How do you find the chewy center of a pearl?
Imperial Pearl is a family-owned business, and one of the oldest jewelry companies in America. It's been buying pearls directly from pearl farmers and designing pearl jewelry for three generations.
Imperial's clients are independent jewelers across the country, major jewelry chains and department stores. Hence, all of its marketing has been B2B.
Imperial's situation:
While many pearl jewelry companies have been swooped up by larger companies with big marketing resources, Imperial has remained fiercely independent. In order to compete, management determined it must re-establish the brand with consumers.
The decision:
Develop Imperial's first national print campaign in over 40 years.
Imperial hired BRANDnv, and together we dug in to find Imperial a place to own.
Imperial is not just a pearl company. It's also a designer of fresh, fun, gorgeous and surprising pearl jewelry. But the challenge is that when a women thinks pearls, she thinks classic studs and strands. And classic equals boring, which is the opposite of fresh, fun and surprising.
So here's the two-pronged strategy we developed:
- Banish 'classic' from pearls and show women the 'Yow!'
- Establish Imperial as the name in pearl fashion jewelry design.
Here are 3 campaigns from the exploration.
