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Thermador Invites Us To Virtual Dinner Parties

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High-end kitchen major appliances brand Thermador has a tough job in this economy: even wealthy people are reluctant to spend big on trophy stoves. Thermador is hoping to keep the fires burning with the largest campaign in its history. The effort -- "Real Innovations for Real Cooks," launching next month -- centers on a product-demonstration, cooking-show-style Web experience at Thermador.com.

The site, via Orange County, Calif.-based AOR DGWB Advertising & Communications, launches with a cross-section view of a building -- one side of which is a loft space in New York City, and the other side a home that could be facing the ocean at Malibu. The two sides represent Thermador's two offerings, Masterpiece and Professional kitchens. In each kitchen, the owner is holding a party, and as one chooses one of the two kitchens to "visit" ambient sounds of traffic or waves, music and people talking and laughing come up.

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The host walks forward and introduces himself -- saying, in essence, "I'm glad you arrived," and explaining what he's cooking on the range or in the oven and what's in the refrigerator. The host instructs the visitor to mouse over the star icons to zoom in on an appliance, where one can observe the recipe being prepared, learn about how specific features expedite preparation of the dish, get a more elaborate tutorial on the recipe and get more information on the appliance.

Beatriz Sandoval, senior marketing manager at Thermador, says the new effort is the cornerstone of how we are revitalizing the brand. "We kept coming back around to real innovations, and there was no better way to embody what we wanted to say than showing home chefs in action in an interactive way. It's meant to be indicative of what would happen where the kitchen is the hub of a home. To get that message and positioning across it was important to launch with an experiential center and everything will reflect that tonality and passion," she says.

"It's like watching a cooking show with a friend," says Jonathan Brown, creative director at DGWB. "It's less sales than entertainment." He says the idea is stickiness -- and social-media elements let visitors save recipes, appliance specs and the like from the site and send it on to others. "Typically, people are remodeling the whole kitchen as they do research. They will spend time on this site because it is an engaging way to experience information, and send it to your spouse."

Brown says the inspiration for the site is a real-world kitchen that Thermador runs in Scottsdale, Ariz. "At the showroom in Scottsdale you cook lunch or dinner with their chef while learning firsthand why the ranges and ovens are so much better. We asked ourselves how we could bottle the Scottsdale experience and serve it on Web. We can't fly everyone to Scottsdale, but the site lets us entertain and inform them in an immersive way."

The campaign will include Facebook and Twitter and Thermador home page elements that drive traffic to the site and relationships with enthusiasts, industry bloggers, and independent bloggers, per Brown. "Everything pushes toward this."

Sandoval points out that the new site, and the campaign that supports it, represent a shift in positioning from the idea of Thermador as an American icon. "All of our visuals and everything we did had more of a look to our past," she said. "We thought it was time to concentrate on the core of the brand -- the innovations we create."

According to Sandoval, Thermador has not been hard-hit by the economy because people are staying at home more and investing in what they have, particularly since selling one's home is no longer fiscally attractive. "People aren't moving. So we are seeing a lot more remodeling; we are seeing a lot of full kitchen suites leaving our warehouses."

1 comment about "Thermador Invites Us To Virtual Dinner Parties ".
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  1. Chris Diede from DGWB Advertising, January 11, 2011 at 2:32 p.m.

    The Thermador Web Experience is now officially live and can be found at:
    http://www.thermador.com/experience

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