CASE STUDY: Aaron's 2019 Brand Strategy

For 3 consecutive years, Aaron’s (a national furniture, electronics and appliance omni-channel retailer with 1500 corp. and franchise stores in 48 states) had chosen to focus media investments on measurable ROI derived from promotional campaigns. While the promotional periods performed well, and laid the groundwork for the ability to leverage predictive data science to manage advertising investments, the multi-year trend showed declines in awareness and "intent to buy" - especially amongst Millennials. This data revealed a tangible threat to market share and medium-term growth. The decision was made to add a branding message layer in between promo periods, and to rebalance the overall media spend to a 50/50 brand-promo mix. 

The company had just committed to a multi-year process of converting all stores to a highly successful new store experience and persona. Therefore, the new legacy store national brand campaign messaging would need to advance both the old and new models. It could not over-promise on the legacy store customer experience and risk disappointing new shoppers nor could it undermine customer expectations for the converted stores. 

In focus groups and interviews, consumers spoke about the feeling that a low credit score unfairly brands you as a bad person. They expressed that the reason they have a low credit score was not because they are irresponsible, rather, circumstances beyond their control were at play. They felt that a company that understands that a credit score is only part of their story is a company that is compassionate, fair-minded and worthy of consideration. 

The big idea that would drive the dual creative messaging mission: “Good people with bad credit are still good people.” The emotionally driven creative structure of primarily video and social marketing campaign would leverage real user generated YouTube content. 

Prior to production, a “rough” video was created for qual and quant testing, with the near-final copy and musical treatment. It tested in the top 3% of all ads in emotional engagement and memorability. It increased “intent to shop” by 18% and “intent to buy” by 21%, bringing an expected 2%-3% gain in market share. Upon completion, in just the first 3 months the :60 second version of the ad, passed 20 million completed views on the “skippable” TrueView YouTube buy. The :60 second ad outperformed the :30 and :15 second versions by nearly 50%. And, multicultural engagement was equal to general market, confirming research that projected universal appeal and providing significant Hispanic media reach efficiency gains.