 Advertising has been crucial to this storage company's success |
The concept for the Big Yellow Self Storage Company was based on an American idea. The team at Big Yellow wanted to be retailers of space, to give customers the same level of service that they'd get at the supermarket.
Storage was to become consumer friendly, and the stores themselves would have flexible opening hours, be nice, have pleasant environments and happy, approachable staff.
Along with a competitive price, these have become the core values of the Big Yellow company.
Once they had created the "core" product that customers wanted, they needed to build their customer base by letting people know about their business.
No marketing experience
Chief executive Nicholas Vetch and his team came to storage via the property business.
They had zero marketing experience, so creating awareness about their business has been a case of trial and error. And common sense.
Nick's maxim for marketing all along has been "only do it if you're going to do it really well and it will have the maximum effect".
So far they've tried the following types of marketing:
The web: very successful and relatively cheap
Leaflet drops: lots of effort and not very successful
Radio ads: pretty successful and very cost effective in the 'regions'
Billboards: couldn't afford to do it enough to have an impact.
Advertising campaign
And they've just launched their first ever TV campaign.
It's a big move in terms of financial outlay but the company feels that the time is right.
 When you want to cover the whole of London, the easiest thing to do is to go straight to television  Nicholas Vetch, Chief Executive, The Big Yellow Self Storage Company |
With advertising, you have to decide what you want to get out of it. The Big Yellow believe that it will raise awareness of the product and brand.
They want the Big Yellow to be synonymous with storage.
The campaign will run for six weeks and the response is being gauged via the website.
Each customer who comes into the storage facilities is then asked how they heard about the company.
The Big Yellow Self Storage Company also picked this time of year to run the campaign because spring is a big time for house moves.
The ad company
Doner, Cardwell, Hawkins started working with the Big Yellow a year ago, talking to them about what their ambitions were.
Their aim was to inject some human values into the brand, to knock off the fairly sterile side of storage.
The commercial they have come up with is quite quirky and fun. Warehouses can be quite daunting but the ad aims to emphasise the human side.
The brand was already well defined and all the values were positive. So Doner, Cardwell, Hawkins took a different tack.
They asked consumers what they'd most like to put in storage, and all of the women asked jokingly said their partner.
Though most of them then added something more serious, the idea of locking up your husband had stuck.
Now the campaign is on general release, and Nick and his colleagues have to wait and see just how successful it will be.
Student Guide
Got a garage? Can you get the car in - or is it full of stuff you don't want in your home?
Big Yellow is a business that can help you. It aims to provide a user friendly environment where you can store all that stuff.
Many storage businesses are bleak and a bit intimidating. Big Yellow really wanted to get over this image by providing a more human touch - so they needed some marketing.
The team which runs Big Yellow had little experience of marketing. They had tried a few methods and investigated others.
The Big Yellow website has been very successful and quite cheap Leaflet drops have been time consuming and not very effective Radio ads are good for the regions and cost effective Billboards are expensive and need lots to have an impact TV - let's find out... Just think...
Work out why some methods have been successful and others haven't.
What sort of businesses might use each method successfully?
Campaign planning
Big Yellow decided that the time had come to advertise on the TV.
They've now got 20 stores, so the potential market is large and TV reaches a large audience.
They needed an advertising agency to help them because television advertising is expensive, so it's important to get it right.
So what did they have to do?
Decide what the brand stands for Decide on the goal Decide on style of advert Work out when to show it Monitor the response. Just think...
Why is it important to plan a campaign very carefully?
How do you think the fact that Big Yellow now has twenty stores affects the decision to advertise on the television?
Pick a product that you use and work out a strategy to advertise it.
What does Big Yellow stand for?
Deciding what a product "stands for" can sometimes be difficult, particularly if it's being sold to a wide range of people.
Big Yellow was quite clear. It gives storage a human face and is customer friendly - something which some storage companies haven't achieved.
Just think...
What do you think the following products or brands stand for - Tango, X-Box, Miners, Thorntons, Tesco, Mars Bar?
Sometimes advertising agencies find if difficult when people from a business have a very strong idea about what a business stands for.
Why do you think this is?
What's the goal?
Do you talk about your Walkman or your personal stereo?
How about Biro, Thermos flask or Hoover? Many products are called by a product name instead of a general name.
The goal was to make Big Yellow the name everyone uses for storage. They also wanted to make more people aware of storage.
Most of us wonder what to do when the garage, spare bedroom and the loft are full of things we can't bear to part with.
Why not put it in store?
Just think...
Have a look at some ads on the television and decide on the goal of the advertising.
Work out what the company's market research must have been telling the business about its product or customers.
What style of ad?
Storage isn't like shampoo, champagne or chocolates, which you can sell using all sorts of "feelgood" strategies.
They decided that humour would work and produced an ad which was quirky and fun.
This helped to get over the message that Big Yellow storage centres are not daunting but friendly places.
Just think...
Work out why the ads you have looked at use a particular style.
What are they trying to do? Why is the style appropriate for the ad?
When to show it?
Many people move house, get married or just decide to have a clear out in the spring. These moments are just the time when people need storage.
Some of it is short-term. Some of it is long-term.
Short-term can also turn into long-term when people decide they like the space - just what Big Yellow likes.
Just think...
Advertising for some products is seasonal. Have you noticed that as soon as Christmas dinner is over, the TV is full of ads for summer holidays?
The new catalogues are out and holiday companies must assume that we can spend those long winter days when the family is together to plan and dream about the summer.
It must work or the companies wouldn't spend the money.
Work out which ads are seasonal and explain why.
Monitoring the response
There is no point spending thousands of pounds on advertising if it has no effect, so monitoring is important.
Big Yellow wants to do two things:
increase sales of space raise awareness of storage. So it:
monitors the number of new customers and asks them where they heard about Big Yellow watches the hits on the website. Just think...
Work out how the businesses, whose TV ads you've seen, might monitor the effect of their spending.
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