Flooring is a design-oriented product. The first thing the customer thinks about is the look she wants. And, yes, it’s most often a female shopping and purchasing flooring. And, the purchase can require a substantial budget. Knowing this, how do we talk to today’s consumer about this high ticket, design-driven product?
Most promotional efforts today center around stain-resistance, durability and cleanability. For sure, all those things are important but they also make buying floor covering akin to buying a washer and dryer — function-oriented. And frankly, what’s engaging about that? Nothing, really. For such a high-ticket item it should be more exciting than buying a utility. Creating a good consumer experience is paramount to the shopping process today.
Armstrong is one of the best-known consumer brands in flooring and it is taking real steps to earn that reputation in the market and engage with consumers in a way that will hit them emotionally, not just for function’s sake.
We met with the company mid-August to hear about its new campaign “The Floor is Yours.” (We had the exclusive and complete story in the Sept. 4 issue of FCW.) The campaign goes beyond features and benefits to create an emotional connection. It’s “product story-telling for the modern consumer.”
Three unique and surprising personalities are connected with the effort. World champion Lumberjill Martha King will promote hardwood, U.S. national rhythmic gymnast Nastasya Generalova will promote engineered stone, and DJ Yolo Ono will represent luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and vinyl sheet.
The marketing campaign will be delivered through a flooring hub on HGTV.com along with social platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest as well as print, digital and broadcast. There will be dealer tie-ins and retail tool kits. It’s a full-blown, all-out effort that will span eight weeks this fall.
We had the opportunity to view a video of Martha King talking about hardwood while she chopped, sawed and chain-sawed logs of wood. And passionately so. She is a strong, beautiful, talented woman and quite possibly the perfect spokesperson for hardwood flooring. She is also in her late 20s, demographically desirable as the Millennial consumer begins to buy and renovate homes. By all accounts, she speaks that demographic’s language.
I, for one, was riveted by the power and strength Martha showed and later, by the beautiful flooring unharmed by her chopping. It was engaging to say the least.
The resurgence of vinyl records in the music industry couldn’t be happening at a better time for this campaign which will position LVT and vinyl sheet as fresh, modern, innovative and stylish. And like the gymnast herself, engineered stone will be shown as flexible, strong and elegant.
The campaign doesn’t use traditional beautiful interior shots. While these room scenes serve to inspire the consumer, there are plenty of them available. “The Floor is Yours” is something altogether different. It’s fast-paced, it’s unexpected, it’s storytelling, it’s emotional and even a bit edgy. Best of all, it appeals to consumers in an entirely new way for flooring. It’s memorable. What better way to bring life to a brand and to flooring as a category?