2009 Ex Award Winners: Best Mobile Marketing Program (Consumer) - Ex Award

CAMPAIGN: Lane Home Entertainment Tour
CLIENT: Lane Home Furnishings
AGENCY: Vivid Marketing

Shopping for furniture can be a daunting task—just ask anyone who’s invested in a new couch or entertainment center. Lane’s Home Entertainment Tour which hit 20 Lane retailers last fall and will visit another 90 this year is a 1 000 square-foot trailer that takes some of the stress out of those decisions. The big rig showcases Lane’s line of home entertainment furniture with separate showrooms for guys and gals and an Ultimate Home Entertainment Room that features what they can do together.

The centerpiece of the experience is fun creative messaging on the big red truck that highlights the differences between men and women. (Hint: She likes “Sex and the City” while he prefers ESPN.) An eight-foot-tall oversized Lane sofa serves as a stage for an outdoor emcee who hosts game show-like programming for interactive trivia contests between men and women. In between games attendees can spin an oversized prize wheel for some cool swag or relax in one of six Lane recliners as they wait to enter. Once inside they find a Made for Her room a warm and bright atmosphere featuring neutral colors with patterned accents and upholstery samples. Catalogs filled with Lane’s living room pieces are available so she can mix and match and dream up her own styles. The opposite side of the rig houses the Made for Him room filled with electronics and gaming and other manly stuff along with storage for all those gadgets a comfy recliner and a massage chair. In the Ultimate Home Entertainment room men and women can sit down and relax while a Lane ambassador tracks their home furnishings and entertainment preferences through a software program that recommends furniture lines at the end of the process and provides an incentive to make a purchase.

“Nothing like this has ever been done in the home furnishings industry ” says Morgan Files director-advertising at Lane. “Retailers have been attracted to this tour due to that uniqueness and the fact that it is a way to create some excitement and add fun to the retail shopping experience.”

The numbers say the tour is working. In its first two months the tour increased store traffic by 30 percent compared to a typical weekend achieving 37 000 impressions and selling $300 000 worth of Lane furniture. We say “Vive la différence!”