Summer Daze
The brand was already established as an elite design-build firm for celebrities, politicians, and business leaders. The question was — how can we scale its brand beyond individual, cost-prohibitive backyard transformations? How can we reach every backyard and grilling enthusiast across the US? We found the answer in summer’s most time-honored tradition: a summer promotional campaign for the grilling enthusiast, backyard lounger, and weekend warrior.
Background.
Creekstone Outdoor Living has always emphasized one thing: turning outdoor dreams into a reality. In the design-build community, they were already the elite choice for contractors. From our previous work with Creekstone, we had already developed deep relationships with key influencers, across Houston’s very national and international scene. After building the Creekstone brand structure and its position as the #1 design-build firm in the greater Houston area, our ad agency kicked off an e-commerce presence that extended the retail POS to mobile and home devices.
Now, Creekstone was looking to launch its flagship retail store and to extend the retail experience online and in the home.
Challenge.
Driving new customers to the brand’s first design-build retail store, in an area that was undergoing massive new construction and development, means changing perspective and speaking to new experiences. Practically, it also meant getting Creekstone mapped in an area of town that was a blind spot among the major map services (Google, Bing, Waze). Adding insult to injury, there was another company in the same area with a very similar name that was facing a public reputation crisis.
Our challenge was to drive foot traffic to the new design-build store, where a digitally integrated shopping experience would allow the brand to interact with the customer before the POS transaction. In addition to paid, local, and organic search traffic to Creekstone, we also needed to extend the reach of our shopping experience to the digital world, where it was still relatively unknown, but overhead costs were exponentially less.
Campaign.
To convince new customers to step into the flagship store, we explored the backyard dream for the grilling enthusiast, the backyard lounger, and the weekend warrior. We molded and shaped a 5-1-2 campaign with a hyper-local approach to grand-open their retail store with an unavoidable buzz throughout the newly built or expanded neighborhoods that were seeing huge population growth and upward economic mobility. Our strategy depended on fostering deep relationships with not only the people in a rapidly developing area but also the larger Aggie community, the local business community, the Chamber of Commerce, and a slew of industry-related media partners.
So we integrated the last mile for the campaign. We created a campaign that pulled the backyard’s Summer Daze into the store and created retail promotions, in-person demos, influencer marketing, special events, and digital ads. We helped Creekstone establish a POS system backed with an AI-powered CRM and true marketing-sales funnel. We also connected the construction clientele database with the retail clientele database, allowing us to cross-promote the campaign and design-build services. Coincidentally, this also allowed us to strengthen relationships with consumers as we could send out personalized promotions, loyalty rewards, and birthday and holiday offers.
We continued drawing positive attention and foot traffic with in-store demos and even grilling and pairing classes from Michelin-star chefs and expert sommeliers, and every so often, we were on the ground hosting Cars for Coffee and other Chamber events. Influencers were key in our efforts to create community buzz and increase foot traffic, and through our continual promotions, special events, and special partnerships with brands like Webber, Lynx, and the Big Green Egg, Creekstone’s brand was propelled beyond the local presence.
Results.
For our advertising agency, it all started with the goal of generating $500K in revenue at the retail location alone, a normal amount for the first year at a new storefront. Halfway through the campaign, however, that goal turned into $1M and it would be a lie to say we weren’t sweating.
The initial launch came and we could finally dry our foreheads, as that initial launch generated $1.2M and, over the full retail season, the Creekstone Outdoor Living store generated $4M.
As the campaign rolled on, we earned media placements as the subject matter experts in the elite design-build scene, which led to a 130% increase in content engagement following the release of the radio spots. Moreover, the online segments of the campaign garnered 120 unique check-ins at the Creekstone store within the first 6 months of opening, and the store and promotional photographs have earned 1.2M views each. By establishing Creekstone’s online presence and expanding the brand’s reach beyond the local community, the campaign also lifted in-store product sales to more than 15K/week.
