Welcome to The Organization

Throughout its 44 year history, The Container Store has met the functional needs of its customers, helping them create and organize their spaces for projects large and small. In 2018, the brand launched a new tagline that very much reflected that functional orientation — ‘Where Space Comes From.’ The global pandemic, however, upended everything. It drove a surge in business as people outfitted their new home offices and virtual classrooms, and made the brand realize the transformational impact of organization. By early 2022, the brand set out to launch the biggest brand overhaul — new tagline, new icon, new mobile app, and new tiered loyalty program — in company history, and turned to PMG to help it build further momentum with consumers, appeal to them emotionally, and drive sales.

The cornerstone of the new brand launch was the date of the launch itself — 2/22/22, or what could be considered the last most organized date of the century. Moreover, the new brand elements — a logo that has three nested baskets that form a shape of a smile, and a tagline of ‘Welcome to The Organization’ — would also shape the campaign, conveying The Container Store organized is open to all, and with it, comes happiness. Our media strategy was to reinforce the new brand philosophy through a set of high-impact initiatives at launch, and support the new brand positioning with evergreen messaging across multiple channels.

Our media plan consisted of three main pillars — amplifying a TikTok hashtag challenge (the first ever for the brand) that was developed by The Container Store and its creative partner, Preacher; supporting a sitewide promotion slated for 2/22/22; and reinforcing the new tagline through programmatic and paid social media.

On TikTok, The Container Store challenged users to share videos of their junk drawers, with the hashtag #ShowUsYourDrawers. The hashtag challenge, which enlisted influencers including The Home Edit, Marie Kondo, Cassandra Aarssen, and Drew Barrymore, among others, was amplified through a reach and frequency campaign on TikTok.

We also made a big splash on launch day with a takeover of the Yahoo login page and theSkimm’s daily newsletter to promote the sitewide offer, and consumers also saw the campaign via digital OOH ads on Uber cars. After launch day, we leveraged paid search, shopping campaigns, paid social and programmatic (prospecting and retargeting) to drive engagement, site traffic, and conversions.

The TikTok challenge was a huge success — generating 2.4 billion views within the first three days of launch (and 9.5 billion total to date). By mid-March, the campaign had earned media placements equivalent to more than 25MM impressions and over $230k in media value. Ad Age included it among its top five TikTok campaigns, and TikTok itself celebrated the campaign as a case study in how to most effectively leverage the platform’s capabilities and reach. Video views of the hashtag challenge page exceeded TikTok’s benchmarks by 3X, with a 14% engagement rate and significant lift in brand awareness.

The campaign also grew The Container Store’s audiences on other social platforms — for example, Pinterest engagement was so strong that total followers jumped from 10 million to 13.5 million in the first 24 hours, and by the end of the campaign, the number of users who engaged with the brand’s ads — representing potential customers to retarget — jumped 250%, creating brand advocates the speciality retailer can tap into for future activations.

Beyond engagement, the campaign successfully repositioned The Container Store, and the date of 2/22/22 will also be known as its biggest day ever in e-commerce sales — beating the next biggest day by more than 2.3X. Loyalty enrollment on launch day was 3X the daily average. The campaign was one of the many successful initiatives that contributed to The Container Store's record growth during the financial year, primarily driven by existing customers.