Putting Crown in prime position

What was the brief?

To develop and implement a creative marketing campaign to launch Crown Paint’s new range of primers.

The new range comprises PX3, a traditional solvent-based product, and the water-based PX4. The product names themselves help communicate their key USPs, with PX3 offering the triple benefits of helping prepare difficult substrates for better paint adhesion, covering stubborn surface stains and providing a sound base on which to paint newly plastered or porous walls. PX4 has the additional benefit of being water-based to offer a quick-drying and low-odour finish.

The launch of the new primer range was intended to consolidate Crown’s existing product offering and promote the new products as the ‘one stop shop solution’.

What did we do?

Our campaign was designed to ‘educate and engage’ and we employed a variety of different techniques to achieve this including product placement activity in the professional painting and decorating press and the builders’ merchant titles, and technical advisory articles that explored the range in greater depth. To add further credibility to our campaign, we approached both the Decorator’s Forum and the Painting and Decorating Association to conduct independent product reviews -all of which were positive!  On Crown’s key social media platforms, we also created a programme of dedicated content, including engaging video animations.

Running alongside all of this was an online competition. As one of the key benefits of the new primers is that they improve paint adhesion, the “Stick it to ‘em” competition invited people to comment whether they preferred water or solvent-based primers and why, to win a goody bag containing a specially designed magnetic van sticker.

What were the results?

The launch campaign has helped establish a healthy interest in the new primer range with sales figures up and market share both up.

In total, our dedicated social media content reached over 30,000 people – with no fewer than 105,000 timelines reached within the first week.

Over 70 people entered the competition and hundreds more stickers were sent out on request over the next few months.

From October to December 2019, 15 separate pieces of coverage were secured across a targeted media list – with only a handful of titles aimed at the professional painting and builders merchant market, this equated to at least one piece of coverage per publication per issue to provide consistent exposure. An additional 12 pieces were secured in the first quarter of 2020, bringing the total to date to 27.

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