LAS VEGAS–With an online following and six stores in major U.S. cities and its own magazine, luggage marketer Away’s products have “a utility for a really wide swath of people.” But being a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand, it hasn’t reached enough of those people so it’s looking farther up the purchase funnel by way of television.
“There’s a functional need for our product in the market and an emotional one and a community to belong to,” Away VP of Brand Marketing Selena Kalvaria says in this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019. “The problem is we haven’t reached all those people.”
Away’s experience with television thus far has focused on direct response. This year it’s looking to find out “what other roles can TV play, not just reach but driving culture, emotional resonance and return on brand equity via premium programming,” says Kalvaria.
“How do we start to think about the full marketing funnel, the full strategy, in order to grow our reach and to really be able to have those conversations with those people?” she says. “And at the same time think about how that impacts and actually makes our bottom of the funnel more efficient.”
It’s not just about commercials per se but “there is customer alignment, there’s emotional alignment, there’s values alignment” while creating “mental availability,” another term for getting into more peoples’ purchase consideration set.
While most direct-to-consumer companies think about channels they can measure easily, Kalvaria embraces traditional brand health metrics. “Awareness, consideration and ultimately market penetration.” For her, consideration is one of the biggest metrics for a brand whose key brand attributes include being stylish, innovative and unique.
“How are we moving those metrics through the stories that we tell on television, through the stories that we tell through upper funnel?” asks Kalvaria. “As your awareness and your consideration moves, your penetration will move too and that’s your bottom funnel.”
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
