California Closets

I started working with California Closets in 2008 — just as the economy was beginning to crumble. There was a lot of fear in the air, particularly since California Closets was (and is) a premium purveyor of custom closet systems. I was called because the leadership wanted an honest assessment of the company’s web site, which they felt could do better. I agreed: The site wasn’t optimized properly and was a bit hard to navigate, which seemed at cross-purposes with the company’s mission to simplify its customers’ lives.

Though I started as a consultant, within several months I was acting as the vice president of marketing before joining the company full-time in 2009. But no matter my status, it was immediately clear that the company needed to reconnect with its customers online as a first step towards repositioning the brand.

We began by putting franchisees front and center, for the first time allowing them to show off their work on the national web site. We also unified the company’s digital strategy, eliminating various and sundry micro-sites that had been set up by franchisees for search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns.

All those micro-sites had diluted the brand’s equity, and also sent leads into the wind, because lead tracking and sharing between franchisees with separate sites was nearly impossible. Within a month of launching the new site, traffic began to climb. Suddenly, consumers could find the authentic California Closets experience online, and leads began to flow, even in the midst of the recession.

We learned a lot in a short amount of time, and immediately set about launching a new and improved site to capitalize on the fact that consumers searched for us in lots of ways (including some keywords that surprised us!).

It also quickly became apparent that California Closets’ traditional position in the luxury end of the business was hurting sales. While the company had become known for fancy installations for movie stars, the truth was that clients of all stripes bought storage solutions.

From Minneapolis to Manhattan, from Nashville to Santa Barbara, people wanted to see the full breadth of the company’s offerings — and needed an entry point to understand us. After a significant amount of research and testing, we came to the conclusion that the brand’s deepest equity came from the people who knew and loved us — our customers.

California Closets enjoys one of the highest net promoter scores in the industry (on a par with Apple’s!) — so why wouldn’t we feature real customers and real closets in our advertising, collateral and web site? You can see the results of this brand transition to the right.

Take a look at the new site (launched in July, 2010), the customer testimonials, collateral and advertising. I’m proud to say that I directed this brand revamp — and even happier that it achieved measurable results for the company and its franchisees.