CMO Grebstein Building Lowe’s Marketing Around Millennials

Marci Grebstein is emphasizing emotion, rather than products, as she and her team reach out—in new digital ways—to the latest generation of home buyers.

Improvements in the U.S. housing market and overall economy have been a big plus for home-improvement centers. And as the Millennial generation begins to age into the prime household-forming and home-buying years, home retailers are preparing for a new type of core customer.

Marci Grebstein came into the sector last year, when she was named CMO of Lowe’s, which has more than 2,300 locations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Grebstein, a retail marketing veteran, has previously held posts at several merchants, including Food Lion and Staples.

On Grebstein’s watch, Lowe’s launched a new campaign in March called “Make Your Home Happy,” which marked a departure for the 70-year-old Fortune 50 retailer. While still focused on home-improvement projects, the new ads have a more emotional spin built around love of home, including a long-form online video heavy on emotion and limited on product shots.

Most recently, Lowe’s upped the ante in mid-July, launching a new video-streaming app and a 10-episode DIY series, “The Weekender.” Initially available on Apple TV, the series will expand to other platforms this month.

As the summer home-improvement season hit full swing, Grebstein took time to talk about Millennials, virtual reality, and the difference between DIY and “DIFM.”

CMO.com: The previous campaigns at Lowe’s had been heavy on do-it-yourself and how-to content. Why is the new campaign’s focus different?

Grebstein: It is all about the home and the consumer’s desire to create a place that is perfect for them and their family because home is an emotional part of everybody’s lives.

The “House Love” execution was taking learnings that we had through a lot of research, specifically around Millennials these days—as they go into their 30s and the group begins to age and are entering home ownership and starting a family—and how they’re think about their homes. It’s different than Boomers and [Generation] Xers. It is that place where they want to have great experiences—experiences with their families, with friends, with neighbors. It is a very emotional connection; it’s not just their primary investment from a financial standpoint.

CMO.com: As you target Millennials, how do you avoid excluding the other demographics that are still a factor in the home market, especially Boomers?

Grebstein: We don’t want to exclude them. What is great about this execution is it reached both. It plays to the emotional connection with Millennials who haven’t had an experience with the home-improvement category and not with Lowe’s specifically. It creates the bond and personality for Lowe’s outside the typical seasonal promotion.

Then for the Gen Xers and the Boomers, the musical component of using the Karen Carpenter song “We’ve Only Just Begun” brought back a lot of great memories. It made them think differently about Lowe’s, but they already have an affinity for Lowe’s, so it reinforced that emotion around their home.

CMO.com: Lowe’s has made heavy use of social media, such its “Fix in Six” Vines. How is your social and content marketing evolving? Does your Millennial focus include expanding those efforts?

Grebstein: We absolutely are. It really is about looking at consumers and how their media habits are changing. There are a few things we’ve done so far this year. The first was figuring out how we could use Snapchat to influence Millennials in really small DIY projects. We’re not talking about renovating an entire bathroom [but] some very small, do-in-a-day kind of weekend projects. We launched in April on Snapchat [with] “Lowe’s In-a-Snap.”

We use the Snapchat functionality of tapping on the screen. Each time you tap on an video, it walks you through the steps of doing that project and helps you visualize it. One of them was how to create a study nook out of a closet or a corner. It can even be in a rental apartment, it doesn’t have to be for a homeowner.

Or if you want to upgrade your kitchen and don’t want to do cabinets and countertops, how can [you] take down a dated backsplash and put up something that’s a little more classic or contemporary, without project overload? Then they could get much more detailed how-to information from a lot of our videos that reside on Lowe’s.com and our YouTube channel.

CMO.com: Have you had to adjust the picture of your core customer to deal with Millennials’ home lives?

Grebstein: How they want to receive messages is very different, and the media they interact with is different as well. We have to be where they are, and we have to utilize those platforms in a meaningful way. You can’t necessarily take a piece of TV creative and put it in another channel. You need to try to create messages that are appropriate for each of the channels or vehicles we’re using to reach that audience.

Another part is if they’re just starting out as homeowner—even a renter—most Millennials are not going to start with a major renovation project. They are probably going to start small, and we want them to feel successful in that project. The more success they get out of those smaller projects, they will slowly work up to larger projects.

We want to be there, not only to enable them and help them, but help them build that confidence. They can tackle this, and Lowe’s can be their partner in it.

CMO.com: Speaking of media, Lowe’s has been experimenting with augmented reality and virtual reality with itsHoloroomprogram. What’s the insight behind using it to engage consumers?

Grebstein: The innovation that Lowe’s develops on an ongoing basis—most of what you mention is from Lowe’s Innovation Labs—is really about what solution can we find to enhance those customer experiences? Even though they seem improbable today, we know that they are the future—not just for home improvement, but for other industries, as well. For Lowe’s, that augmented and virtual reality really enables the 3D visualization of how a project in the home-improvement space comes to life.

It really takes a lot of anxiety out of what for many of our consumers will be a major enhancement and retail purchase for them and their home. Want to make that decision-making process as easy and as seamless as possible for the consumer.

CMO.com: Millennials are very experiential, and retailers have answered with more in-store experience. Is that somewhere you are looking to, as well?

Grebstein: The Holoroom that we have in pilot is one thing we’re looking at. We have a few others that we have been working on, as well. We have a customer experience design team internally [who] concept, pilot test, and then roll out different experiences to address those consumer needs and wants, and how Lowe’s can provide those experiences.

CMO.com: You mentioned Lowe’s Innovation Labs, which also put a 3D printer in the International Space Station. Does Lowe’s marketing connect with this unit?

Grebstein: We do. A perfect example is how, as we are constantly looking for proof points of our campaign “Make Your Home Happy,” I have been connecting with them regularly because our whole idea around that campaign is all the things Lowe’s is doing to make the consumer successful.

Some of the technologies Lowe’s Innovation Labs is coming up with are going to be tremendous proof points for us to talk to the consumers about [that] whether it’s a DIY project or a DIFM—do it for me—and they’re having Lowe’s come in, it is going to be successful project at the end of the day.

I do work with them and Kyle Nel, the gentleman who runs Innovation Labs. We stay connected, and he also has a small team here in our headquarters that we connect with on a regular basis.

CMO.com: You’ve spent most of your career in retail marketing. How does the home-improvement sector differ?

Grebstein: When I moved to North Carolina, I had a real Lowe’s experience. We came to the market and decided to build a home. We weren’t doing the work ourselves. I had someone else do it for me, but I spent a lot of time at Lowe’s.

If I’m going to spend $10,000 $15,000, or $20,000 on a kitchen, it’s very different than going in and spending $200 on my weekly grocery shopping. And it can dramatically increase—or not—the value of my home. When you start working on that project side, versus just talking about the product side of the equation, it is that project expertise that is very different in the home-improvement space than in general retail.

That’s where Lowe’s can partner with that customer to take the fear and anxiety and help them all the way through that process.

CMO.com: Summer is a busy season for home improvement. What’s next from Lowe’s?

Grebstein: You will see us continue to innovate in the social space. We have a few things in the back half of the year that we’re working on currently.

We will continue to challenge ourselves around the conversation about new media channels. We think about Millennials becoming more cord-cutters and disconnecting from cable. We have to think about how are we going to reach them with our message if they’re not watching a lot of cable television, where we run a good amount of our media.