Annapolis Lighting Work

Hi all -

I just wanted to write about some of the recent work we've been doing for The Annapolis Lighting Company. They hired us recently to redevelop and reposition their brand as well as to develop a more effective media strategy that would provide results for them. As we do with many of our clients in a similar situation, we began by embarking on a thorough research phase. In this phase, we did four distinct segments of research:

Internal - Interviews with management, sales staff, etc. to find out more about their corporate culture, their sales methods, past advertising efforts, etc.

Industry - Secondary research to better understand the intricacies of today's lighting and fan industry. What are the current trends? A lot of this came from the trade association, since they already have a good deal of compiled research.

Competitive - In order to make Annapolis Lighting's marketing stand out, we need to know what their competitors are doing. How are they positioning themselves? What are their messages? We have to consider all of this because the last thing we want to do is to create marketing that blends in with what they are doing.

Target Audience - This is where we did our most thorough research. All of this research was primary research, where we directly engaged the target. Within this segment, we did a combination of intercept interviews and online surveys. Our aim here was to get a peek into customer perception of the brand as it stands now for both current customers and people not as familiar with the brand, better understand buying habits as it pertains to this segment and gauge overall brand awareness.

Once the research was compiled, we moved forward with developing the brand based on our findings. In the end, our positioning statement essentially said that The Annapolis Lighting Company is the lighting store that carries a higher caliber of product than your normal lighting store (their major competitors are Home Depot, Loews, etc). Based on that, we developed the following brand development concepts (click to enlarge):




You'll see that we refreshed the logo a bit, but still kept it similar to preserve the brand equity that did exist. We think our creative does a great job of communicating Annapolis Lighting's distinction. I'd love to know how you feel about it.

We also did quite a lot of work on their media strategy. Although not as easy to blog about as the creative, I'm very proud of what we did for this client. Where they were spending quite a lot on traditional media like print, we have adjusted their media mix to include more in-store, interactive, outdoor, direct marketing, etc. We feel confident that the media plan we have devised for them, combined with our monthly support, will provide massive ROI.

Let me know what you think!

Garret