as possible. It is proposed that 55,000 be invested in port activation, matched by the same amount from Marketing Edinburgh. This will be met from the City Development Department revenue budget for 2011/12. The intention would then be to raise 100,000 from private and educational sector sponsorship, providing a total potential budget of 210,000. Income and expenditure are featured below. Taking into account the sponsorship for the Clipper Race, expenditure represents a leverage of just over 1:20 (Sponsorship of the clipper of 1 million + contribution from ME & private sector 155,000 = 55,000 to 1.15m).
Income EDS Marketing Edinburgh Sponsorship 000s 55 55 100 Expenditure Web Support Port Activation Coordinator Port Activation budget x 5 ports@20k ea Marketing collateral Campaign press and PR 000s 30 40 100 20 20

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Total

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5 Environmental 5.1

Impact

There will be some negative impact from flights to the port activation areas but this would be managed to a minimum. Most of the PR and publicity would be carried out through the World Wide Web. ns

6 Conclusio 6.1

With nearly 50% of Edinburghs tourists being under 35 years old, and with 11,000 students, The Generation Y market is an important priority for city promotion. The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 2011/12 would therefore provide an excellent opportunity to profile Edinburgh as a contemporary, cultural capital with the aim of attracting new talent to visit, live, work and study in the city.

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7 Recommendations 7.1 To support a campaign aimed at securing maximum benefit from the offer of sponsorship for the Edinburgh entry of The Clipper 2011/12 Round the World Yacht Race. To agree that 55,000 be earmarked as the Councils contribution to the costs of this important marketing campaign.

7.2

Dave Anderson Director of City Development

Appendices Contact/tel/Email Wards affected Single Outcome Agreement Background Papers

Greg Ward / 0131 529 4298 / greg.ward@edinburgh.gov.uk