Summer Daze

Background.

Already an elite design-build firm for celebrities and business leaders, Creekstone Outdoor Living faced a pivotal challenge: how to scale beyond high-end, individual backyard transformations and connect with grilling enthusiasts and outdoor living fans across the United States.

Challenge.

Creekstone had established itself as the premier design-build firm in the greater Houston area, with a strong reputation among contractors and high-profile clients. Now, the company sought to launch its first retail store and extend its brand experience into the digital realm. 

The location presented unique obstacles: situated in an area of unprecedented Houston development, where new roads were being carved through wooded areas, the store was essentially invisible to navigation systems. The rapid pace of construction meant major mapping services had outdated satellite imagery and no street data for the area. This required coordinating with mapping providers to physically survey the location and update their systems, ensuring customers could actually find the store.

The goal was ambitious: drive foot traffic to the new design-build retail store, create a digitally integrated shopping experience, and establish a brand presence that would resonate beyond local markets. Creekstone needed to transform from an exclusive design-build service to an accessible, desirable brand for every backyard enthusiast.

The team developed a hyper-local strategy that would leverage summer’s most cherished traditions. By focusing on the dreams of grilling enthusiasts, backyard loungers, and weekend warriors, they created a campaign that would not just sell products, but create an entire lifestyle experience. They built deep relationships with local communities, including the Aggie network, local businesses, the Chamber of Commerce, and industry media partners.

The approach was comprehensive, integrating in-store experiences with digital marketing. Michelin-star chef demonstrations, grilling classes, sommelier pairings, and community events like Cars for Coffee brought the brand to life. Influencer partnerships with brands like Weber, Lynx, and Big Green Egg extended the campaign’s reach. Digital optimization included 360-degree store tours, localized search strategies, and personalized marketing that mapped the entire audience ecosystem.

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. 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.

For their online presence, we optimized maps and local search, integrated 360-degree images and Google maps for a virtual tour, traveled on-site to take store and promotional photographs, and recruited loyal Creekstone fans to write reviews and tag the physical location of the store.

We scaled the brand’s reach to larger audiences by mapping the target audience’s entire ecosystem of networks and relationships, and we leveraged digital channels to programmatically personalize campaign messaging.

Results.

The campaign delivered remarkable outcomes:

• $4 million in revenue during the retail season
• 130% increase in content engagement
• 120 unique store check-ins within six months
• 1.2 million views of store and promotional photographs
• In-store product sales exceeding 15,000 per week

What began as a modest goal of $500,000 in first-year revenue quickly transformed into a $1.2 million launch and ultimately $4 million in total sales. Creekstone Outdoor Living had not just opened a store, they had created a community and a brand experience that extended far beyond traditional retail boundaries.

By combining digital innovation, local community engagement, and a deep understanding of their audience’s lifestyle aspirations, Creekstone demonstrated how a strategic, multi-channel approach can transform a niche brand into a must-visit destination for outdoor living enthusiasts.

FIVE

The Creekstone brand has continually resonated with customers due to its attention to detail and its high levels of craftsmanship and customer service. The Summer Daze campaign solidified this image of the Creekstone brand through a TV commercial that doubled as an in-store promotional video and a social media campaign that echoed and strengthened the message to consumers. Both the commercial and social media were also supported by a press and media circuit with influencer marketing reaching key individuals in targeted communities.

Online, a complete digital transformation allowed the Creekstone brand to better connect with consumers through POS, CRM, AI integration for targeted marketing, and Google local maps and walkthroughs. Offline, Creekstone was able to directly interact with consumers through in-store promotions, cars n’ coffee events, wine pairings, drilling demos, training seminars, and more.

ONE

From the TV commercial to the AI integration and digital transformation, the campaign was guided by a single, unified strategy to cross-promote the retail store to key design-build clients and reach a retail audience composed of 50% local foot traffic and 50% online. We also synced the marketing, sales, and retail together, in real-time, to roll out the multi-channel promotion and summer retail campaign

TWO

We increased foot traffic to the Creekstone retail store by deepening the relationships we had already built through its design-build presence in the local community and driving the loyalty of key, influential individuals.

We grew the brand via POS sales as well as digital sales (search and social traffic) by targeting loyal customers, their friends, influencers, manufacturers, and other design-build firms, using their networks to reach new audiences via the press, social media, and personal relationships, and then scaled this approach digitally, to exponentially grow eCommerce revenue from a national audience.