KVC BUILDERS
How do you market a client that is perceived as too expensive, but wants to be accessible? You simply explain why they’re worth it. The tagline, “Right from the Start,” says it all. You want something done right, you do it correctly from the beginning — with high-end craftsmanship and the best materials available. (Sometimes the best marketing is the simplest solution.) Combine that with some serious humor and graphic images of homes being built and you get a campaign that stands out.
WAYNE TOWLE MASTER FINISHING & RESTORATION
We presented three very different campaigns to our client, a husband and wife duo, and restoration specialists. They were happy with all of them, and weren’t sure which to choose. (A very good problem to have.) As we discussed the options, they recalled when a client brought in a piece of lingerie as a color sample. Wayne searched a box in the corner of his office and pulled it out. We all howled with laughter, and immediately knew which campaign to choose! Featuring the client’s exceptional talent of being able to refinish a floor or wall in any color, we used examples of objects and had our client actually refinish the wood in the background of the ad, to match the object. Humorous copy tells the rest of the story. This campaign got the client a lot of attention, and us, a couple of awards.
THREAD
Custom House Draperies didn’t have any marketing, wanted to grow, and was ready to compete with some of the bigger drapery and bedding showrooms out there. They needed a website, but when we saw their outdated logo, we asked if they might be up for a name change, too. They agreed and a complete rebrand of the company began. Renaming them “Thread” with a killer logo and tagline, “Where Designers Have it Made.” put them on the map. With no available product photography, we decided to shoot artistic shots that focused on their fine workmanship. Playful headlines and copy focus on the company’s attributes. Their growth was award enough for us, but a New England Ad Club Hatch Award didn’t hurt either.
AIB
What better way to get the word out that you’re teaching a Concept and Copy course than to do your own advertising? We did a series of “Before taking our class” and “After taking our class” posters, featuring humorous visuals. We hung them around the school and our class roster was full before we could even say “strategy.”
TAGLINE
It’s not just about advertising, it’s about thinking.
DESIGNER BATH
Designer Bath & Salem Plumbing had an absolutely gorgeous showroom, but they didn’t have a distinctive brand personality. Since it’s a family business, and they were known for having long-time employees that they treated like family, we decided to start there. We chose black and white lifestyle visuals of families we thought consumers with kids would relate to, and paired them with headlines and copy that focused on the owner’s family. We also tweaked the logo and created the tagline “The Products and the People.” And yes, we not only presented the “number one and number two” ad, we got them to buy it.
BELLE MAISON
How do you get younger consumers to believe that a beautiful home and kids can actually live together? By showing our client’s very big family (including triplets), doing just that. All of our advertising centered around being able to live with antiques and high end furnishings, no matter who you live with (including the dog). It worked and sales went up.
NEW ENGLAND WEATHERVANE SHOP (CAMPAIGN I)
Who doesn’t love an offbeat product? This client’s hand wrought weathervanes, got us plenty excited. Our strategy was to let people know that weathervanes had come down from the roof and could now be used inside homes as art, on the porch, or in the garden. With close-up shots and copy that read from the weathervane’s perspective, these quirky and colorful ads couldn’t help but get attention.
TAGLINE
Think outside the cupola.
BACK BAY SHUTTER COMPANY (CAMPAIGN I)
If you’re listening, sometimes the client makes it easy to figure out what the strategy should be. Our client, a high-end shutter company, had never hired an agency. In the course of getting to know them, we were struck with how detail-oriented, passionate and finicky they were about their product. These guys really cared about their handcrafted shutters and lost sleep over making sure every one of them was made perfectly. We realized they were actually a little bit crazy, in fact. And so our campaign focused on our clients being “neurotic perfectionists,” (which is also their title on their business cards). Positioning Back Bay Shutter as being completely consumed with making shutters, designers, architects and consumers paid attention to these ads, which stood out in the visual-heavy shelter magazines. They also stood out in the design community, winning an AIGA Best of New England award. While we’ve changed the campaign over the course of time, the strategy has always remained the the same — these people are passionate about shutters.
TAGLINE
Totally passionate about shutters.
BACK BAY SHUTTER COMPANY (CAMPAIGN II)
Our second campaign for Back Bay was to the trade. We wanted to engage designers directly, so we hopped into their world, where there are always 1,897,365 things that can go wrong, to tell them that one thing would always go right. A good way to set up a client. Copy driven, the fonts get the mood across.
TAGLINE
A designer’s best friend.
BAY POINT BUILDERS
It seemed to us that nobody ever has a good story when it comes to working with a contractor. So, when our client, a mid-sized builder, told us that their thorough pre-planning process keeps a project on budget and on schedule, we got an idea. Our campaign shows visuals of iconic childhood moments — splashing in a puddle, eating ice cream, jumping into a pool — and asks the consumer to imagine if this is how it could feel when they did a building/renovation project. We made the tagline “Shouldn’t it be Fun? ” because when you’re spending the kind of money you have to spend on a home project, it should be.
TAGLINE
Shouldn’t it be fun?
