The campaign is under the aegis of the Richards Group, the longtime Home Depot agency, and retains the familiar theme, “You can do it. We can help.” But otherwise, it drastically differs from its prosaic predecessors, which have been centered on Home Depot employees and the products they sell. Rather than focusing on what Home Depot can do to help customers, the ads present uplifting tales of what customers can do to help themselves — with an assist from Home Depot.
The stories are told by actual Home Depot customers in commercials directed by a documentary filmmaker, Jeff Bednarz, in a cinéma vérité style. The spots, from 30 seconds to two minutes, can be seen on a section of the Home Depot Web site (homedepot.com/truestories) as well as on TV. The first three ads feature women; two are single mothers and the third is an occupational therapist who appears with her patient. As soft music plays in the background, the customers describe how Home Depot helped empower them to complete tasks, like tiling a bench or remodeling a house. Keep the Kleenex handy; in two of the three spots, the customers tear up as they speak and use words like “hero.” And in scenes of the customers at their local Home Depot stores, some hug the employees who helped them.
The campaign is indicative of efforts by marketers to borrow elements from the popular culture as they seek to forge closer ties with consumers. The intense emotions generated by reality TV, as well as talk shows like Oprah Winfrey's, are largely because of their focus on so-called real people, prompting marketers like Frito-Lay, Geico, Home Depot and Sears to climb aboard the reality bandwagon.
Also, since Frank Blake took over as chief executive last month, he has made clear that he intends to restore the image of Home Depot as the friendly local retailer run by happy, helpful employees. “We think this is the next step for us in engaging with our customers,” said Roger Adams, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Home Depot in Atlanta, by “celebrating the success of their home-improvement projects.” In research among consumers, Mr. Adams said, Home Depot and Richards found that “people were talking about the changes home improvement makes in their lives; it wasn’t just ‘I painted a wall.’ ” The idea for the campaign, Mr. Adams added, was “in development for the better part of a year” before Mr. Nardelli’s ouster, so “it wasn’t relative to any change at the company.” Still, “it is very consistent with where our new chairman is going,” he added.
The customers appearing in the initial commercials were found through interviews outside Home Depot stores and inquiries among employees of Home Depot and Richards. One customer, a single mother named Amy, works for an agency that works with Richards. A disclaimer appears onscreen during her commercial that she was paid for her appearance.
A home-improvement project “makes a person feel somewhat heroic,” said Gary Gibson, creative group head at Richards, “in a meaning to that word that embodies the sense you get when you build something, fix something, in your home.” “It was certainly not our intention to be another reality-based piece of communication,” Mr. Gibson said, referring to the spate of TV series and commercials with real people. “We started with the notion that nobody can tell a home-improvement story better than the customer can,” he added. “They tell them better than we write them.”
Viewers may agree after watching the commercials. For instance, Amy’s begins with her saying: “My name is Amy. Eleven years ago, I was a shy, new single mom, trying to just kind of make it on my own. When I bought the house, and I’ll try not to cry on this one, 15 days after I bought the house, my dad died.” “He remodeled every house we lived in,” she adds, crying. Amy describes how, in remodeling the house herself, she judged the difficulty of a task by how many visits it required to Home Depot: “The three-trip to the Home Depot, the five-trip to the Home Depot. Or there could even be the 10-trip.”
The spot concludes with Amy and her daughters in their beautiful home. “If my girls do have heroes in their lives,” she says, “I’d like to be one of them.” The second commercial features a woman and her family, composed of her daughter, son and sister. “Now my kids say, ‘Oh, my mother did that,’ but — ” She is interrupted by her daughter, who interjects, “At first we were, ‘Mom, you’re messing up the house.’ ” The spot ends with the mother declaring, “This is a building we’ve made into our home.” The commercial, which features a black family, was by the UniWorld Group, an agency that specializes in campaigns aimed at black consumers.
The third commercial, with the occupational therapist, Tammy, shows her collaborating with her patient, Phyllis, on a backyard project, redecorating a bench with ceramic tile. “I had a brain aneurysm,” Phyllis says, haltingly and smiling. “It definitely has cramped my style.” Tammy likens the “on-the-spot training” she received from “the guy at Home Depot” to the work she does with Phyllis. “It takes a lot of courage for someone to get back into their life again,” Tammy says of Phyllis, choking up. “Because of that, Phyllis will always be a hero to me.”
Mr. Bednarz, who has a production company named Directorz, acknowledged that reality-style spots made with documentary methods have their risks. “You really don’t know what it’s actually going to turn out being till you shoot it,” Mr. Bednarz said, particularly when his subjects, like those in the Home Depot spots, “don’t know the questions I’m going to ask.” “I think people right now are looking for honesty,” Mr. Bednarz said of consumers, adding: “We are so educated now in watching TV that you know when someone’s being honest, when it’s coming from the heart. As long as you’re pure about it, and not trying to stage it, the honesty will come through.”
The TV commercials will appear on shows like “American Idol,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Good Morning America” and “Today.” The print ads will run in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, O, The Oprah Magazine and People.
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