Robinson Home Products
We Put Hot Sardines in Their Kitchen…but Not the Kind you Think.
Click Above to Watch Video.
Trade show marketing can be a dog-eat-dog world, but at the International Home & Housewares Show each year (where makers of kitchen and home products show their next-season introductions to retailers)...it's actually celebrity-chef-eat-celebrity-chef. From Guy Fieri to Paula Deen…all the culinary icons who have licensing deals for kitchen products do in-booth demonstrations to hawk their wares.
Our client, Robinson Home Products, was returning to the show after a two-year hiatus, and needed to make a BIG splash to let people know they were back. The company evolved so much since their last show appearance, with four new gadget brands added to their portfolio and their debut in the tabletop category after acquiring the license to the #1 flatware brand, Oneida. With a booth that was half the length of a football field – the second largest at the show – Robinson needed a way to maximize its investment and drive both brand awareness and booth traffic. The company found itself in the unusual position of being a "big player" that not many people knew about.
With no celebrity chefs in their marketing arsenal, Robinson was toying with the idea of simply hiring one to draw booth traffic when we hit them with another idea:
TO BE MEMORABLE, YOU HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT.
So Redpoint found The Hot Sardines, a seven-piece vintage Dixieland hot-jazz-and-blues band, and secured them for in-booth performances at the show…but with a twist: All of Robinson's new product introductions were used as musical instruments: graters, cutting boards, tongs, wooden spoons, spatulas, carving boards, cooling racks, pots, pans, mugs, bowls, collapsible funnels, and more. If it had the ability to make a sound…it became a part of the performance. We worked with the trade show organizers to schedule performance times, including three sets of music throughout the day in the booth, and one in the Cooking Theater to help spread the word show-wide.
The result? Attendees may remember seeing a handful of celebrity chefs at a variety of different booths whose brands they can't remember…but Robinson Home Products will forever be "the company that brought that cool band to the show." And…a bonus: Today Show scouts at the trade show saw the performance through Twitter and it drew their attention to Robinson's new line of collapsible kitchen gadgets for an upcoming segment. Check out that video here.