Anyone For Tennis?

It's that time of the year when, here in the UK, everyone gets interested in tennis for a fortnight. Park tennis courts are woken from their eleven month hibernation as the nation gets inspired to try and emulate what they see the professionals doing on the television.

Sun shine and hours of daily coverage of Wimbledon combine to turn thousands of people into aspiring players, even if it is just for a month.

Many of these people will decide to inject a little money into their new-found interest. Racquet manufacturers are forever providing reasons for us to believe that we could be just that little bit better if we had the latest technology in our hands.

We know this technology is good because it's what all the best players use. We can see that for ourselves.

Or can we?

Despite the impression that certain manufacturers like to give us, or in the case of Head, what they actually state in their annual report and accounts to shareholders, very few of the players are using these wonderful technological innovations.

Towards the end of his career Andre Agassi promoted the Head Flexpoint Radical OS. You can still find references to it being his "racquet of choice", and Head were so pleased with the technology that they told their shareholders he had used the technology to reach the final of the US Open (aged 35).

He didn't use a Flexpoint racquet.

He used the same racquet he'd been using for more than a decade, but it was painted to look like it had the Flexpoint technology.

Such paint jobs (as they are known) are a common occurrence in professional tennis. Most pros like the same racquets they've always used, weighted and balanced to their preference and with a custom grip shape  .

In the meantime, the racquet manufacturers like to promote lightweight racquets because they feel easier to use when you waft them around the shop and they cost less to make.

All of which brings me to Vantage.

Vantage give everyone access to the same options a professional has when he or she chooses a racquet.

Racquet length, weight, balance and grip can all be customised.

All of this is done on-line, through their clever and stylish website.

As a tennis player I can vouch for the quality of their products. But as a consumer behaviour expert I know that will only go so far.

Vantage's biggest challenge is the ignorance of customers and the complexity of the tennis racquet market. Most people (and the world is probably a better place for this) don't want to analyse who is using what and why. Most people just want to feel like they're using a good product. And they judge this by buying a brand that they've seen used by their favourite players.

It's the same with most products where brands operate: the brands offer a package of positive associations that give customers a feeling. Of course, as they buy they can justify their purchase in all sorts of apparently rational ways, but the feeling comes first.

The junior tennis racquet market illustrates perfectly the contradiction between what's best and what people choose  . They want a racquet like their hero; a Babolat like Nadal's, a Wilson like Federer's.

But they won't get it.

They'll get something that looks right, but it won't even be made from the same material (junior racquets below 25" in length from the main brands are all made of aluminium - a material no professional would dream of using).

Vantage now offers a range of graphite racquets for juniors, but until kids (or parents) see their favourite professional using one it will be very difficult to persuade them to even hit a ball with one  .

It's easy to say what Vantage should do: sponsor a top professional player to use their product. This would leverage all the associations (of excellence, success and achievement) that people have with the player, and activate them at exactly the same time they see the Vantage brand. In addition to increasing awareness of the brand, this shapes the way people feel about the product.

Once these associations are in place they work just as readily in reverse: Vantage feels excellent, successful and something we'll achieve more with in our tennis. Our unconscious gets a bit muddled between the feelings for the player and the feelings for the product and they cross over.

At a conscious level we tell ourselves something different. We tell ourselves it must be a great product and then retrospectively select the elements (like product quality and stylish web design) that are compatible with the feeling we have.

But this would require a sizeable investment for a small company, and more money would be needed to tell the racquet-buying consumer about this news.

The website looks great and works very well.  But without the associations people's unconscious minds' reference, the rational argument probably won't be enough to win many over.

But perhaps other associations could be leveraged less expensively.

Just knowing that any player had won a tournament using a Vantage racquet would be reassuring. Providing a roll of honour at the side of the screen (or scrolling across the bottom might be worth trying).

Similarly, and considering my recent article on how context influences consumers, joint promotions with larger brands would be another way of raising the perceived appeal of this relatively new brand.

So, all in all, a great website, a great product, and a great customer experience but, strange as it may sound, that may not always be enough.  Consumer behaviour is, first and foremost, a matter of the unconscious mind, and Vantage still have work to do in reassuring people that choosing their brand isn't going to lead to regret.

I can tell you that you won't regret buying a Vantage racquet, and that you'll love yours like I do mine. But I can't tell everyone.