HEAD Padel CX Journey Pitch

2022

HEAD Sport is a leading Global Manufacturer and retailer of premium, high-performance sports equipment and apparel for athletes and players. Their current range of products encompass sporting gear for Tennis, Skiing, Golf, Swimming and more.

This project was part of a group submission for the course "Creating Customer Experiences". The final CX proposal was presented by the group to a panel of two judges; the presiding professor in charge of this course, and a client representative from the marketing department of HEAD.

The Problem

In the UK, Padel is a relatively new but fast-growing sport and product category. HEAD Padel seeks to establish a strong position in the UK market and take advantage of as well as further stimulate the market’s growth. HEAD aims to establish HEAD Padel as the the go-to brand for everything concerning the Padel sport – for beginners, advanced players and professional athletes as well as for Padel clubs and associations.

The Mission

The goal of this project is to develop a unique customer experience that can:

Attract new customers to the sport and to the brand HEAD Padel.
Turn existing HEAD Padel users into fans and promoters of the sport and the brand.

Although budget constraints are negligible, the proposed measures should aim to be as cost-effective as possible.

Understanding the Pain Points

For HEAD Padel, we recognise that there are three key pain points we need to tackle:

Lack of consumer awareness: HEAD Padel's lack of consumer awareness can be reflected in the fact that not only is Padel a relatively unknown sport, but people are also unlikely to associate HEAD with Padel.
Accessibility: This indicates that there is a entry barrier for people who do become interested in engaging with the sport but is unable to due to court or equipment shortage.
Consumer retention: the idea that people quit playing the sport due to various reasons.

Our proposed touchpoints aim to tackle those three pain points, with emphasis placed on raising awareness of both HEAD and the sport.

Establishing the Brand Identity

Our proposed customer experience journey for HEAD Padel aims to establish HEAD as a notable, convenient, trustworthy authority for Padel.

Ultimately the proposed tactics should aim to provide convenient entry for users to engage with HEAD's line of padel products, establishing an association between HEAD and a 'fun' Padel sporting experience.

Tackling Touchpoints

Our proposed CX journey consists of four interrelated touchpoints: pop-up courts, website, social media, and clubs and coaches, to address the customers’ needs.

Although the four touchpoints spread across all stages of the customer experience journey, our focus is placed more on the pre-purchase stage, where users' first experience would form the initial impressions to decide whether they would continue future interactions

Pop-up Padel Courts

To kick off our journey, we propose the implementation of pop-up Padel courts across London for invited players to have a go at the sport using equipment provided by HEAD. On the court, coaches will be present to assist players, as well as a registration desk for interested players to enroll in HEAD's membership programme. Interested parties may choose to book a slot on these pop-up courts to play free-of-charge at any time the courts are open.

The locations chosen to install these pop-up courts prioritise convenience for the average user, encouraging engagement with the brand's products, as well as establishing an association between HEAD Padel and the Padel sporting experience.

Project Highlights

Figure 1: Interrelationship of proposed touchpoints

Figure 2: Organic search result on the 1st page of Google for the query ‘Padel Racket’
(retrieved on 19 March, 2022)

Figure 3: Overview of proposed Touchpoints in correlation to stages of the customer journey, painpoints and elicited emotions

Results and Key Takeaways

The presentation of this project produced the following results:

Commendation from the panel towawrds our proposed ideas and execution, particularly the way we managed to "target the intended audience with appropriate and cost-effective tactics".

Some of my key takeaways of this project are:

An effective marketing strategy does not require a fancy advertising strategy: With the high budget allocated to us, a lot of groups saw the opportunity to pitch fancy campaigns involving cutting-edge technologies or to venture into new channels of marketing. At the end of the day, what's most important is to consider touchpoints most relevant for the target audience.
Focus on the problem: At the end of the day your proposal is used as a means to solve a problem. Keeping this as a priority would allow you to craft effective marketing strategies