National Brand’s Annual Sale Event
The Situation: A leading maker of kitchen goods, bakeware and cake decorating supplies holds an annual Tent Sale event at their headquarters facility to sell through overstock and discontinued items. It is a popular event among the company’s loyal customer base, generating 7-digit sales each year.
The Complication: The company’s agency partner dropped the ball and failed to produce a marketing plan or creative executions, with just a few weeks left before the start of the Tent Sale event. Through a mutual acquaintance, the company’s Sales Director reached out to our agency with an urgent request for help.
The Plan: The account service lead and I met with the company’s sales team, assessed their marketing needs and budgetary constraints, and developed and presented a complete, integrated plan to meet and exceed their marketing goals. Stale creative approaches developed by the previous agency were discarded in favor of vibrant, colorful executions focused on the company’s products and their customer benefits. Working with area representatives and our design staff, I developed and executed a fully integrated media plan including direct mail, print advertising, 30 second radio spots and online banners that maximized impact to a highly targeted audience.
The Execution: Instead of emphasizing the tent, as previous ad creative had done, we placed the focus squarely on product images… featuring an attractive birthday cake. The resulting images and layouts were not only more attractive and engaging, they were also far more on-target and benefit-driven.
The Outcome: Despite a rushed development timeframe and limited budget assets, the Tent Sale event exceeded the previous year’s sales by over 50%. Foot traffic for the event approached saturation levels, and surplus stock sold faster than it could be replenished.
The Aftermath: The client was so overwhelmed with the success of the event, they rewarded us with the annual sale event account for 6 more successful years (until their internal marketing department assumed control).
In-Store Signing for Major Appliance Brand
The Situation: A leading manufacturer of residential freezers needed an in-store display highlighting their broad assortment of chest and upright freezers available at a nationwide retail store chain.
The Complication: The retail chain, consisting of hundreds of small-footprint stores, has notoriously limited floor space and sales-floor staff… making it difficult to convey the client’s full assortment of 18 freezer products available for order and delivery.
The Plan: As Creative Director, I (along with the account lead and a member of our design team) met with the client to discuss their initial request for a few small-scale POP signs suggesting a few “also available” models. We offered a counter-proposal, involving a far larger and more informative wall-banner that would serve the role of a “silent salesperson” to help each prospective customer find the right model to suit their needs and budget.
The Execution: Working closely with both the manufacturing client and retailer, we developed and produced an attractive and colorful 8-ft. x 4-ft. banner that performed several key functions:
- Presenting the general benefits of owning a freezer
- Explaining the specific key features and benefits of this freezer brand
- Showing each model in the brand lineup and listing their feature sets
- Indicating the overall step-up story of the chest- and upright-freezer lines
- Providing built-in sign holder pockets for displaying price cards under each model
We printed and shipped the banners to several hundred store locations from coast to coast, where they continue to be displayed at present.
The Outcome: The client and their retail partner enjoyed significant and immediate sales increases across the product line, especially among units that were not typically floored as display models. The “silent salesperson” did the job well… and in a remarkably cost-effective manner.
Product Lineup/Training Guide for
Sales Associates
The Situation: A manufacturer of the #1 store-brand in cooking appliances needed a training and reference resource for store associates, introducing their new lineup of ranges, cooktops, wall ovens and microwaves.
The Complication: The manufacturing partner and merchandise buyer envisioned an informational field reference resource, noting standard feature differences between products and “trade-up” structure of the new lineup. The retailer’s Brand Team envisioned a training guide that explained the key product features and how to integrate them into the sales associate’s overall selling process.
The Plan: Our account team and I met multiple times with both client-side parties and arrived at a page-by-page detailed solution that satisfied both points of view.
The Execution: We produced a full-color, 36-page booklet that explicated all the key features, highlighted new features and selling tips, and demonstrated the step-up features of each model in each product category in the cooking appliances lineup. In the end, we negotiated a host of compromises from both the manufacturer and the brand team to ensure a successful, on-time and on-budget outcome.
The Outcome: Over 2,500 of the training guides were printed and distributed to hundreds of store locations nationwide, providing store personnel with an information-rich resource on the sales floor to help facilitate the sales process.
Chris Little, copywriter and business writer in the Chicago area 