Ferguson Extreme Kitchen Contest, how they did it

Summary: WJBF-TV in Augusta, Georgia produced an Extreme Kitchen MakeOver contest financed by venders and producing $50,000 in sales.

Challenge: Local television station WJBF-TV in Augusta, Georgia had a unique challenge. Ferguson Kitchens, a supplier of kitchen products with a retail location, approached the station with an idea for donating services for an Extreme Kitchen Make-over contest, but had no advertising budget. Would the station be interested anyway?

Strategy: Sales executives Patricia Thornhill and Lauri Morrison, who work as a team, came up with a plan: “We asked, 'How can we get the dollars...that’s when we thought of a vendor program.'”

The contest, sponsored by Ferguson, had familiar rules: People in the community were asked to take a picture of their kitchen and write a letter explaining why they needed a new remodel.

Created online using YouPickEm software from Second Street Media, the contest was promoted on TV and radio. Voters were allowed one vote per day, encouraging the entrants to go social to get out the vote. 

With Ferguson's support, Thornhill and Morrison asked its venders to donate services and products, and to also pay for broadcast airtime. In addition to overall contest promotions, each vender was individually featured in the ads they paid for, so the larger the investment the greater both individual and overall exposure.

“We told them that to benefit they really needed the television support and to do that we needed the dollars attached equal to the amount of exposure,” says Thornhill.

“It was very important Ferguson called the vendors for us set up the appointments,” said Thornhill, since Ferguson also sells their products and has more pull. Venders included all elements of the kitchen remodel: Paint, cabinetry, carpets, lighting and granite, that would be needed in the make-over.

While the commercials promoting the contest ran, the web site showed a countdown  Also included on the site was a letter from and a picture of Fergeson's general manager, information on each the vender’s products and pictures and letters from the entrants.

The winner was “a fabulous woman who lost her job and was unemployed, had survived breast cancer and was an excellent spokes person," says Thornhill.

Next came the hardest part, creating a mini-broadcast of the remodel itself. In addition to providing access to vendors, Ferguson’s consultants orchestrated the construction process, meeting with the homeowner and helping her with design choices, timing and supervision of the process. They also contributed all the electrical and the demolition work.The venders supplied the rest of the products and construction.

The station had just a four to five week window, to shoot video of what was going on in the renovation and write a blog. The Extreme Kitchen Makeover was chronicled in 5 minute segments, aired to create a reveal a week that showed the community what was being done, and to run thank you commercials.

Results: The contest was a big win for the station, with 250 entrants signing up, generating 30,000 votes and 100,000 pageviews. The contest generated $50,000.

Lessons learned:  Thornhill says that it would be difficult to pull off without a team of two account executives and access to a designer dedicated to designing the web site. The hardest part was that the first year was very production intensive, “but less so for next year,” since rules, and some of the voting commercials can be duplicated. Coordinating shoots with home owner and vendor during production was also a challenge. One last piece of advice: “When you open voter up to the community your client has to be willing to accept whoever shows up. We were lucky that we got someone very well spoken and very deserving.” Next year to have more control, she is considering “narrowing down the options and then letting the community vote.”

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

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