Sunworthy — brand creation in a troubled category
With more than a dozen different brands of wallpapers and nearly as many wallcovering factories and companies in their portfolio, Borden asked us to make some sense of this division within the environment of home furnishings and within the corporate environment of Borden.
We began with a study of the shrinking wallpaper category within the expanding home furnishings market and identified some of the issues that might be causing this category to "under-perform".
While some, like the rising cost of experienced installers, could not be solved by MEIER, there were many aspects we could address with solutions shared between the development of a cohesive single brand identity and completely new methods of 24 hour installation hot lines for DIY-installers, re-designed book-presentation formats, re-definition of collection categories and collection displays targeted to discrete markets: high-end, middle and hardware/home stores.
The advertising campaign did not mention wallpaper in it's headlines – but rather solutions to design issues we knew to be of concern in the middle to high-end markets.
The creation of the brand, Sunworthy (which we named, logo'd, branded and launched in a series of multi-page print buys) and the ancillary material - coop ads, packaging material, sales training literature and designer-room kiosks which could be sent "loaded" with merchandise to home stores and replaced, rather than re-stocked, allowed a basically fallow division of Borden to become the largest wallcovering brand in the world and reverse the downward spiral trend of wallpaper sales in the market. Sunworthy was successfully sold to the Blackstone Group for squillions more than the individual factories or brands might ever have garnered.
Photo Credit: Ken Skalski