Lowe’s
Case Study: “Connecting with the Community”
Challenge:
To introduce Lowe’s to Canada and to draw consumers into stores, in order to grow sales as the company was expanding into the Canadian market.
Solution:
We set up local team and tournament sponsorships within every community that Lowe’s had a store or was opening a store in Canada. We created a year round program, with soccer team and tournament sponsorship in the summer and hockey tournament and team sponsorship in the winter.
This program ran for the first 5 years that Lowe’s was in Canada, every year, as the number of stores increased, the number of communities involved in the program would grow as well. The program was highly visible in each community and very well received as the sponsorships went directly to keeping the cost of sports down for families. Feedback was very positive, and overall foot traffic and sales were increased.
What Thom Partners Delivered:
- Over 5 years, we arranged the sponsorship on behalf of 31 Lowe’s Stores, for 571 hockey teams and 761 soccer teams, 1337 community teams in total.
- We also facilitated the sponsorship of 9 community hockey and soccer events, drawing hundreds of members of each community.
- In total, we helped Lowe’s to put their logo on the jerseys of 16,250 children in 31 communities across Canada where they have stores, directly influencing their family’s purchasing decisions and home improvement store of choice.
- We managed this program with keen supervision throughout each season, to ensure consistency between communities, obtain pictures of all sponsorships and to deliver regular feedback to our client.
- We managed all invoicing requirements with community sports organisations and paid accordingly on behalf of Lowe’s in a timely manner. We organized all budgets and presented Lowe’s with one simplified invoice.
- We arranged for special giveaways to be distributed to each team, by receiving these from the client, organizing, repackaging and shipping to each location. These special giveaways and in-store offers elevated the sponsorship and increased traffic to the local stores.