Our Brief: Their exciting WaveRunner machines are the choice of more rental site operators than any other personal watercraft so Yamaha not only wanted to tempt holidaymakers to try them out, but also to give them the chance of owning their own high performance machine. The challenge was to devise an exciting competition which would both stimulate rental uptake and collect customer data for future sales leads. Yamaha wanted data ... and as much of it as possible. If Yamaha could collect personal information from some of the one million people who rent a PWC on Europe's beaches every year, they'd have a very good idea where to target their sales drive.

Our Solution: We created a pan-European competition that offered holidaymakers the chance to win a Yamaha WaveRunner, as well as other Yamaha watersports products and accessories ... and capture their personal details at the same time. Not surprisingly the promotion needed a name that would be understood by all nationalities; so 'Rent it! Win it!' was born. Anyone renting a WaveRunner from one of a hundred or so selected sites across Europe collected a smart credit card with a unique code, entitling them to enter the competition online when they got home.

Rental locations, mostly on beach sites, meant a huge amount of multi-language material was designed, produced and distributed including banners, posters, stickers and leaflets to steer customers towards the action. We also sourced, designed and supplied the plastic cards, each with a unique code hidden under a scratch panel. But that was only half the job; to enter Rent it! Win it!, the renter needed to visit our dedicated, multi-lingual competition website, complete a form that collected their personal details and validate their unique code. Throughout the campaign, Yamaha were able to see just how many people were visiting and registering on a daily basis. Finally, we managed an e-mail campaign to inform the lucky winners.

Our Result: Some very happy winners among over 4000 participants who entered from all around Europe, a lot of very happy Yamaha customers (the rental site operators who had seen a sharp increase in their business during the promotion) and quality data for Yamaha. Due to the success of the campaign it is repeated annually.