• by Aaron Baar , May 20, 2016

Summer is a time for home renovation, but some projects, perhaps, may not be suited for the do-it-yourself crowd. 

Citing statistics that show a third of all home flooring projects go uncompleted, Carpet One is taking aim at big-box retailers, who may have cheaper prices on flooring materials, but do not have the expertise of Carpet One in a new advertising campaign. 

“This is the first time [Carpet One] has gone toe-to toe with the big box stores,” Gillian Lynch, vice president and group account director at Winsper, the agency that created the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. “They’ve wanted to go to market with this for a while, but they hadn’t found the right partner [who could] do it with a sense of humor. As an agency, we have helped other premium brands with similar campaigns, so it was a natural fit.”

The campaign includes a simple television spot, in which a couple directly addresses a camera from their couch. As they speak about heading to a big box store to get competitive pricing on a floor, their voices echo as if in a giant deserted chasm. “Because we couldn’t find anybody to help us, all we got were these ‘big-box voices,’” the woman says. A voiceover suggest viewers can find the perfect floor at Carpet One, without having to pay more. 

“This was a funny way to show the experience of the consumer,” Lynch says. “We thought this was a way to start to socialize this message, and we didn’t want to be preachy.”

The spot and other materials, including print executions and in-store materials, will be made available to the local retailers who are part of the Carpet One co-op. The local retailers will then execute the media buys as they see fit locally.