Second phase set for ‘Is It Home Yet?'

National home furnishings sale planned for September

Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, January 28, 2010

LAS VEGAS — Calling the launch of the "Is It Home Yet?" marketing campaign last year a success, the World Market Center said it is readying for the next phase, which will include a new nine-day sale event in September.

Retailers attending the Las Vegas Market next week can visit a National Home Furnishings Month kiosk in the WMC's Grand Plaza for complimentary listing on a store locator on the homeyet.com Web site as well information and tools they need to participate in this year's event.

WMC said the site is newly revamped, but as of this morning, the information on the site largely appeared dated from the initial launch last summer and the initial sale last September. This year's sale period will be Sept. 18-26, officials said.

"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," WMC President and CEO Bob Maricich said in a release. That "in essence, will multiply the collective voice and effect we can have on consumers buying for their home," he said.

WMC said it has extended a partnership with Sale-in-a-Box, a 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 Furnishings Month campaign, and will be taking pre-orders in Building C, space 512 during the Feb. 1-5 market.

World Market Center spokesman Andrew Maiden said the digital toolkit will be free and available in the spring and that Sale in a Box will set a package price for printed materials it will offer to retailers.

Retailers are also encouraged to complete a short survey at www.homeyet.com/retailers to share feedback on the campaign and offer new ideas for this year.

WMC said the launch of the multi-year, multi-channel marketing campaign, "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."

More than 7,000 retailers signed up for the store locator last year - with 49% from the West, 19% from the Midwest, 23% from the South and 9% from the Northeast.

Nearly 2,000 retailers downloaded the toolkit with marketing tools to support the National Home Furnishing Month initiative in their advertising programs, the WMC said. Maiden said there was no tracking system to show how many participated in the program, but he is hoping for more feedback this year.

Consumers who "engaged with the campaign" had an average age of nearly 50 and skewed 2:1 female, WMC officials said. They added that 78% of consumer respondents said they planned to make home furnishing purchases this year and living room furniture ranked as the first choice. Consumers also said blogs and other online information are their dominant sources for information influencing their purchases, followed by store visits.

WMC said the homeyet.com campaign generated 500 million impressions in paid, earned and donated media. It said that in September homeyet.com attracted 340,000 views, nearly half of them unique visitors.

The marketing campaign was developed by Ogilvy North America. Initially, the WMC called it a $20 million, multi-year campaign. WMC officials did not immediately respond to questions this morning.

Steve DeHaan, executive vice president of the National Home Furnishings Assn., which encouraged its membership to participate on the homeyet.com store locator last year, said that "anything that will help convince consumer to buy furniture or inform the consumer, we are certainly going to be all about."

But he noted that since the HomeYet.com campaign was launched, NHFA has launched its own HomeFurnishings.com consumer Web portal, where it has since focused most of its attention and encouraged retailer participation.

"When members need information (on homeyet.com or the national sale), we'll certainly direct them to the information and the material they can use in the advertising and those kinds of things," DeHaan said. "It gives them an opportunity to participate in a national promotion."

 

 

 

More Las Vegas Market February 2010 Coverage