Challenge
Studio Vertu, a Cincinnati company and the world’s largest creator and producer of Italian marble coasters, serves over 3,000 retail clients worldwide. After 14 years in business, the wholesaler decided to drop-ship coaster sets through e-commerce, making the most of a changing retail landscape. metaphor was tapped to brand the new line of business, create an online experience and promote the coasters to consumers.
Solution
metaphor selected MarbleCoasters.com for the name to clearly call-out e-commerce. To differentiate the direct model from a parent brand which is quite traditional and European in style, metaphor chose a modern font, bold colors and linguistic attitude for MarbleCoasters.com. “Rock Your World” became the tagline while Web site nomenclature and marketing embraced the “Rock” theme as well.
MarbleCoasters.com is fully manageable by the team at Studio Vertu. The non-commerce content runs on editspot, an easy-to-use Web builder and content management system. The shopping experience runs on Zen Cart, an Open Source and full featured e-commerce solution.
metaphor had a limited budget to promote the Web site to a global consumer audience. To spark interest in marble coasters and the Web site, metaphor recommended a trip contest. All Studio Vertu coasters are constructed of Italian marble while many competitors use a cheaper material so a trip giveaway to Italy was a natural tie-in. The trip gave metaphor’s PR team something more than a new Web site to promote. Additionally, Studio Vertu has the capacity to produce coasters with virtually any image, so metaphor recommended focusing upon city and regional pride with coaster sets designed for key regions. Custom coaster sets and press releases were sent to editors at major publications in key Studio Vertu markets such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
After a successful holiday online selling season, Studio Vertu produced a Barack Obama coaster set which held immediate appeal on the Web site. metaphor promoted the set prior to the inauguration to local media, taking the “Cincinnati company helps Obama Rock the Nation’s Capital” approach. After receiving stories in The Cincinnati Enquirer, Channel 9 and the local Fox station, the story was picked up by Associated Press services and ran nationally, creating a huge influx of sales on the Obama coaster sets.
