Evolur:
Brand Strategy & Growth
Evolur is an affordable-luxury nursery furniture brand, delivering high-quality products to budding parents for over 8 years, catering to first-time & new millennial parents in the U.S.A., Canadian & Mexican markets. It aims to make quality, safe & aesthetic nursery furniture accessible.
The brand comes from the legacy company – D.O.M. Family – that boasts of 35 years+ of manufacturing and crafting nursery furniture & products.
Brand Goals
The company grew exponentially in terms of revenue since launch, creating loyal brand advocates within the customer base and increasing word of mouth.
Time had come to create a holistic brand experience in terms of identity & marketing strategy that could capitalize on this growth as well as live up to it.
This is where I stepped in.
Brand Challenges
Outdated Creative Approach
No Thought-leadership
Lack of Platform Direction
No Clear Branding to
Align with Industry
Underutilized Database
No Communication Direction or Consistency
Lack of Inclusivity in Communication
No Clear Digital Marketing Strategy
Step 1: Craft a Brand Direction & Identity
COMPETITION & INDUSTRY RESEARCH
Extensive research helped identify a gap in the market to position Evolur visually & communication-wise.
The luxury meets baby segment, catering to the softness of the audience, was the direction locked in on.
BRAND TONE OF VOICE
The aim was to create a tonality that balanced the softness of the industry, the elegance & elevation of the business’ marketing positioning (affordable luxury) and the friendly, witty tonality of the target audience.
BRAND VISUAL IDENTITY APPROACH
The new Branding Direction played on existing brand colors (primarily) while creating an elegant & playful feel to the business, resonating with the sentiment of existing consumers. The branding was flexible to adapt to different marketing channels & occasions while creating uniformity & consistency across touch-points.
BRAND KEYWORDS IDENTIFIED
Luxury, Soft, Friendly, Straight-forward, Inspirational, Celebratory, Thought-leader
Result: A refreshed Brand Identity that was instantly recognizable across channels, increasing engagement & recall as well as living up to the brand’s growth and goals.
It was also important to create a brand personality outline to align with Evolur's future business expansion plans, as well as stay relevant to the community/audience over the course of the next (min.) 5 years.
Step 2: Integrated Marketing Strategy
While in the luxury segment, the brand’s presence was ad-hoc with no clear platform strategy.
I partnered the team to craft their Platform Strategy, identifying key platforms the brand should be present on and their frequency.
This step also saw the launch of the Brand on TikTok and an expansion on YouTube via a platform-specific, multi-format strategy.
This was combined with a tailored Content & Communication plan that allowed the brand to blend UGC (Product Curiosity & Sales) + Industry-specific & thought leadership content (Brand Building) + Relatable Parent-specific Buckets & Expert Collaborations (Community Building) + Co-marketing ‘Giveback’ content spikes (Garnering new Consumers + Consideration).
The New Brand Identity + Look & Feel
Step 3: Campaign Streamlining & Opportunity Mapping
In this step, I helped the team utilize data-spotting to identify key opportunities through the yearly calendar for recurring and one-time campaign spikes.
This led to creating a marketing calendar that was a healthy mix of sustained activity & spike activity, based on consumer behavior, seasons and sales-based occasions & events.
With this step, the brand was able to create a first-for-itself campaigns that owned global occasions like Mother’s Day & Father’s Day in unique storytelling formats, brought in inclusivity through Pride Day campaigns that celebrated LGBTQ+ parents within the Evolur customer community, owned industry & parent-specific occasions like Baby Safety Month, collaborated with industry & community experts, collaborating with massive shows like The Ellen Show, and more.
Mother's Day - #NotJustAMom
Primary asset of a larger, integrated campaign celebrating the several roles Mothers play.
Father's Day - #RealLifeSuperhero
Primary asset of a larger, integrated campaign that, unlike competition, celebrated the fathers in the Evolur community & customer pool.
Breast Feeding Awareness Month - #TheBirthRight
As a company targeting parents, especially mothers, this occasion was widely celebrated in North America. However, unlike most brands owning it at a breastfeeding level, the concept of this campaign was to bring in inclusivity and sensitivity towards those mothers who cannot or choose not to breastfeed.
The aim was to eliminate the shaming and stigma around breastfeeding or the lack of, letting the world know that its #TheBirthRight of a mother/parent to feed their child the best way they know how to.
This integrated campaign garnered real feeding stories from the Evolur community, putting the mothers are the forefront and went on to becoming a recurring property for the brand.
Collaborations & Creator Partnerships
As a first for the company, I partnered them to own creators & experts in an effort to build the community.
Data & research showed us that for parents, especially mothers, brands who help them along their journey hold higher mind space... thereby increasing word-of-mouth.
This strategy saw the brand increase its community conversation and host its first ever creator-driven LIVE Experts session.
As part of its integrated Breastfeeding Awareness Month campaign - #TheBirthRight - Evolur partnered customer and breastfeeding specialist, Nicole Butera with over 175k followers, for an experts session. This collaboration also saw the brand's first-ever LIVE experts session, as well as a Nursery Chair/Glider giveaway.
#WorldBreastpumpingDay's campaign saw Evolur partner Lactation Counselor & Pumping Expert, Tamari Jacob of One With The Pump (over 90k followers). The collaboration targeted those mothers who choose to pump for various reasons and help them navigate what data showed us to be a difficult journey for a lot of young mothers.
The first of its collaborations, Evolur partnered certified Pediatric Sleep Coach - Lindsey Henniger of The Sleep Ranch with over 55k followers, to help educate their community on SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) as part of its #SIDSAwarenessMonth campaign.
Step 4: Newsletter Strategy
The brand was sitting on a 100k+ database, creating an opportunity for a sustained Newsletter/Email Strategy.
The Strategy was segmented into new, repeat and dormant customers.
The overall strategy was to create regular blasts to enter consideration & drive purchase while creating a community-like feel for the parent via relatable content.
The creative approach was to carry-forward the set tonality, but versatile enough to customize it to occasion & campaign. The content approach was a healthy blend of product features, consumer content & community-building pieces.
Lastly, there was a specific Subject Line strategy crafted to ensure audiences are hooked to increase open rates within cluttered inboxes, raising this number from 0.2% to 20% within the first month of the strategy implementation.
Step 5: Aligning Retail Presence
In order to create a seamless brand presence, the brand’s presence on Retail touch-points as well as retail-based marketing, was uplifted in terms of tonality and visual identity to align with the new direction.
This included Amazon & BuyBuyBABY storefronts & A+s for product branding, website & retailer website product content, and at-store collateral.
Step 6: Cultivating Brand Advocates
Over the years, Evolur created loyal customers who were fierce in their love for the brand, organically working to increase its presence through active WOM.
Further consumer research indicated that parents love to hear from parents. And as a brand whose parent company’s philosophy is ‘by parents for parents’, there was an opportunity to make these loyalists voices for the brand.
The Brand Advocate Strategy identified key long-term customers and partnered with them to create wholesome, parenthood-specific content to further the brand goal of community-building.
In addition, the team was also able to identify the professions of customers and partnered them for their expert advice as a way to celebrate working mothers.
Step 7: Influencer Marketing Strategy
With UGC being at the fore-front of the brand’s marketing strategy, an Influencer Marketing Strategy was crafted to ensure authentic partnerships with celebrities and mom/parent influencers.
The strategy was tailored in a spike-like manner to ensure a healthy ratio of influencer to consumer content.
Key Wins
Instagram (primary platform) growth by over 82%
Increased emailer open rate rates from ~0.2% to 20% in the first month of implementing the Email Marketing Strategy
Reached the top of the Baby Furniture Category on Amazon in North America, beating out all key competitors
Increased the Brand’s PR features in renowned publications like US Weekly, Mom.com, Baby Center, Bella Magazine, Toy Box and more
Identified and drove successful co-marketing campaigns like Comotomo, The Prego Expo, Seek & Swoon, Crane Baby & more
Launched 10+ key products & collections, including the Evolur x Barbie collection
Brand launch on TikTok, carrying forward the marketing content approach of UGC, Topical & Content Creator-driven Campaigns
Expanded the brand’s social content formats by introducing LIVE Expert Sessions, Consumer Nursery Spotlights, Inclusive Customer Experience for the LGBTQ+ Community and more
Crafted the company’s official Green Promise, creating a foundation for its CSR & Eco initiatives
Crafted & implemented a robust UGC, Topical & Content Creator-driven Campaign approach
Drove the Enfamil x Evolur licensing creative partnership and campaigns, reaching a newer database of over 10 million mothers
Integrated Branding & Marketing initiatives that resulted in multi-million dollars in revenue