Lowe’s

Lowe’s

In 2005, after a four-month review, BBDO won the $315 mil­lion Lowe’s account from the incum­bent, McCann Erick­son, and three oth­er agencies.

McCann’s line for Lowe’s was “Improv­ing Home Improve­ment,” but our plan­ners found that Lowe’s cus­tomers did not talk about “doing it your­self.” Instead they said “we did this,” or “we did that,” refer­ring to the help they got from Lowe’s employ­ees. Lowe’s was an enabler, and BBDO posi­tioned it as a “let’s do it togeth­er” brand, not a do-it-your­self brand.

Home improve­ment stores had been lit­tle more than sup­ply ware­hous­es, but  a grow­ing female cus­tomer base put more empha­sis on design than ren­o­va­tion, and Lowe’s was ahead of the pack to rec­og­nize it. With less pro­fes­sion­al patron­age than Home Depot, Lowe’s was posi­tioned as a kinder, gen­tler ver­sion of a big box store. Focus­ing on the aspi­ra­tions of their cus­tomers, the line became “Let’s Build Some­thing Togeth­er.” (Home Depot respond­ed with a sim­i­lar line, “Let’s Do This,” in 2013.)

Lowe’s | “Walrus”

This spot was a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture for Lowe’s because it did not imme­di­ate­ly launch into a prod­uct or a pro­mo­tion. It offered the intrigu­ing image of a man car­ry­ing an incon­gru­ous pur­ple wal­rus through the store. (Yes, the stuffed ani­mal was intend­ed to evoke that pur­ple dinosaur on kid’s TV.) He leads us to the paint depart­ment, a help­ful Lowe’s employ­ee, and the sto­ry of a col­or-match­ing sys­tem for paint.

Lowe’s | “Blossom”

Every­one hopes to get one more sea­son out of their grill. This spot evolved from an idea with an even big­ger sight gag: a news­pa­per boy toss­es a paper against a house and the gut­ters and shut­ters fall off. We used the idea for this spot, and it actu­al­ly worked bet­ter because the lyri­cal float­ing blos­som sets up a dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tion. (We went back and forth between using a but­ter­fly or a blos­som but, frankly, the but­ter­fly was too expen­sive to animate.)

Lowe’s | “Phone”

We’ve all com­par­i­son shopped to find the low­est prices. Here, com­par­i­son shop­ping for appli­ances becomes a tac­ti­cal oper­a­tion involv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers linked by phone. We did­n’t show or men­tion nation­al or region­al com­peti­tors, but view­ers sup­plied them in their own minds. Lowe’s beats them all, and guar­an­tees it to boot.

Lowe’s | “LowesT”

Home Depot’s line, “More Sav­ing, More Doing,” was a strong val­ue propo­si­tion. We respond­ed by fea­tur­ing the “Lowe’s Low Price Guar­an­tee” in every spot. But Lowe’s want­ed a ded­i­cat­ed spot about hav­ing the guar­an­teed low­est price. After all, it’s prac­ti­cal­ly their mid­dle name—which gave us the idea of link­ing Lowe’s and “low­est” in fun ways. This exe­cu­tion allowed view­ers to antic­i­pate how we were going to add a “T” the next scene.