Wayfair Head of Brand Marketing Kara O’Brien joins The Current Podcast to discuss blending the in-store and digital shopping experience.

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:00 ] Damian: I'm Damian

[00:00:00 ] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse Liffreing

[00:00:02 ] Ilyse: And welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:00:05 ] Damian: This week, we're delighted to talk with Kara O'Brien, Head of Brand Marketing and Analytics at Wayfair.

[00:00:11 ] Ilyse: For years, Wayfair has been an online one stop shop for people looking for everything from beds to couches to kitchen appliances. In fact, for those browsing home goods, the choices often seem endless.

[00:00:23 ] Damian: I know, because I've spent many long hours looking for the perfect bathroom cabinet to fit into my tiny New York apartment. But seriously though, one of the big draws for Wayfair has always been its reasonable prices for its products.

[00:00:35 ] Ilyse: Wayfair is famous as an e commerce platform, but now that's changing. In May, the company opened its first brick and mortar store. start by asking Kara about why the company made this move.

[00:00:47 ] Ilyse: First, I believe congratulations are in order because Wayfair opened its first brick and mortar store back in May.

[00:00:54 ] So, why don't you walk us through the decision to make the leap into a physical storefront?[00:01:00 ] 

[00:01:00 ] Kara: Absolutely We are so excited about this milestone. It's something that's been a long time coming. I personally have been at Wayfair for 10 years, and it has been one of the peak moments of my time there to see our brand come to life physically. so why now? I mean, our ethos has always been to deliver the best possible experience for our customer, and now we want to really be able to do it however they shop and however they choose to shop.

[00:01:24 ] And so to be able to bring the It's a product to the customer. Let them see it in person, help guide them through the purchasing process. It's it makes a ton of sense. And, consumer demand has shifted so much during and since the pandemic, there was, pretty strong move to buying these more considered purchases online when people had no option to go in store.

[00:01:46 ] But, now we're seeing the pendulum swing back and the consumer preference is to have a mix, to have a balance, to be able to see things in person, but have the convenience of being able to shop and research from home. 

[00:01:57 ] Ilyse: Yes, now I know I'm, I have an apartment in New York and i've spent too many hours on Wayfair, probably.

[00:02:03 ] Kara: - love to hear that.

[00:02:04 ] Ilyse: but why did you land on Wilmette, Illinois for this touch point? And how are you bringing the brand to life in store?

[00:02:12 ] Kara: Yeah, to start with Wilmette, I think there's two big considerations that ended up there. one is convenience. And so we really want to make shopping for your home as easy as possible. It's a process. It's something that's so important to so many people.

[00:02:25 ] And so we don't want the process itself to feel onerous. And so for us, we had found this wonderful space. It's in a revitalized shopping center. It's surrounded by suburbs with lots of young families who are really kind of our core customer. And then the access to the broader Chicagoland, uh, area was fantastic.

[00:02:45 ] So that's always been a strong market for us. But more on the business side, it's, It's very well positioned within our logistics network, and to kind of come back to that idea of convenience, we can ship products to, directly to customers home instead of trying to fit something [00:03:00 ] large and bulky in the back of your trunk.

[00:03:02 ] And so we're able to do that fast, free, easy, when they've seen something in store or if they've explored beyond.

[00:03:10 ] Ilyse: mortars follow or?

[00:03:12 ] Kara: I think that's the idea eventually, but I think one thing we're really trying to do is learn at being an e commerce company. First, there's so much one way conversation that you have with the customer through your marketing, through your site. This is an opportunity to have that two way conversation.

[00:03:28 ] And, we recognize we're new to the space. We're going to learn a ton and hopefully be able to apply that

[00:03:34 ] Ilyse: what 

[00:03:34 ] Damian: to what extent does the physical store help build the brand perception? And I know you sort of touched on that, but what I'm interested in is, it's known as an e commerce platform, and here you are now building out a physical store.

[00:03:46 ] So What does that do? How does that help?

[00:03:49 ] Kara: Yeah, well, I think it's rooted in who we were as an e commerce company, right? We have so many different types of products. We have, tens of millions of products on site. [00:04:00 ] And so the challenge at hand was really how do you take that vast selection and put it into a box, right? You can only put a finite number of products in.

[00:04:08 ] And so for us, what we were really trying to solve for is how do you at Google Demonstrate that breadth, but still assist people through that purchasing process so that they can find that thing they were looking for, even if they didn't even know they wanted it. And so a lot of our philosophy was we want to be able to give you departments that are specific to a space, but we also wanted to have a through line that We're specific to your style.

[00:04:34 ] So the way you can shop the store, it's not, living room over here, bedroom over here, completely cordoned off. It's more of a choose your own adventure. So if I have multiple projects and I have a modern aesthetic with a little bit of a rustic twist. We have pathways to carry you through.

[00:04:49 ] If you are mission driven and just need a new set of pots and pans, we can get you there quickly too. and so then the other thing that's a component to that, given how much we have, is the [00:05:00 ] support needed along the way. And so we have our associates trained to help you find the things you want, if you want a different color, we can show you that through our e commerce platform, but then you know that the size is perfect because you saw it in the store.

[00:05:12 ] Damian: So you're connecting the in store experience to the digital experience.

[00:05:16 ] Kara: closely. The technology enablement was so important to us. We wanted to make sure people could understand again that endless aisle, but make it a very shoppable experience in store. we also are going to be launching new services like design services to help customers complete that project with confidence.

[00:05:31 ] and so very much want it to be an interplay. Now,

[00:05:40 ] Ilyse: back in March, which included a full omni channel activation featuring celebrity spokespeople and an updated logo. What were the most successful lovers within this campaign, and are there any surprising insights so far? Yeah, well, we

[00:05:54 ] Kara: Yeah, we were really excited to bring this to market. along with this campaign, we have a revised tagline [00:06:00 ] of every style, every home. And I think the whole goal in the campaign was to be able to show that, not just say that. And so by bringing in different personalities, some recognizable, some just relatable, we felt like we could showcase that breadth, but in ways that, a consumer looks at the ad, the campaign and says, Oh, I see myself in that.

[00:06:17 ] I know that I can get what I'm looking for. as it comes to the winds, it's still early days, just launching in March. Not a ton of time. But we're seeing really positive response to the casting to the breadth of personalities were showing. It's quite memorable as a result. So we're seeing good spikes in attention metrics.

[00:06:35 ] We know it's resonant, and we know that people are associating it with wayfair. So for us, that own ability was a really important goal in the campaign.

[00:06:43 ] Ilyse: TV spots during the Oscars. Yes. What was the impact of those pretty high profile ads?

[00:06:49 ] Kara: Oh, I think it was really nice as we went on this more of an evolution than a revolution of the brand. It was really nice to be able to showcase that in a big splashy way and have as many people [00:07:00 ] see it as possible. And then as you've seen and will continue to see over the course of the year, we're really building on that.

[00:07:06 ] So we have a few different spots. They all exist in this world of the waverhood and, that sort of, The sort of universal experiences that people have in their communities are the things we're trying to show in all different ways. Now beyond those

[00:07:19 ] Damian: Now beyond those big TV spots, are there other sort of digital channels that you're exploring?

[00:07:24 ] Kara: lot of this campaign was not just about the what, but the where. And so we've definitely taken an expanded lens to how we show up for our customers, and really trying to make sure we understand where they're spending time. We show up there and then as a result are additive to their experience, too And you know some of the newer spaces were in definitely moving more into streaming video Moving more into audio which we hadn't done before home tends to be quite a visual category So that's been a really exciting experiment for us and then working with all sorts of creators I think that's an emerging area [00: