Melbourne motor show revived

VACC and RACV work together to establish Australian Motoring Festival as a permanent fixture in the calendar

The Australian Motoring Festival is gaining momentum in the lead-up to its inaugural event, timed for March 26-29 next year.

There's an evangelical zeal in the way the two partners in the joint venture – the RACV and VACC – have drummed up interest in the Festival, which is being marketed as "the motor show that moves".

To date, event organisers have secured a venue (The Royal Melbourne Showgrounds), they've enlisted the aid of a track designer (Renato Loberto of MotoKinetic) to develop on-road and off-road tracks, and they've recruited Shane Jacobson – comic actor, TV presenter and petrol head – to be the public face of the Festival.

Now all they need are exhibitors!

According to David Purchase, VACC's Executive Director, the Australian International Motor Show planned for Melbourne last year had attracted 20 exhibitors up to the point at which the organiser cancelled the show. No car company has signed up for the new event yet, since the organisers only mailed out a prospectus last week, but Purchase is confident there will be enough exhibitors getting on board to make the Festival a success – with the plan being to keep it running as an annual event subsequently.

There's little doubt in the mind of the VACC chief that the new format developed for the Festival will be more appealing for exhibitors and attendees alike. In their discussions with the car companies since the demise of AIMS (the Australian International Motor Show) run by VACC in Melbourne and alternating with the FCAI's show in Sydney, the Festival organisers have learned what the car companies want from a show.

For one thing, it has to be 'interactive' – not just a static display of cars. The Festival will provide visitors with opportunities to take new cars for test drives. Two driving zones comprise an on-road loop circuit with three additional testing areas for autonomous emergency braking, active safety systems and automatic parking, plus an off-road route with five additional testing areas for ascent/descent, wheel articulation, side angle, mixed surfaces and rear visibility/parking obstacles. Renato Loberto's company, MotoKinetic, has been tasked with setting up the different drive programs at a cost to VACC and RACV of around a cool half a million dollars. It's well worth the money, Purchase declared.

The car companies want costs brought down though. Attracting large numbers of prospective buyers must be relatively comparable with the standard overheads of a large metropolitan dealer. And certainly the costs should be a lot lower than leasing floor area at a traditional capital city motor show.

According to Purchase the Festival can achieve that. In contrast with leasing floor area at Darling Harbour (Sydney) or the Melbourne Exhibition Centre for AIMS, car companies can lease floor area in 'lots' of 300m² – for about $100,000. That's a fraction of the million-dollar fees asked for large tracts of floor space in the two AIMS venues. Additionally, exhibitors wishing to offer vehicles for the drive program will be required to pay an additional sum, put at less than $30,000 by Purchase. It remains a considerable cost saving in total.

After the amicable parting of the ways with the FCAI – and the termination of the agreement to jointly host AIMS in Melbourne and Sydney – VACC called together marketing execs from 15 different car companies and asked them what they wanted of an event that would showcase their products in the one major venue.

As well as the lower costs and the interactivity, the car companies wanted a show held over a shorter duration than was the case for AIMS, they wanted large attendances through the gates, they wanted national media exposure and they wanted data capture to help them keep track of aspiring buyers. Those demands drove the organisers to settle on several criteria that distinguish the Festival from AIMS.

The Showgrounds venue proved a much more affordable venue, but with plenty of space to expand. It is well serviced by public transport, close to the city and suburbs, and blessed with a mix of pavilions for under-cover displays, and open areas for the driving programs. When VACC looked at other venues they found Sandown to be run-down and neglected, without the large pavilions of the showgrounds. Calder was ruled out by virtue of being too far out of town.

According to Purchase, the Festival will occupy about "two thirds" of the 12Ha showground site. That area set aside (about 8Ha) is nearly three times the area available at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre (AKA Jeff's Shed) where AIMS was held in the past. And Purchase suggests the Festival may need to use the remaining 4Ha if things turn out as planned, even though that remaining area may not be entirely fit for purpose.

The Festival will run for just four days, in "Mad March" next year. Asked whether the organisers had considered scheduling the inaugural event closer to the AGP in order to leverage synergies from the F1 event, Purchase replied that they had been "struggling to find a date" any closer than two weeks after the AGP.

But in any case, the organisers "didn't want it in the same week as the Grand Prix," since it could have had some impact on the "discretionary dollar" consumers had to spare. By allowing a couple of weeks in between the events, the families likely to attend both events could find the money to visit the Festival, which will be quite affordable anyway. A family pass will be $60, or $40 for RACV members.

Purchase suggests a "conservative" figure of 100,000 visitors will pour through the turnstiles over the four days of the Festival. The VACC boss believes the numbers could actually be much higher than that, with attendance figures for the final AIMS held in Melbourne, in 2011, reportedly totalling around 195,000. That was a marked improvement on the figure of 160,000 in 2009. The shorter duration of the Festival is not expected to have any impact on the attendance figures.

National media exposure is guaranteed through an alliance between the event organisers and a media partner – a Melbourne-based daily newspaper with national affiliates and a web presence.

Of major importance to any car company considering whether to exhibit at a motor show or similar event is the ability to sell the product. The Australian Motoring Festival can provide the exhibitors with data capture opportunities. It works like this: The static displays of new cars will be couched in Hall 1, at the main gate. Prospective buyers wanting to take a car for a test drive can supply their contact details in exchange for a smartphone app with a barcode, which entitles them to test the vehicle at the venue. It's a blurring of the lines between experiential marketing and canvassing sales prospects.

Why the Festival should succeed

The Australian Motoring Festival is not a traditional motor show. Its breadth of displays and activities serves to distinguish it from a show like AIMS.

A car company PR executive recently speaking with motoring.com.au provided an insight as to why AIMS had ultimately failed, along with all the other capital city motor shows. Australia is a small market, he said, and even AIMS – the very biggest of the local motor shows – couldn't remain sustainable when the car companies were finding new ways of targeting buyers directly and more cost-effectively.

It's not just Australia where motor shows are struggling, of course. Our source reckons that for smaller shows around the world, their time has come. If they're not Frankfurt, Geneva, Paris, Detroit – and even Detroit is struggling – or Tokyo, they might as well pack up and slink off into the night.

Car companies are providing experiential marketing events to target specific buyers of their respective brands. And dealerships can provide photographic studio-standard lighting in their showrooms, along with "nicer coffee" and no admission fees.

The car companies have limited marketing budgets; a point that David Purchase acknowledged. They cannot afford to siphon off most of that budget for one or two major motor shows a year, leaving nothing more for other marketing activities.

Prestige brands in particular have seen the light – in the form of experiential events for a fraction of the cost of motor show fit-out and floor lease. Furthermore, they're getting more bang for those fewer bucks by narrowing the search for committed new-car buyers.

According to our anonymous PR exec, the plan to move AIMS from the Darling Harbour Convention Centre while that facility was being renovated was a recipe for disaster. The proposal to relocate the show to Homebush during the renovation was unlikely to attract visitors in anything like the same numbers as the convention centre did.

For much the same reason, our source was dubious about the VACC's decision to site the new Melbourne show at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds. But Melbournians are renowned for making a day at the motor show more of an event, rather than just walking in off the street. That's certainly how David Purchase expects the Festival to pan out.

Why you should go

There will be something to entertain everyone, and the organisers anticipate visitors can waste away an entire day at the Festival. Classic cars will not only be on view in static displays, they will be motoring around the grandstand, offering sight and sound the average person will rarely witness.

For kids there will be dodgem cars and remote control vehicles, while the non-enthusiast family members can enjoy the ambience and jazz music.

You can drive the car or cars of your choice if you're in the market for a new machine, and the Festival's organisers anticipate as many as 10,000 sorties combined, for the on-road and off-road tests over the four days.

Other exhibitors will be there, displaying motorbikes, parts and accessories too.

Admission is $30 for a single person or $60 for a family, and RACV member discounts apply. Getting there is easy, with some parking available, and there's a train station adjacent the showgrounds precinct.

Pictured:

Shane Jacobson, David Purchase, AIMS in Melbourne for 2011, Renato Loberto, showgrounds pavillion for classic car display, showgrounds grandstand, Festival layout computer-generated images

Melbourne motor show revived

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