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January 27, 2010 - Marking an
historic effort for the home
furnishings industry, the
first-ever, multi-channel
marketing campaign, Is it Home
Yet? and the campaign’s
inaugural event National Home
Furnishings Month (NHFM),
successfully reached its
first-year goals—to unite home
furnishings retailers with a
cohesive branding and sales
event, while inspiring today’s
“everywoman” to reconnect with
her home through
furnishings-related content,
information, and ultimately
driving to retail.
Created by
World Market Center Las Vegas,
the home furnishings industry’s
leading international
marketplace, and launched in
partnership with eight industry
associations, the advertising
campaign—developed by Ogilvy
North America—was the first-ever
industry-wide initiative that
encouraged consumers to
celebrate the idea of “home” and
refresh their living spaces
through new home furnishings
purchases. In addition to room
makeover sweepstakes, the
campaign’s website,
www.homeyet.com, featured
advice from top designers with
home makeover tips and trend
information. Exclusive
information about sales and
promotions at participating
retailers across the country was
also available online.
More than 7,000 retailers
nationwide participated in the
program and were included on the
site’s store locator section.
Geographically, the campaign saw
broad support from retailers
across the country: 49 percent
of retailers from the west; 19
percent from the Midwest; 23
percent from the South; and 9
percent from the Northeast.
Nearly 2,000 retailers
downloaded the National Home
Furnishings Month Retailer
Toolkit, which equipped them
with marketing tools to support
the initiative in their
advertising programs.
The average age of consumers who
engaged with the campaign was
49.9 years old. Of all consumer
respondents, which skewed 2:1
female, 78 percent said they
planned to make home furnishings
purchases in 2010, with the
living room ranked as the first
choice of rooms to be
refurnished in their home.
Consumers also indicated that
blogs and online are the
dominant sources of information
that influence them to make
furniture purchases, followed by
in-store visits.
The campaign—which centered on a
robust digital strategy aimed at
retail activation, industry
partnerships and print and
outdoor placements—generated an
unprecedented 500 million
impressions in paid, earned and
donated media. Additionally,
during the course of the month,
www.homeyet.com attracted
340,000 views with nearly half
being unique visitors.
“This was an ambitious
undertaking and we are extremely
pleased with what we
accomplished during the
first-ever National Home
Furnishings Month,” said Robert
Maricich, president and chief
executive officer of World
Market Center Las Vegas. “The
launch was a homerun by all
measures, although nothing will
be as critical to future
successes as retailer activation
in order to truly capture
consumers’ share of mind and
wallet. For over a decade our
industry has lost a share of
consumer spending, and only with
a broad-based, cohesive and
focused message can we turn
around this disturbing slide.”
One the country’s fastest
growing retailers, Jerome’s
Furniture in San Deigo, was
excited to support the National
Home Furnshings Month campaign
because it reinforces what they
believe is a strong and timely
message to consumers: The home
and home furnishings as the
positive center of peoples’
lives. Jerome’s executed the Is
it Home Yet? message with a paid
campaign in San Diego on TV, in
print, online and in their
showrooms. In addition, Jerome’s
sponsored a Home Makeover
promotion, in partnership with a
local ABC-affiliated TV station,
which ran from September through
December.
“It was exciting to see this
campaign executed on a national
level. We felt it was important
to rally behind a cohesive
message that creates true,
long-term demand for our
products and services for our
industry. The ‘Home Yet’
campaign was a big first step in
that direction. National Home
Furnishings Month made
implementation easy by providing
marketing materials and
resources that were easy for us
to adopt into our own
messaging,” said Lee Goodman,
president and chief executive
officer of Jerome’s. “Our
involvement in National Home
Furnishings Month campaign
helped us increase traffic to
our website and showrooms. It
was a huge success overall.”
What’s Next: The Drive for
Retailer Participation in 2010
Plans for 2010’s National Home
Furnishings Month are already
underway; the 10-day sale event
has been set for September 18-26
and World Market Center and its
industry partners plan to engage
retailers at the upcoming Las
Vegas Market, Feb. 1 – 5, 2010.
Upon visiting the National Home
Furnishings Month kiosk in World
Market Center’s Grand Plaza,
retailers will be able to get
their complimentary listing on
the store locator, which is live
on the newly revamped
www.homeyet.com website, as
well as get the information and
tools required to participate in
this year’s national event.
“Our goal for 2010 is to make
this a national sales event for
retailers by providing the
creative content and free tools
for them to ‘plug and play’ this
campaign with their own brand
and in their own markets which,
in essence, will multiply the
collective voice and effect we
can have on consumers buying for
their home,” said Maricich.
World Market Center has also
extended a partnership with
Sale-in-a-Box, America’s premier
supplier of sales event
materials for the retail
industry, to ensure the toolkit
is easy to adopt and “turnkey”
for store owners and marketers.
Sale-in-a-Box will produce
printed materials for retailers
who want to activate the
National Home Furnshings Month
campaign in their store and will
be taking pre-orders at the
upcoming market in Building C,
Space 512.
Retailers are also encouraged to
complete a short survey at
www.surveygizmo.com/s/212435/nhfmpostsurvey
to share feedback on the
National Home Furnishings Month
campaign and new ideas for 2010.
Maricich cites recent reports
from U.S. Census, where retail
sales in September and October
of 2009 compared to a year ago
declined far less, after 18
months of almost unrelenting
double digit declines. This is
viewed by some industry analysts
as signs of a flattening of the
downturn in 2010, and
positioning the economy for a
rebound as the attention turns
back to home. With consumer
confidence rebuilding in 2010
and into 2011, Maricich believes
this campaign is uniquely
positioned to enlighten, inform
and educate consumers and drive
traffic to stores.
“As these retail
sales trends improve,
even anecdotally, our
collective efforts certainly
cannot be overlooked,” added
Maricich. “We recognize this is
a large and diverse industry,
and we always viewed this as a
project that required partners
in order to make an impact over
the long term. With expanded
partnerships and retailer
participation in Is It Home Yet?
and National Home Furnishings
Month, we are confident that we
will continue making
progress. There was
a tremendous amount of data and
perspective gained in
this important first step which
we will use to foster new,
creative ideas into the future.”
About World Market Center Las
Vegas
World Market Center Las Vegas is
an integrated home and
hospitality contract furnishings
showroom and trade complex. The
state-of-the-art campus
showcases furniture, decorative
accessories, gift, lighting,
area rugs, home textiles and
related segments, as well as the
Las Vegas Design Center (LVDC),
now open daily to consumers and
designers. World Market
Center currently hosts Las
Vegas Market™ biannually in
February and September – the
preeminent total home market.
Additionally, making its debut
in February 2010,
InspireDesign™ at World
Market Center represents a
dynamic alternative for
manufacturers and companies
serving the hospitality design
marketplace. In 2010, World
Market Center will launch the
inaugural Gift + Home™
show catering to the gift,
decorative accessory and
seasonal industries.
For more information on World
Market Center Las Vegas, visit
www.LasVegasMarket.com. |
