The Challenge
For its most innovative product launch to date, The Mitchell Group engaged Innis Maggiore to develop the positioning strategy, sales platform and marketing materials for introduction of Sta-Kleen, the industry’s first and only truly dry erase urethane. With the 2010 Hospitality and Design Expo & Conference (HD Expo) fast approaching, the agency was tasked with quickly developing and executing a campaign designed to make a big splash with manufacturers and interior designers in the HD contract market.
The campaign tactics included the development of a product microsite as the destination where furniture manufacturers and designers could learn more about Sta-Kleen’s stain-resistant properties and preview its portfolio of high-fashion patterns and colors. Over the course of the first 18 months, additional marketing tactics will be deployed to extend awareness of Sta-Kleen to contract furniture manufacturers and designers specializing in other contract market segments, specifically healthcare and office interior.
The Mitchell Group has a website for its existing products, but the ability to modify or add to the existing code and content is cumbersome and would have weighed down the velocity of the campaign.
The Solution
Innis Maggiore suggested Sitefinity as the CMS that would allow rapid deployment and the flexibility to grow the site substantially over the first 12 months of the product launch. With over 20 Sitefinity deployments in its portfolio, Innis Maggiore had no hesitation in recommending it as the content management system. The integration with many of the tools the agency frequently employs makes rapid deployment possible, including custom .NET controls, web services, APIs, jQuery, and RadControls.
Additionally, with the need for regular addition of pages to the site, the ability for the agency’s content managers and client to add content was critical. Sitefinity has the most user-friendly interface of the CMS solutions the agency employs and clients regularly learn the content management interface in about an hour training session.
Innis Maggiore developed the initial microsite in less than 4 weeks and designed and messaged it to the positioning idea of the product. The first phase contained the sneak peak of The Erasable Man™ - Sta-Kleen’s dry-eraseurethane-wearing spokesman designed to display the effectiveness of the product at the HD Expo Show. Phase two contains the live show video of attendees writing on – and erasing from - The Erasable Man’s Sta-Kleen suit.
With heavy traditional and online Public Relations tactics employed, the website required a robust news room, a module the agency wrote specifically to the needs of the campaign. Sitefinity allowed easy integration with this module as well as the Sta-Kleen fabric portfolio, also a custom module designed to easily manage the frequent additions or modifications of patterns.
The Results
The client is thrilled with the result of the first phase of the website. Distributor business partners, and industry peers have already commented on its great look, informative content and how well the video and portfolio explains and shows the new product.
Most importantly, Sta-Kleen has already taken first place in the race to erase, with the marketing and sales materials. The website was instrumental in helping the Mitchell Group sign exclusive arrangements with all top distributors they had targeted. And the most recent news is that one of Sta-Kleen’s distributors has also landed contracts with three premiere furniture manufacturers. The PR effort driving to the website has also generated interest for distributors to begin discussing pickup of the line prior to the product launch at the HD Expo.
The client was amazed at how fast the website could be built and yet still has such a powerful content management interface. Both content managers feel the WYSIWYG editing makes them feel far more confident when any changes are made. Plus, the custom modules integrate directly into Sitefinity, so it’s as easy to manage the news room and portfolio as it is the standard pages. Of course, the web designers and developers are happy as usual, since they all enjoy the ease of designing and coding to Sitefinity. Our SEO experts love it too since all the content, page title, and meta data they need to touch is right at their fingertips.
Stay tuned… Sta-Kleen will likely be coming to furniture near you. And you can be one of the first to learn about it at www.StaKleenDryEraseUrethane.com.