YCN : LTA TENNIS BRIEF

LTA

Get more women in the UK playing tennis.

Background to LTA and British Tennis

As the Governing Body of Tennis in the UK, we are responsible for governing, developing and promoting the sport, and our mission is to get more people playing, more often. Our aim for 2014 is to get 450,000 people playing tennis across parks and clubs.

Target Audience

Whilst tennis is fairly gender balanced (and age balanced) compared to other sports, there are not enough women playing. There is a huge lapse rate among men and women after the ages of 16-19 (particularly women) but there is latent demand in the 20-34s, especially among women in London and the South East. Seasonal play in particular sees a huge uplift among this age group, and seasonal uplift is highly significant outside the club environment. Based on expressed interest in playing, graduate professionals, male and female, still represent the greatest opportunity for us to drive participation much higher, as there is still much untapped potential, and this could drive 36% of all our future participation growth.

Our core female target is a graduate professional aged 21-34 living in London/South-East, who also likes to do other sports or physical activities, of which tennis is one option among others. This group is made up of:

1. Lapsed players (i.e. they used to play a lot, but not anymore). They would be happy playing cardio tennis (more details on cardio tennis below).
2. Infrequent players (i.e. play a bit in the summer, or on and off through the year). They want to play “proper tennis”

The Creative Challenge

Your challenge is to create a campaign that will increase awareness of the benefits of tennis to lapsed and infrequent players. Your campaign may focus on one particular group, or target both at the same time.

Either way, it must grab their attention and leave them in no doubt that tennis could be the sport for them!

Key barriers

• Finding and booking a court (not being able to book online)
• Finding time (other priorities)
• Someone to play with

Key motivators

• Health/fitness – the gym is at the heart of their lives (especially the lapsed)
• Competitiveness – the ‘Infrequents’ want this because they love the competitive side of tennis, having a game, getting the release and adrenaline from smacking the ball and winning the match
• Enjoyment/fun
• Sociable

Other points to note:

• To some extent, we have an opportunity to reposition Cardio Tennis as a gym-based fitness activity which is new, different, on-trend, “the in thing”, all-abilities, defined age, single sex
• Remember that this audience love the idea of “working off stress”, physical “aggression” through hitting the ball hard
• Friendship groups are absolutely key: they will turn up with a friend the first time, and then feel more confident after that
• Cost is not a barrier for this audience: they expect to pay £10 or more. Convenience/ease trumps cost.
• Assumptions that “tennis is stuffy/exclusive/posh” does NOT feature for this target audience: they know what tennis is, they “get it". The only thing they DO believe is that London Tennis Clubs are posh/stuffy/exclusive and “not for them”
• The words “coach” and “coaching” immediately imply “serious” or “you have to be really into tennis”: if you use this kind of language… better to position things as “instructor” or something else rather than coach for this particular segment.
• Awareness is very low for Cardio Tennis, different types of balls,AllPlayTennis.com (website providing info on places to play or linking you with people to play with) etc: we have a relatively clean-slate to work from with these people.
• We already have an online booking system in development.

Considerations, Media and Mandatories

Feel free to bring your creative thinking to life in any medium, or combination of media, that you feel will best engage with the target audiences. We’ll be looking for pragmatic and hard-working ideas that won’t break the bank to execute. We’d not discourage posters and other outdoor formats, but would rather they weren’t used in isolation. Your campaign will need to work across all kinds of channels, so do keep this flexibility in mind – and we will of course use our online channels promotionally.

In the Project Pack you’ll find examples of previous campaigns (such as Tennis is…) and you may wish to reference some of this activity. Alternatively, feel free to start from a clean slate.

Please use the LTA/British Tennis logo.

Useful info

www.lta.org.uk
See Tennis is... campaign attachment
Ref other sports – Cycling has an excellent women’s programme

CARDIO:

• Cardio Tennis is a fun group activity featuring drills to give players of all abilities an ultimate, high energy workout to music – the ‘Zumba’ of tennis!
• See Cardio website http://www.lta.org.uk/allplaytennis/about/cardiotennis/

Tennis Xpress:

• Tennis Xpress is a 6 week course that is for beginners or people wanting to get back into tennis
• Whether you’re a complete beginner or looking to get back into tennis Tennis Xpress will get you started quickly
• Helps you learn how to serve, rally and score in just 6 weeks (1 lesson per week)

Deliverables, Artwork and Additional Information

For guidance on how to submit your work, please adhere to the main deliverables information which can be found here.

Any additional supporting information referenced in the brief can be found in the supporting project pack.