Month: July 2020

Challenge

With the initial rise of COVID-19 in March of 2020, companies everywhere were scrambling to find ways to keep connections and relationships afloat at an extremely unreliable time. Our client Milliken, a leading producer of carpet and LVT, found themselves in this very position, asking “what can we do right now of value?”

It was important for Milliken as a company to find a way to enhance connection with an approach that did not have ‘selling’ as the end-goal, but rather, an opportunity to instill hope within their industry and beyond.

Solution

With this perspective in mind, we assisted Milliken in creating what came to be known as the Conscious Creators series. This series took place on Facebook Live over the course of a three-week period. Each week, a new 30-minute segment streamed in real time on Milliken’s Facebook page. The series was led by top motivational speaker Brant Menswear, a professional that Milliken had partnered with before for their annual sales meeting. Read on to learn more about the tactics we used for this series, as well as the remarkable impression it left on Milliken’s followers, reaching over 14,000 unique viewers.

Tactics

Create an Eye-Catching Visual Personality
The first step of building this successful campaign was to create a unique, aesthetically-pleasing personality for the virtual sessions. Many different companies at this time were infiltrating inboxes and newsfeeds, meaning much care and attention was required to ensure Milliken’s creative stood out in an intriguing, artful way.

In aligning with Brant Menswear’s new book, “Black Sheep,” our team was able to design and assign a bold yet inviting look and feel to the Conscious Creators series. It is also important to note that it was imperative for us as a team to capture two separate brands (Milliken and Brant Menswear) in a cohesive, creative way that made sense for each entity as well as their partnership together.

Produce Marketing Assets with Special Built-in Features
Once Milliken approved the creative direction for Conscious Creators, we were then tasked to create supporting marketing assets to further promote and enhance the campaign. Our team created a series of e-blasts and social media posts in tandem with a content calendar in order to ensure the highest reach possible.

In addition to these assets, we also went one step further by plugging in special built-in features found in the e-blasts. Within the e-blasts, the receiver could easily schedule a calendar reminder on their phone or tablet so they would not miss /forget about the live sessions. This helped immensely in attracting potential viewers as well as retaining them when it was most imperative. They could also find live links to various ‘homework assignments’ that Brant provided in-between sessions inside these emails.

Within the e-blasts and social media, too, we were able to set up “countdown calendars” as another way to encourage viewers to attend the virtual sessions. These countdowns would simply reflect how many days, hours, and minutes we were away from the virtual sessions, in real time, adding an element of excitement.

Results

At the conclusion of the Conscious Creators series, we touched base with Sherry Dreger, Vice President of Branding and Client Engagement for Milliken. When asked if she was pleased with the results of the campaign, she said, “The numbers that we saw from this series were incredible. They certainly surpassed all of our expectations! Even better, we did not lose people from week to week. We stayed consistent in our numbers from beginning to end.”

She continued, “Crobar is a true partner in every sense of the word. They are deeply involved in our business. And not only are they creative, they are strategic, too.”

When asked if Milliken had plans to host more inspirational seminars similar to the Conscious Creators series, without pause Sherry replied “100% we will do this again. We’re just getting started!”