Trust the Real Experts leveraged the humorous empathy of unneeded and unqualified opinions to draw the audience in, while delivering on the promise of expertise and aspirational imagery homeowners are looking for in the process. This careful creative balance established a cathartic campaign that bridged GPS’s historical showroom ads with a campaign that could be a platform for multiple audiences, including the Designer-targeted ad below.
General Plumbing Supply
Creative Campaign Development
General Plumbing Supply is a leading kitchen and bath supply house that differentiates themselves through their deep knowledge and expertise. GPS came to Spitball to bring together the creative and media buying needs to support their multiple showrooms and growing business.
Our first task was a media audit to gather historical insights and analyze performance. The target audience consists of homeowners, contractors and design professionals. This three-headed monster needed to be wrangled to get the most out of their media spend.
In parallel, Spitball took a deep dive into the audiences to gain knowledge and extra insights in developing an overarching brand campaign that could cater to each audience. GPS’s current silo’ed approach created a fragmented image across various media channels. A stronger, consistent campaign was needed since GPS competes against larger supply houses as well as big box stores like Lowes and Home Depot.
Spitball’s blueprint to success has been our multi-pronged approach to research, including mystery shopper experiences to the GPS and competitor showrooms. This research along with consumer panel data shaped the brand and campaign strategy. The pain point that was consistent across all audiences mirrored the value that GPS has been known for – expertise. This simple inflection point might feel like table stakes but Spitball took a creative approach in bringing this idea to life. All too often companies like GPS lean on manufacturer beauty shots that do not distinguish the retailer enough. Spitball’s creativity helped break cookie-cutter visuals to resonate with the primary audiences.
To activate the campaign, Spitball’s creative and media team worked their integrated strategies into media tactics that not just hit the audience based on media consumption but accentuate the creative concept. To help drive awareness and consideration, Spitball architected a plan that connected the brand with audience passion points but also used location data of both GPS and competitor stores to capture homeowners who were in the mindset of renovations.
Unique placements and technology were used to add a layer of targeting to media tactics. Programmatic and contextual buying looked to drive awareness to relevant audiences while retargeting increased site and showroom traffic. Cover wraps were leveraged to turn traditional print into a personalized, direct channel but with high visual impact.
Custom radio spots along with dedicated on-air segments and reads from well-known personalities, such as Michael Kay on ESPN, were also produced to get the GPS name in front of consumers when and where they listen.
When developing any media plan, we also look to create a KPI framework so we can measure just how effective our ideas stick. For us, all media impressions are not created equal so impressions are not the only benchmark we measure. Brand lift studies, site traffic, store foot traffic and other metrics were used holistically to determine the effectiveness of the new campaign.