Background & objectives
Large format bedroom retailing is split among those selling mattresses and bedroom furniture at a low-price base, and specialist brand aggregators like Bedshed. Heavy discounting drives the sector – consumers purchase irregularly and when in market they are naturally attracted by a sale.
Bedshed wanted to break the passive purchase cycle and drive sales by creating an innovative and compelling point of difference based on a core competence that would position them above the race for the lowest price.
Bedshed knew that its greatest assets was its people – they were seen by its customers as having more expertise than the competition.
Our task was to move people beyond price and product, creating a compelling point of difference based on a core competence that positions Bedshed ahead in the race for a sale.
Rare was challenged to extend and prove the Bedshed expert positioning, engaging with consumers at an emotional level above and beyond price.
A strategy and a range of creative concepts were developed for a new consumer campaign. The standout idea was an intelligent approach entitled “The Bedroom Report”.
Perth based Painted Dog Research were commissioned to undertake a national study across all State and Territory capital cities – the largest body of independent research into bedroom behaviour ever undertaken in Australia. This would form the evidence for the campaign and provide unique content for numerous integrated executions.
Research results came in and the content was so rich in detail we were able to split the statistical data for use as human interest, business relevance and humorous engagement. This enhanced Rare’s campaign thinking, bringing it to life through multiple executional ideas perfectly suited to a multi-channel fully integrated approach.
With concepts evolved and ready for production, there was one more all important step – the engagement of Bedshed franchises and their staff across Australia.
It was considered vital in meeting consumer expectations that the staff embraced the idea, so key stakeholders were invited to working forums, enabling Rare to share its strategic and creative thinking with them. This collaborative approach – unique to the bedroom furniture industry – significantly added to the success of the campaign and meeting consumer expectations in-store. The culmination of this work was a presentation to over 250 franchisees at the annual National Meeting.
Rare completed the production required to deliver the fully integrated campaign, taking full advantage of the unique idea and rich data at our disposal. This included defining the objectives and roles of different communication (i.e. brand building, consumer engagement, retail activation etc).
We segmented messaging by audience and mapped against our known customer journey, from discovery and awareness to evaluation and purchase. The communication plan led seamlessly into a detailed and multi-layered channel strategy.
Once the investment and channel plan were set we worked with the media industry, sharing the research and even the creative to uncover new and exciting integration opportunities. The outcome was media integration that perfectly suited the campaign. We also generated unbelievable parochial commitment across the Perth industry to support and provide a platform for Bedshed to aggressively launch and help sustain the Bedroom Report nationally.
For the first time Bedshed committed to run a long-term brand building approach over and above the ongoing promotional and retail platforms. Something unique for the bedding industry.
Brand and retail communications were expertly woven across multiple channels online, offline and in store. TVCs cleverly matched relevant Bedroom Report statistics with promotional offers in an engaging and creative manner. An extensive array of Bedroom Report initiatives were designed to constantly interest, surprise and delight across all touch points, imbedding the creative and statistics with either brand communication or promotional offers.
With the new campaign came a new, more contemporary colour palette, fonts and graphic look. Icons were designed to represent business services, playful illustrations were added to enhance the brand personality and help bring The Bedroom Report to life, enabling seamless use through stores and across all marketing collateral, creating a truly integrated campaign.
The Bedroom Report went live at the beginning of July 2018 and is available for anyone to view on a dedicated website (thebedroomreport.com.au). This non-sales portal presents Bedroom Report statistics, explains and outlines the habits within Australia’s bedrooms and works seamlessly with our extensive social activity, spreading the Bedshed brand and expert positioning through a vast array of shareable content.
The campaign has changed people’s view of the Bedshed brand, and given a reason over and above a ‘great price’, to visit a store and talk to a bedroom expert. The campaign drove traffic into store and online, where refreshed store point of sale and online experiences reconfirmed the new positioning. We know this due to Brand Tracking Research, undertaken by Painted Dog monthly as well as key statistical data derived from website analytics.
– We’ve seen 70,425 sessions with an average time on page of over 8 minutes since the website went live in July 2018.
– Our activity on social has combined to drive just over 40% of the sessions.
– We’ve also seen 12,689 interactive polls completed by users, that’s 18% user participation.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven, metric used globally to measure customer engagement and advocacy levels. It establishes the likelihood of a customer to recommend your product or service on a scale of 0-10 and often correlates with future revenue growth.
Bedshed achieved an NPS, 6-months after the Bedroom Campaign report of 18.5.
Brand Tracking indicates growing awareness and positive attribution against key brand statistics for Bedshed, particularly in the Eastern States where it is working off a lower base customer base and shorter history of operation.
It came to life because Rare was able to work closely in conjunction with the Bedshed marketing team. As a result, the Bedroom Report aligns with Bedshed’s vision and objectives repositioning the brand and enabling the business to capture market share by engaging with the target audience in a different and unique way to the competition. This campaign has been expertly executed to run across a very broad range of channels and integrates perfectly with existing promotional and retail campaigns, complementing and enhancing their performance.