Independent retailers including Mitre 10, Home and Thrifty-Link Hardware have benefitted from a range of creative and strategic advertising solutions provided by Faith. This has included catalogues, television, digital, loyalty club programs and local area marketing.

Faith worked on the Fiskars brand, one of the oldest companies in the world for ten years. Their Finnish range of garden tool and yard care products, including cutting tools that embrace pruners and loppers, axes and block splitters as well as digging tools. In addition to this segment of gardening we produced a range of materials for UK gardening brand, Hozelock.

For three years we worked with Carter Holt Harvey, one of Australia’s most important producers of wood based products including particleboard brands, Structaflor, Laserframe  R–flor and a termite resistant flooring product Terminator.

The Faith design team also oversaw the consolidation of 25 state brands and 65 products brands to form Australias largest cement and dry mix company- Cement Australia.

Laserlite, was the only brand of polycarbonate roofing specifically designed made and tested for Australia’s unique conditions.  Residential as well as commercial markets constitute a major focus for the brand.  Faith produced creative and digital solutions for them including a new website platform that optimised search, product application and selection. SEM, SEO and online display advertising were all geared to maximise paid and earned effectiveness.

Smorgon Steel was also an important client. Prior to being acquired and merged with Bluescope, Smorgon Steel was involved in supplying steel reinforcing products to the construction and building sectors. A new market positioning was developed as well as a new website and a range of collateral material, new trade and consumer advertising.  

The steel industry is characterised by capital intensity, slim profit margins and highly aggressive competition. Against this backdrop, and over several years Faith was able to provide Smorgon/Bluescope with a responsive, creatively driven communications strategy that clearly understood the technical demands of varying target audiences.

Today, we continue to keep abreast of the needs of this market through clients such as Britex Cleaning products who we have handled for three years and whose products are distributed through Bunnings outlets nationally. Using an array of digital advertising, and social media we have continued to grow the business in a challenging market.

In this market segment at both a B2B and B2C level Faith has demonstrated a keen insight into the needs of the both the supplier and independent retailer market for building material products. We understand the ‘pathway to purchase’ of both trade and retail customers and their unique needs for relevant information. Our experience, insights and skills make us ideally suited to work this growing and changing market.

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Choices Flooring is owned by Newfurn Limited and are a member driven co-operative who have survived and adapted in a market where many co-ops have disappeared.  They run a co-ordinated national marketing and merchandise program for 130 members around the country.  Members are broken up          by geographic segments which allow for joint marketing and promotional activity.  Co-operative advertising dollars and member marketing fees were allocated to each segment for promotion and marketing according to the cost of media and the sales dollars they generated.  This model is felt to be the most equitable for all the members with additional money being made in some segments to achieve strategic objectives.

Faith working with the internal marketing team used customer and insights research from Melbourne based research agency Truth Serum, to develop an integrated communications program which included all the major touch points that its prime target audience related to.  Importantly we looked at the emotional and rational clues which were so important to generate a flooring purchase which on average is made every seven years.  There are other cues such as moving home or extensions that prompted purchase, but essentially the key market was new homes and replacement.

The communications program was very comprehensive and included retail catalogues, magazines, television radio, press, direct mailers, online and digital.  We developed a new website for the group as Carpet Choice as well as a further site when it migrated to Choices.

We also worked hard on an interior design project entitled ‘Destination Choice’ whose aim to was to engage with customers instore and assist them navigate the myriads of flooring options available to them.  A lot of work went into developing a standard quoting system which attempted to lift the success rate in quoting from its average of 50% to 60%.  A post-purchase service model was also introduced to achieve the highest level of service satisfaction.  The better operators embraced this with vacuuming after installation and some little memorable touchpoints that saw the customers become advocates of Choices Flooring.

In the five years we handled the business the group held its market share against aggressive competition from Harvey Norman and Bunnings.  Margins increased and advertising expenditure as a percentage of sales declined slightly.  Our media team managed the $4 million spend across the country, planning and buying activity in every regional market in the country.  We also worked with the internal finance team to deliver a reporting system that complemented the allocation of co-op dollars by geographic segment.

In every way possible Faith was a friend to Choices Flooring offering Branding, Design and Art Direction, Creative Direction, Digital, Media Strategy, Planning and Buying.

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