Agencies aim to liven up furniture ads

Offer nationally themed promotional events

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, June 8, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS — Two industry marketing and advertising firms are coming together to offer a new brand of promotion they say will shake the industry out of its boring advertising ways.

Napier Marketing Group of Minneapolis and Imagine Advertising of Norcross, Ga., formed a marketing alliance to offer "nationally themed furniture events," they said in a release.

A conceptual newspaper ad tied to the third “Ice Age” movie is an example of a new approach to furniture store promotion offered by two marketing and advertising agencies.

Their effort will start with a promotion tied to the release of 20th Century Fox Studios' upcoming movie, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

Retailers who sign on will get access to in-store and media advertising materials to promote "The Biggest Furniture Event in 2 Million Years," with exclusivity in their markets. The movie — the third in the animated "Ice Age" series — hits theaters this summer, but the furniture promotion will run Nov. 3 through Dec. 15, timed with the slated DVD release of the film.

Bill Napier of Napier Marketing Group said he's working on ties with other branded properties with national appeal, but wouldn't disclose the names yet. He said other promotions are lined up from January to next spring.

"Furniture advertising has become somewhat tired and predictable," Napier said, adding that the messages seem to always be the same - "tent sales, warehouse sales, no payments forever sales or guys screaming about going out of business sales.

"We want to change that and we can do better, a lot better," he said.

Napier, who is responsible for targeting and negotiating the deals with the national brands, has teamed with Imagine Advertising's Flora Stopher, who is in charge of executing and delivering the creative side across all marketing mediums. The two have worked together on industry projects for nearly 10 years.

Stopher called the new promotion "very fun, colorful and engaging."

"We can now bring retailer a huge menu of nationally themed promotions, and we can continue to support our retailer's local and regional promotions as we have for the past 15 years," she said.

Napier said he took samples of the "Ice Age" promotion to April High Point Market and ran it by several large retailers, getting a good. He said retailers in 11 major metro markets have committed to the program, but declined to name them.

The cost to retailers could start as low as $1,000 and would go up depending on the size of a market and the extent of the retailer's participation in various advertising platforms, including newspaper, television and in-store materials, he said.