Pair
Media Features & Stand-out Product Launches for a Furniture Manufacturer
“A lot goes into every design project we work on and every new product we launch.
However, much of this nuance and storytelling gets lost by the time we publish something on our website or social channels. We partnered with Wolf Craft to help us showcase our design chops.
Their work distilling our creative process set us up with the right storytelling to secure press features in publications like Design Milk and FastCompany.”
— Brian Wilson, Co-founder at Pair
Services
Strategic Industry Audit
High-impact Website Updates
Ongoing Project Page & Blog Post Creation
Newsletter Development & Management
Social Media Content: Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn
Industry
Contract Furniture
Interior Design
Product Development
—
Pair is a future-focused contract furniture manufacturer with an extensive line of easily customizable pieces. Pair gives organizations and designers one place to create beautiful, one-of-a-kind furniture.
The Challenge
Pair’s challenges were twofold:
1. Potential clients couldn’t see Pair’s range of design capabilities
Pair sells personalized office furniture. Their standard line boasts a wide range of finishing, size, and configuration options. And unlike most office furniture manufacturers, Pair also works with customers to create fully custom solutions.
Pair is off-the-shelf, custom, any everything in between.
The problem??
Pair’s content felt standard. They weren't showcasing their range of design capabilities. Pair’s custom work, in particular, was absent from their content making it difficult for their sales team to market these services.
2. Launching new products was disorganized, took too long, and cost too much.
Bringing a new product to market often means years of R&D, prototyping, and testing.
The (problem) opportunity??
Pair has built dozens of “client-tested” pieces. But this work is hidden in their project archive. This meant, sales teams couldn’t leverage past custom design work to sell to clients who needed a similar solution.
What if Pair could take advantage of their custom design work to quickly launch new products?
Pair’s newsletter, Instagram, and case study page developed by Wolf Craft.
Our Goal
The goals were also twofold:
1. Stand out in the crowded office furniture space by highlighting Pair’s ability to customize any product
Our sister company, Wolf PR, has worked as Pair’s PR firm for years. Brian Wilson, Pair’s founder, brought on Wolf Craft as an additional partner because he knew they needed storytelling support. He wanted their content to showcase Pair's personalized approach to office furniture design.
2. Quickly launch new products from Pair’s archive of custom design work
After deep diving into past projects--including long calls with their designers and sales team--we identified this second goal. Their custom process was hidden, and we were working to unearth it.
To us, it ALSO looked like Pair had viable new products hiding in the custom details of past projects. We set out to create a system to quickly translate custom design work into standard products.
Our Solution
Leverage Pair’s projects to talk about their client-focused customizable work. Amplify these stories across social platforms.
Our approach included three key areas:
1. Tell the stories of Pair’s projects, products, and design process
We worked with Pair’s founder, designers, and sales team to identify opportunities to showcase their process and design skills. This work included deep dives into each project and product line to understand the goals, scope, challenges, and ultimately their solution.
We utilized this information along with assets from their design process--like renders and prototyping images--to create detailed case study pages and in-depth blog posts.
2. Engage the A+D community on an ongoing basis with social media and newsletter content
Drawing from case study and blog content, we created and published regular social media and newsletter content.
3. Support the launch of a new product
We worked with Pair’s founder to create a shortlist of potential new products. This list exclusively included built and tested pieces from past projects. A do-more-with-less approach.
After selecting the product with the most market appeal, we created all the launch assets, including: a product page; in-depth blog post; social media content; and materials for Pair’s PR team.
Results
1. Comprehensive content strategy and SOP
We developed a comprehensive content and social media strategy that included case studies, blog posts, newsletters, and social media content for LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. This foundational work established a clear structure to share and promote Pair’s work and projects.
Our deliverables included:
Year-long Content Calendar [THE WHEN]: a detailed outline of Pair’s content on a monthly schedule, including upcoming and archival projects as well as spaces for topical news as it came up.
Social Media & Internal Content Ecosystem [THE WHAT]: a clear system for how individual pieces of content relate to one another and are amplified across social channels. This item ensured Pair would get the most mileage out of everything they publish.
Social Media and Internal Content Asset Pipeline SOP [THE HOW]: a standard operating procedure for how things actually get produced and by who.
2. New product launch—introducing SOMA
While building content for Pair’s LinkedIn, Omaha project, we noticed something promising. Pair’s custom lockers—created specifically for LinkedIn—could be a viable stand-alone product.
Pair’s founder, designers, and sales team agreed. So, we took what we’d already learned and created a product page and in-depth blog post all about this *new* product, SOMA.
At Wolf Craft, one of our biggest value-adds is that we are trained in design. This work was initially out of scope, but we saw a huge opportunity for Pair and could not let it slip!
Beyond content development, we step in as critical team members who intimately understand design, product development, and media strategy.
3. Top-tier media coverage for SOMA
We shared our in-depth content work for SOMA with Pair’s PR team, Wolf PR. This gave them all the tools and story angles they needed to secure press features in top-tier design publications.
4. New case study pages + template + more media attention
Before
After
Case studies before:
The previous case studies only included final images of the built project. No information was included about to show off Pair’s design process.
Case studies after:
The pages we designed include:
1) Above-the-fold introduction with context and a final image
2) Pair’s design process, with behind-the-scenes assets
3) Link to supporting content
Our work for the above page, specifically, was shared with Pair’s PR team. It gave them the material they needed to secure this in-depth feature in Design Milk.
5. Pinterest account optimization and ongoing content
Part of Pair’s content ecosystem included Pinterest posts for each of the images from their case study pages as well as product pages.
Since new case study pages included descriptions of specific spaces, it was easy to adapt this copy for post captions while ensuring optimized long-tail keywords were also included.
But, before jumping into posts we updated their account organization.
Before
After
Pinterest account before:
80.3k monthly views (when we started)
Banner is a random auto-selection of images that look messy and confusing.
Pair only had boards and posts for individual products, which were almost exclusively renderings. They were not leveraging all the stunning assets of built projects.
Pinterest account after:
179.9k monthly views (after 9 months of our work)
Banner is a compelling image of a marquee project that can be updated as needed.
We added several new boards to showcase PAir’s built projects, which are titled with Pinterest SEO keywords.
New ongoing posts optimized for Pinterest SEO:
5. Regular Instagram content that highlights Pair’s creativity, design process, and technical chops
Our work included posts about the design and construction process for individual projects as well as posts about products from their standard line.
6. LinkedIn content that showcases Pair’s accolades and projects
For each case study page, we created an accompanying LinkedIn post. This way, Pair’s marketing team could easily plug project-specific content into their LinkedIn posting schedule.
7. Monthly newsletters that feature new case studies, products, blog content, and press features
Pair has a large list of industry contacts, clients, and new leads. However, they did not have a system in place to engage each of these people on a regular basis.
We developed a newsletter template and strategy to ensure two would stay top-of-mind for their clients and industry contacts.
Let’s work together
We’ve helped businesses that work in design and the built world tell stories for growth. Tell us a bit about your company and what you’re looking for.
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