A Monstrous Launch for HEL’s New Road Legal Race Caliper!

WDA has helped HEL performance with a whole range of exciting marketing projects over the years, and have won multiple awards for their famous ambigram campaign which WDA created a number of years ago.

“Owner Simon is a great guy and someone WDA considers a friend. I personally remember meeting him way back when he was starting out and it’s great to see what a success he’s made of the brand, which is now pretty much regarded as the global market leader for hoses,” said WDA’s MD, Lee Waterhouse.

“Simon is well known for his ballsy approach, so it came as no surprise when he called me to say he’d gotten a bit bored and decided to develop a brand new product from scratch – and asked if WDA would like to help him with the launch!”

For the past few years, he’d apparently been busy working on a top-secret project. Still braking related – but a big departure for HEL and a massive challenge and effort to bring to market. Not least because Simon wanted to deliver a class-leading product, which improved on offerings from much bigger and more established (for the specific product) brand names.

HEL’s new caliper product required a completely new approach – design, testing, manufacturing were all a departure from HEL’s core product – along with an effective marketing strategy to successfully launch and drive instant traction and sales.

WDA’s approach

Looking over the specs and having inspected the product and seen the lab results and initial feedback from testers, WDA knew that the new HEL calipers were seriously high quality and high performing components. However, we also knew that performance calipers at a similar price point were available from the market leaders.

Whilst their comparatively priced product was actually a lower grade cast unit, the challenge was that we needed to change the customers preconceptions – both their belief that HEL was ‘just’ a brake lines brand; but also that their new maiden caliper product really was far superior than established products at similar price points – and in fact was actually more comparable with other products costing nearly twice as much.

We needed to convince the audience that there is simply no alternative caliper available within the marketplace today that represents what the HEL caliper does – for the money.

The Campaign concept

The first step in doing this was to create initial engagement. We needed people to stop, take notice and find out more. To coincide with the launch we suggested a discounted introductory price of £666 – which also leveraged the HEL brand name and its ‘devilish’ associations! WDA suggested a paid social and specialist print ad campaign to drive traffic to a dedicated caliper specific landing page that was both visually and emotionally engaging.

The landing page needed to include striking visuals of the product and lifestyle/racing content to position the product and connect with the target audience, along with all the product benefits and supporting content including the value proposition, testimonials, reviews and stats.

2 main calls to action were needed – a “buy now” call to action to take visitors straight to the discounted product purchase page, and a form to subscribe visitors that weren’t ready to buy, allowing us to continue engagement, until such time they were ready to upgrade. This was then backed up by social retargeting.

Landing Page – Design, photography copywriting and implementation

HEL’s calipers really are beautifully crafted works of art, and so it was important that the premium feel and gorgeous details were conveyed through the photography we took, whilst the content guys created emotive copy that was designed to spark audience engagement, click-throughs to the product page and ultimately drive sales. Once all the page content was signed off, WDA’s front end team put together wireframes then designs for the landing page, following UI/UX best practices. In this case they then worked with HEL’s in-house developer to implement on their Magento e-commerce platform.

Advertising campaign and launch

Once the client was happy with the landing page the wheels were set in motion to get our print adverts out to the magazines along with social media cards, posts and animated graphics. Again all created by WDA, these consisted of simple, striking campaign imagery following our ‘666’ concept, and were targeted to drive traffic to the lander. Working to pretty insane deadlines, the caliper was launched successfully and met with praise by HEL’s customers. Simon Lane, Managing Director who had this to say…

“Thanks WDA for all you do for us – Superb! I’m getting very excited by all this !!!!…”

Discover how WDA can help you

If you and your automotive business have a similar requirement to HEL Performance or you’d like to simply find out more about how WDA could help you drive more business then get in touch with us today on 01332 372 728 or email [email protected].

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