Global Perspectives: Toom Thinks Inside the Box

This is one of 31 case studies presented in the Path to Purchase Institute’s “Global Perspectives on Shopper Marketing,” which was published in October in conjunction with Coca-Cola, Unilever and Geometry Global. The book will be available on Amazon.com in January.CampaignName: “A Boxful of Inspiration”Company: toom Der BaumarktAgency: Geometry GlobalSupporting Agency: RedWorks (production)Region: EuropeProgram Type: Retail Messaging and MediaWhy It MattersYour best marketing vehicle may literally be right under your nose: Understanding the shopper’s decision path – and the right timing – let toom uncover a new way to spark a conversation just when shoppers needed it most.BUSINESS LANDSCAPEGerman retailer toom Der Baumarkt needed some inspiration.The German do-it-yourself (DIY) market landscape is intense. Retailers have the highest square footage of sales space per capita in the world, and competition is fierce.But growth has fallen off recently, and the market is fairly stagnant. In their battle for market share, DIY retailers have focused on growing the range and depth of their product lines and competing through price. As a result, retail brands have become largely interchangeable, with customers influenced primarily by the “nearest to me” criteria and dividing their transactions among three or four DIY stores in the neighborhood.With more than 320 stores and annual sales of 2.4 billion euros, toom is ranked fourth in the DIY channel. To differentiate itself from competitors, the retailer introduced a unique “Craftsman Coordination” program that provides a wide range of services, from interior design advice and wallpaper hanging to installing electronics and laying under-floor heating. No other German DIY store boasts such a portfolio of “distinguished” services. The program wasn’t designed as a profit center but as a branding tool that would help position toom as a problem solver and not just a screw supplier. All of the Craftsman Coordination services additionally were designed to enhance the use of toom merchandise.Craftsman Coordination gave toom a distinct point of difference. But the service was so unique that shoppers didn’t grasp it at first. Point-of-sale brochures, advertising flyers and posters hadn’t generated any significant take-up of the service in its first year. So the retailer needed a new, efficient way to communicate the benefits and activate customers at precisely the moment they needed the services.OBJECTIVESIncrease the use of Craftsman Coordination services by 10% in one quarter.Build consumer awareness and understanding of the services.Position toom as a step above DIY competitors.Compete on service and quality, not on price.Inspire consumers as they consider DIY projects in their new homes.INSIGHTSBy analyzing the purchase path for Craftsman Coordination services, toom and its agency, Geometry Global, realized that most orders were related to house moves. Every year, about 8 million people in Germany relocate. And people tend to decorate and renovate when they’re moving into a new home. Toom wanted to speak to this audience when it was most receptive to home-furnishing suggestions – when they are in the act of moving.And toom had just the tool to target this very specific audience at just the right moment: a cardboard box.Many people start packing up cartons long before the actual move date, and therefore well before they begin renovation projects or plans. It was the right time to tell them about toom’s extensive service offerings, and the box provided an unexpected medium.STRATEGYGeometry Global created “A Boxful of Inspiration,” using toom’s existing moving box as a new advertising medium. The agency designed the boxes as miniature rooms – living room, bathroom, kitchen – to demonstrate the services that the retailer can provide for each room in a new home. When constructed, each box gives the customer a realistic insight into a living situation. Consumers could see at a glance how the different services would work in a real-life scenario: interior design advice for the living room, or laying under-floor heating in the bathroom. These vignettes gave consumers who were already excited about moving to new digs a “boxful of inspiration” to make their new homes even better.EXECUTIONEach year, toom sells thousands of packing cartons – simple, white corrugated boxes. Using this as the canvas, Geometry Global designed illustrations for the inside of each box so that when consumers put them together, they’d suddenly be peering down into a miniature room.The boxes were printed with the image of a room on the inside. As consumers assembled the carton, images and captions would let them discover, step by step, the full range of Craftsman services that are available.The new boxes were simply delivered to each store as usual, without any shopper-facing promotion or even sell-in to store managers. (Most toom stores are company-owned.) They were merchandised as usual, too: Moving boxes are typically displayed prominently via gondolas and islands, in part because they take up a lot of space.“The idea was to surprise shoppers, like a Trojan Horse,” said Werner Hesse-Quack, client service director at Geometry Global Dusseldorf. “It was a very quiet idea.”Production costs were double, because the boxes now required four-color printing on both sides of the cardboard. Still, it was significantly less expensive – and ultimately far more effective – than toom’s traditional advertising via in-store displays, brochures and 15 million circulars dropped in household mailboxes. In fact, when toom promoted Craftsman Coordination with a single page in its flyer, the ad alone cost more and generated far less shopper response than the moving boxes.SUCCESS MEASURESCraftsman Coordinator sales jumped 15% in the first quarter of the campaign – 1.5 times the goal. From the first day, visits to toom service desks almost doubled, and click rates at toom-baumarkt.de enjoyed a similar surge.There were numerous positive customer responses in stores – a significant factor for store managers and executive leaders. And there was one unexpected bonus: Young girls took to using the boxes as dollhouses after they settled into their new homes.Geometry Global’s solution was based on a clear understanding of shopper situations. By connecting the dots in a simple path between moving house and hiring craftsmen for home-improvement projects – and then using the perfunctory packing carton – the program helped toom communicate its signature services in an elegantly efficient and unexpected way, reaching just the right shoppers at exactly the right moments. Toom turned an underestimated commodity into an innovative, highly targeted shopper marketing vehicle.Sometimes, thinking inside the box sparks the best innovation. Key LessonBy connecting the dots between the shopper mindset and the need for your services, you can find elegantly simple ways to market your brand to just the right audience at just the right time.

Global Perspectives: Toom Thinks Inside the Box

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