Advertising Campaign for The Boardroom Snowboard Shop
Vancouver, BC
The Challenge:
The Boardroom Snowboard Shop puts a lot of emphasis on their legendary Boxing Week Sale. It's hands-down their biggest day of the year. Line-ups down the street and around the corner on Burrard aren't uncommon. In the past, The Boardroom has leaned heavily toward traditional advertising to promote this sale. Local and national newspapers, flyers, and other print media were the bulk of the advertising campaign, with less attention to online marketing. While print ads are an important marketing stream, the Boardroom's online store is rapidly growing and this year's sale campaign needed to reflect that change and growth.
The Solution:
In order to support these growing online sales, we developed a comprehensive advertising campaign. Print ads called out the 20%-60% discount and were focused to drive customers to one of three local Boardroom stores. Online ads were diversified and covered individual categories — snowboards, boots, bindings, outerwear, etc. — in order to drive customers towards the website.
Print Advertising Strategy:
The Boardroom is located on a heavy foot traffic street. The sandwich board, placed on the sidewalk outside, helps to draw customers in and inform them of the upcoming sale. The main points of the sale — the name and the discount — are the most prevelant elements and quickly convey the message to customers walking by.
The newspaper advertisement — in local newspapers — once again focuses the viewer's attention on the main elements. We also bolded the address of the location closest to the newspaper's circulation area to make the decision to visit the store quicker and more intuitive.
Online Advertising Strategy:
Although they're often not the prettiest things in the world, AdChoice advertisements are effective. I developed these to encompass both the sale as a whole, as well as individual categories. In keeping with the style of the website, the creative is minimal and light. The white space in the ads reflects the white space on the website. This allows the customer to quickly and intuitively understand that they've arrived at the proper site.
The website itself is also branded with the sale, to ensure customer recognition and reduce bounce rates. If a website looks different than an ad, customers will often assume that either a mistake has been made or that the site is not legitimate. Continuity between advertisement and brand alleviates this mistake.
Social media was also included in the sale in order to promote the West coast Boardroom community and lifestyle. For sale campaigns in particular, Instagram is effective as it allows users to tag friends and share the sale information organically.
