JennAir’s brand message pulls no punches. With a sleek website design, featuring three high-quality mini commercials that boast gorgeous actors and highbrow cinematography, the motto “bound by nothing” challenges the viewer to think of luxury products differently. You have less of a feeling you are about to cook a chef-quality meal on a premier-grade stovetop than you are charting your own path on a spaceship into a different universe altogether. But really, JennAir sells refrigerators, stoves, and other kitchen appliances.
JennAir is a brand that has been around since the end of the Second World War, and the founder, Louis Jenn, has been credited with inventing the downdraft range system, allowing stoves to be used in different settings, like the island stove.
Luxury is something as old as time, but making it come alive to customers is a different challenge. The challenge for JennAir – and when they realized they needed Adobe – was when they needed a digital link to connect to consumers in a more accessible way.
Fearless luxury
“We were already going down that path with all of our website platforms,” Jon Hall, product and brand marketing director at JennAir said in an interview. But there was a greater need for more opportunities to highlight the showroom. What JennAir found when talking to end users was that they were connecting to cabinetry and countertops, not the appliances themselves. So there was a unique problem: how to reposition the products, clearly superior, and incorporate this fearless luxury into the buyer’s mind? The first step was a bit of physical repositioning.
“The tipping point was a very clear departure from what the category was doing, and we said hey, we are going to sell appliances in showrooms without countertops,” Hall continued. “One of the pushbacks we got was ‘well, where are you going to put the cooktop?’ We decided to put them in a wall.”
It sounded gimmicky, but it worked. By putting the stovetops at eye-level, customers turned their gaze toward the stovetops and away from the countertops. But there was still something missing from JennAir’s strategy: making the product front and center both on and offline, and creating a customizable experience between the virtual showroom and the in-store experience to be as seamless as possible.
Enter Adobe Experience Manager. With this unique Adobe offering, customers who are already drawn in by the powerful brand message are fully equipped to take the next step on their buyer journey. Sometimes when buying a product that was seen on the internet, it’s difficult to place exactly where you saw it, and in what context. If managed incorrectly, the customer can feel frustrated, confused, and lost, and may go with a different product that may not be a fit but has a process they feel more comfortable with.
The personalization experience
Josh Van Tonder, group product marketing manager from Adobe weighed in on the personalization experience. He echoed John’s phrase “connective tissue” that he used in the interview as a perfect example of how Adobe Digital Signage in Experience Manager underpins the technical capabilities of delivering a flawless customer experience. “That element [of digital connective tissue] is something Adobe’s platform is very uniquely well-positioned to help with … One of the elements in being able to extend a great experience is to be able to bring together the content and the data insight to bear in a physical location the same way you can online in a consistent way.”
When your brand message sings, and your customers and prospects are drawn in by the product itself, it’s time to maximize the time you have with the client. The space between the entrance of the store and the point of sale is the new battlefield, and it can be all too easy to fumble their experience, making your incredible marketing message for nothing. With the right digital tools, marketers can create the environment that keeps their experience with the brand consistent, from the moment they arrive at your website to the moment the product arrives at their homes.
