Each month, The Adquirer provides insight into the creative and media strategies of industry-leading advertisers in a particular sector. Estimated cost per web visit results are provided by our data scientists, utilising sources including Hitwise, Nielsen and BARB.
This month, we look at four different home furnishing advertisers with a similar target audience: indexing highly with females aged 55+, with a suburban lifestyle and who enjoy a bit of Emmerdale. In an industry filled with price promotions and product-heavy creatives, the challenge here is to stand out from the crowd and convince the viewer that your products and service are superior in order to trigger a response. Who tows the line and who breaks the mould? We explore the similarities and differences in their media and creative strategies, and the different calls to action at play.
Furniture Village’s ad kicks off with the inimitable opening chords of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day”, and the ad itself lives up to the name with a bright and happy tone throughout. The ad exploits their proposition by namedropping different “famous brands” that they sell whilst displaying a variety of sofas, tables and beds, along with numerous delighted shoppers.
Ever-present discounts are displayed on screen and delivered by the voiceover, and the brand’s logo appears for the first and last 2 seconds. With other brands being promoted in the ad, having the Furniture Village logo and/or URL on screen could have served as a necessary reminder as to who was delivering this happiness. As with Barker and Stonehouse’s ad, the URL is small on screen, which is strange considering their websites are more than viable for online purchasing. Maybe retail’s acceptance of e-commerce isn’t yet 100% complete.
There is a high reliance on terrestrial stations – 45% of all impacts were on ITV1 and 11% on Channel 5 – which is understandable considering the high levels of spend deployed. The same applies for the high delivery in peak time viewing, which was at 70% for the campaign. That said, although these variables become more prominent the higher the spends, they still must be bought correctly and with an eye on generating a positive ROI for the advertiser.
Furniture Village utilise a sensible ad length selection of 30 (46% of impacts delivered with this length), 20 (28%) and 10 (27%) second versions. Their 192 different ad iterations account for the numerous products and offers promoted throughout the year. Overall, their approach seems to resonate with viewers, as they achieved the lowest cost per website in our analysis, at £4.60, which for higher value items such as furniture is an impressive figure.
