Summer Daze

Background.

Creekstone Outdoor Living has always emphasized one thing: turning outdoor dreams into a reality. In the design-build community, they were already the elite choice for contractors. From our previous work with Creekstone, we had already developed deep relationships with key influencers, across Houston’s very national and international scene. After building the Creekstone brand structure and its position as the #1 design-build firm in the greater Houston area, we kicked off an e-commerce presence that extended the retail POS to mobile and home devices.

Now, Creekstone was looking to launch its flagship retail store and to extend the retail experience online and in the home.

Challenge.

Driving new customers to the brand’s first design-build retail store, in an area that was undergoing massive new construction and development, means changing perspective and speaking to new experiences. Practically, it also meant getting Creekstone mapped in an area of town that was a blind spot among the major map services (Google, Bing, Waze). Adding insult to injury, there was another company in the same area with a very similar name that was facing a public reputation crisis.

Our challenge was to drive foot traffic to the new design-build store, where a digitally integrated shopping experience would allow the brand to interact with the customer before the POS transaction. In addition to paid, local, and organic search traffic to Creekstone and not the similarly named company, we also needed to extend the reach of our shopping experience to the digital world, where it was still relatively unknown, but overhead costs were exponentially less.

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.

It all started with the goal of generating $500K in revenue at the retail location alone, a normal amount for the first year at a new storefront. Halfway through the campaign, however, that goal turned into $1M and it would be a lie to say we weren’t sweating.
The initial launch came and we could finally dry our foreheads, as that initial launch generated $1.2M and, over the full retail season, the Creekstone Outdoor Living store generated $4M.

As the campaign rolled on, we earned media placements as the subject matter experts in the elite design-build scene, which led to a 130% increase in content engagement following the release of the radio spots. Moreover, the online segments of the campaign garnered 120 unique check-ins at the Creekstone store within the first 6 months of opening, and the store and promotional photographs have earned 1.2M views each. By establishing Creekstone’s online presence and expanding the brand’s reach beyond the local community, the campaign also lifted in-store product sales to more than 15K/week.

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.