CASE STUDIES

Case Studies: The Great Escape

Creating a new brand for Pool-A-Rama began with a new name and a logo that captured its primary positioning: “Enabling families to escape the everyday stress in their lives and have more fun at home through play or relaxation, alone or among friends.”

The Challenge

Over the past 30 years, Pool-A-Rama had grown into the #1 family fun retailer in the Chicago area. But recently, the company had been wasting a tremendous amount of money as a result of its inefficient television buying strategies and unfocused messaging.

Pool-A-Rama was incorrectly assessing its media plans according to “number of spots” rather than Targeted Rating Points (TRPs). For this reason, TV spots running at 3 a.m. were being assigned the same value as those running in prime time.

Unfortunately, this simply wasn’t the case, as some of the spots were reaching Pool-A-Rama’s core target audience (suburban homeowners with children), while many were being wasted on other audience segments (young apartment dwellers and retirees).

Because these TV spots were being purchased as run-of-station buys, Pool-A-Rama had very little control on what time of day the spots would run. In fact, many of the spots were getting bumped each month, leading to even more unpredictable “make-good” spots in the following month – if they were run at all.

For a retailer like Pool-A-Rama, this inability to predict when their spots were running was especially detrimental, because of the time-sensitive nature of their monthly sales promotions. If spots weren’t running when they should have been, such as before a big Memorial Day promotion, the store’s sales opportunities were lost forever.

From a messaging standpoint, Pool-A-Rama’s television advertising suffered from a cluttered “flea market” approach. So many products were being promoted in each spot that TV viewers found it difficult to even process the information. While viewers understood that there was indeed a sale taking place, many were unsure of just what product categories were being promoted.

The Solution

The first thing The Well did when we began working with Pool-A-Rama was to get their media planning and buying in order. We replaced the previous agency’s unpredictable, last-minute buying approach with a comprehensive media plan designed to inform Pool-A Rama as to where and when their media dollars would be spent.

We adopted the same Nielsen-ratings-based approach used by all 500 of the Fortune 500 advertisers, and subsequently upgraded Pool-A-Rama’s media buys from late-night “Miracle Pets” broadcasts to spots in the NCAA Basketball tournament, the Kentucky Derby, and the Superbowl.

From a messaging standpoint, we worked with Pool-A Rama to better organize their three monthly TV spots into distinct selling categories. We were still able to advertise every product each month, but we made the information much easier for viewers to understand.

Rather than putting every product in every spot, we rotated a “Pool/Spa” spot, a “Backyard”spot (outdoor furniture, grills, pools), and an “Indoor” spot (bars, bar stools, game tables, home theatre seats) to help viewers focus on each segment of Pool-A-Rama’s vast product array.