Imagine being a prospective University student. You’re attending an Open Days event to familiarise yourself with all the resources that might make up your home away from home for the next 4 years. Just when you start to feel overwhelmed, you see it: an inflatable slip and slide. Indulging in the exhilarating activity is just enough to take the edge off and start to fully embrace the next stage of your life.
Providing this kind of relief from the daily stressors of life is exactly what the marketing strategy for Strike Bowling set to focus on, and they requested the inflatable slip and slide to predominately advertise their franchise to University students.
Here at Inflatable Anything, we take pride in establishing relationships between consumers and businesses in all its forms, but especially close to our hearts is helping to provide a little something extra to make the ebbs and flows of University life a bit easier to manage. We were absolutely thrilled with the concept, and could not wait to get started on this project!
Writing Up the Outline
Advertising bowling venues throughout Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia probably conjures up a pretty straightforward idea. However, the client wanted the brand activation inflatable to be a bit more targeted to students and a bit more adrenaline-inducing. Instead of just plain, outright bowling, the plan was to effectively use your own body as a bowling ball, launch yourself down the 10 metres long and 3 metres wide inflatable slip and slide, and knock down as many of the 1 metre pins as possible.
We have made quite a few inflatables in the past that could be considered a bit more interactive than most. We knew that a big part of executing this inflatable slip and slide correctly was by paying very close attention to safety. For example, the last thing we would want is for these students to slide down the unit and develop a rash or worse from their skin coming in contact with an irritating material.
Working On the Fine Details
The client has fairly straightforward and uncomplicated branding anyway, but on top of that, for these Open Days events, there were different avenues for advertising the 10 pin bowling alley (+++). The unit was to be mostly in black, with proper pin placement and logo in white. Since the detail wasn’t necessarily of utmost importance on this project, we went ahead and used surface printing on the inflatable slip and slide.
In this technique, an image is transferred onto a fabric from the flat surface of a stone or metal. Usually the material passes through several rolls of ink, each layering down different colours, but in this case, it was only black. As opposed to other printing techniques that create patterns by etching designs into the plate, typically this one allows for raised areas to allow the ink to deposit everywhere but the elevated design.
Throw In a Little Elbow Grease
Again, safety was very high on our minds. Not only did we want to make sure students wouldn’t get burns sliding against the polymer, but we also wanted to make sure they didn’t barrel right off of the inflatable slip and slide and into a bike rack or lecture hall. Another safety consideration was after all those different bodies launching themselves down the unit, being able to clean the unit in between activations.
First of all, to address that second concern, it was easy to build up a little barrier around the edge. Both of the options we provide for material on our projects, polyester and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), provide great details to a unit, like weather-resistance and durability. Though very much comparable, on the latter feature, PVC does have a slight advantage. Overall, the material can basically be hard plastic. Meanwhile, though polyester can hold complex shapes better, it still has a bit of flexibility to it. Largely because it has that hardness to it, polyvinyl chloride can also be very easily washed and, surprisingly, the material is lightweight enough to be carried around from campus to campus.
To fit all these requirements plus to ensure the inflatable slip and slide was cushioned against any hindrances on the ground underneath, we ultimately constructed this unit using a .6 millimetres thick roll of 100% PVC.
The Fruits of Your Labour
Just as with our other projects, we meticulously ran this inflatable slip and slide through our manufacturing process and quality control before shipping it out to the client. It seems to have been very well received, because Strike Bowling has used the unit several times thereafter and the business is still going strong!
We love bringing ideas to life, especially when they’re so tailored to an audience. Let our team of professionals help you reach yours!
