Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
We helped a leading flooring brand… influence more decision makers
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, a leading provider of artisan-crafted wide plank wood flooring, appointed Kleber & Associates (K&A) to develop and implement an integrated PR and content marketing program to grow awareness of the brand’s offerings among affluent consumers and A&D influencers. The aspirational flooring brand was seeking to expand its position as an innovator – and as a thought leader – through highly differentiated hardwood flooring solutions.
K&A leveraged a unique audience targeting campaign, combining the strategic use of Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media in a series of multi-faceted national and regional communications programs developed to support the brand’s objectives.
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- Paid – Media the brand sponsored, including blog posts by key influencers and native content
- Earned – Media driven by engaging editors and channel influencers, including bylined articles, trend pieces and other media mentions, along with client testimonials and endorsements
- Shared – Media engagement on highly relevant social platforms, video sharing sites and online forums, as well as via media tours and experiential live events
- Owned – Media delivered to targeted audiences through created content, including blog posts, newsletters, videos and customer stories
Making It Count
Carlisle desired to utilize the agency’s blogger-influencer relationships to help build top-of-mind awareness for the brand and its product offerings among consumers and the interior design community… while also driving increased traffic to the Carlisle website.
“K&A helped grow our website traffic and allowed us to continually measure the effectiveness of our Public Relations investment. This was especially important, as Carlisle markets directly to designers and consumers. And our website is one of our most effective sales and marketing tools.”
Chris Sy, President, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
K&A leveraged relationships with top-tier bloggers in the A&D and building products channel to develop a strategic “influence-the-influencer” program. Our team actively identified and negotiated with aspirational design and remodeling bloggers to secure a series of highly-effective sponsored blog posts and articles. As social media sharing was an integral component of the collaborative program, K&A arranged for the bloggers to feature images from the blog posts on their Pinterest boards and in Instagram stories.
To educate residential homeowners on Carlisle’s diverse offerings, the K&A team implemented consumer-focused MAT release campaigns on the topics of “Designing with Authentic Materials” and “Creating a Healthier Home through Smart Updates.” Each campaign garnered 120+ earned media clips and reached more than 14,000,000 consumers in leading metropolitan media and online outlets throughout the United States.
Taking It Regional
In support of individual markets where Carlisle showrooms are located, public relations efforts were targeted to specific regional audiences – in concert with staff at Carlisle’s showrooms – to identify relevant promotional opportunities and designer partnerships. K&A developed a comprehensive Designer Collaboration Program created to showcase designers in each region and their projects that feature Carlisle flooring.
“K&A partnered with Carlisle to organize a regional experiential showroom program that introduced designers to our brand’s many offerings and capabilities. The K&A team secured incoming ASID Chair Carolyn Ames Noble to deliver a Continuing Education presentation on sustainable materials at Design Chicago. The hybrid in-person and virtual event drew more than 150 registrants from across the country, which increased visibility of the Carlisle brand while enabling our team to forge new relationships with important designers.”
Chris Sy, President, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
By aligning sales and marketing efforts, K&A helped to activate Carlisle’s teams across the country, allowing for a more cohesive vision and increased traction for the brand promise.
Getting Inspired
K&A worked with Carlisle to promote the brand’s newly launched Transformative Design Team, which was formed to push the boundaries of traditional product development into artistic concept exploration.
We earned numerous media clips for the team’s premiere concept floor, a vibrant abstract design reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting that was brought to life using a distinct finishing process that embraced the many possibilities of color layering.
As a follow up to the initial launch, K&A also secured significant coverage of the brand’s encore concept surface, the One Board Floor, which – building upon the effect seen in ombré textiles – explored how plank placement impacts the final design of a wood floor.
Spreading the Word
Integrating the campaign programs, K&A closely aligned pitching and media relations efforts with the national and regional activity calendars developed by Carlisle to reinforce and augment areas of brand focus.
While it wasn’t possible in 2020 to conduct a physical visit to meet with editors and publishers, K&A organized a virtual media tour that featured Carlisle’s latest collections, hosting one-on-one sessions with a number of consumer and trade media representatives to share the latest in biophilic design trends. In the fall of 2021, our team visited in person with editors in Chicago, where we presented Carlisle’s newest offerings along with themes on sustainable design and natural materials.
“Through results-driven integrated content marketing and PR programs, Kleber & Associates effectively targeted, and engaged, key influencers and decision-makers to keep the Carlisle brand top of mind. K&A created a core message to guide the audience experience, extended that messaging into multiple media channels, and then creatively mixed their content delivery to successfully move Carlisle’s audiences from one touchpoint to another – helping to grow brand awareness and affinity.”
Chris Sy, President, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors