At a time when everyone is embracing home makeovers, it seems fitting that Wickes – traditionally perceived as a building trade brand – should be doing the same, as it positions itself as the go-to store for consumers looking to buy paint, tools and other DIY project essentials.
A full-scale marketing assault has seen the home improvement retailer taking the marketing world by surprise, most notably when it chose Girls Aloud singer, Kimberley Walsh to be its brand ambassador.
Looking to challenge stereotypes surrounding DIY and target a younger demographic, the female-focused campaign has been designed to grab the attention of an audience previously untapped by Wickes.
In addition to the celebrity partnership, the brand’s ‘House Proud’ campaign has capitalised on one of the effects of the pandemic as it appeals to ‘house-barrassed’ remote workers who blur their backgrounds on zoom calls. Working alongside creative ad agency VCCP, Wickes aims to instil a sense of ‘house pride’ back into the British public.
Wickes’ chief marketing and digital officer Gary Kibble takes us behind the scenes to share his 20 years of marketing experience.
On Marketing 101 and life before Wickes
Kibble originally joined WHSmith as a marketing trainee. He spent eight years in the commercial division before joining Very.com, where he stayed for a decade, becoming brand marketing director for the business, later progressing to similar roles at Mothercare and Argos.
The industry may have changed a lot over the past 20 years, but Kibble still believes in the importance of “living in the customers shoes” and admits to love “bringing creativity and data together”.
“It really lit a fire inside me when I was younger. As a discipline, marketing has moved from art to more of a science,” he says.
Kibble believes that analysing consumer data is not just about finding out how consumers are shopping, but about understanding the dynamics of the decisions they make.
“What are they browsing on that path to purchase? When and how are they engaging with you and your competitors? I love bringing the qualitative and quantitative data points together to help build and inform my point of view in my actions.”
Has it been harder to predict that consumer behaviour in recent years, as a recent CIM study suggested?
“It would be arrogant to say that predicting consumer behaviour is easy, but there are certain tools that allow us to be more informed,” he says.
“The CCB consumer confidence index showed us that we’ve got the lowest level of consumer confidence since 1974, but you can look below that high-level metric and analyse the trends and shifts.”
In response, Wickes has really dialled up its own understanding of customers and how they’re feeling.
“Every month we run a ‘mood of the nation’ with our trade and DIY customers to get a sense of their sentiment and their likelihood to purchase,” Kibble reveals.
“Are they thinking about saving or spending? If it’s spending, is it in home renovation? All of this helps us make a better and more informed decision about the future for the customer.”
READ MORE: Wickes launches new TV ad showcasing art of DIY
On Wickes’ House Proud campaign
Wickes business is uniquely balanced across three key concepts: trade, installation and DIY. The brand’s House Proud ad campaign featured people showing off homes of all sizes, designed to appeal to post-pandemic ‘house-barrassed’ shoppers.
“While we wanted to knit together the three things that make up our business, the ad was effectively a communication of the reason that we exist to help the nation feel house-proud. House pride has become amplified throughout the pandemic, because we are looking inside each other’s homes and making assessments about people.”
“Homes also became schools, gyms and our place of work, so the desire to feel house proud grew. It became the perfect storm for us and the main motivator behind the campaign.”
Wickes and VCCP worked in collaboration to build a creative execution based on customer insight and feedback.
“In marketing there needs to be mutual level of trust and respect with an agency,” Kibble says, describing the partnership as “genuinely 50/50”.
“I’ve been in this industry for more than 20 years and I’ve had some relationships with agencies that haven’t been symbiotic. The really powerful relationships are when you’re genuinely hand-in-hand.”
READ MORE: Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh swaps singing for DIY in new Wickes Partnership
On Wickes’ brand ambassador; Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh
“To my mind, working with brand ambassadors can be really powerful and quite game-changing for brands.”
A firm advocate on the power of celebrity and brand partnerships, Kibble refers to his days with Littlewoods when he established a collaboration with Trinny and Susannah.
“They had a programme on BBC called What Not to Wear that would regularly bring in 12-14 million viewers. Of course for some people it looked odd that these style icons were partnering up with a subprime brand. It was amazing how quickly their endorsement accelerated positive perceptions.”
The inspiration behind the Kimberley Walsh and Wickes campaign largely came from a change in the demographics of consumers that were shopping home improvement in lockdown.
“We saw an material shift and increase in female and younger customers shopping the Wickes brand,” says Kibble.
“We knew that if we spoke to this younger, more female-orientated customer in their language and through their channels, then we may have an opportunity to build brand loyalty as opposed to a one-off shop.
“Who are they engaging with from a social perspective? Who are they liking on their Instagram feed? These questions led us to really understand the true benefit and value that an ambassador could bring to that audience.”
Kimberley Walsh has 766k followers on Instagram, but her genuine love for DIY was crucial for the partnership to work.
“The partnership has to be authentic, otherwise customers see through it. Kimberley was brought up by a single mother and did a lot of DIY when she was younger. She’s a huge home improvement fan.”
On Wickes’ future works
Keeping one eye firmly on that “high growth, slightly younger, more female audience”, Kibble has Wickes’ next campaign ready to go.
A ten-episode piece of ad funded programming with The Saturdays singer Rochelle Humes will be launching this summer, continuing to break down the stigmas surrounding DIY at both an industry and consumer level.
“DIY is often seen as the domain of the male in any household and that’s not right,” he says.
“Wickes is also seen as a trade brand, so we’ve actually got a compounded brand challenge. We had to work even harder against these stigmas.”
Kibble returns again to the importance of authenticity within marketing, emphasising the importance of being “true to yourself” and believing in your messaging.
“The role of data and analytics is so much stronger in marketing now. But I also know they should never overtake intuition, gut feeling and experience.”
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1 Comment. Leave new
Interesting stuff and great interview. More please !