Project brief: Herman Miller has a long tradition of creating good design that benefits people’s environments and collaborating with designers that continues today. To bring these ideas alive, we came up with “Design for You,” a contest for Herman Miller to share good design with everyone. The unique tiered contest engages group participation: Users get others to enter in order to unlock prizes. For the grand prizes, we commissioned five artists to interpret “for a better world around you” using Eames rockers as their canvas. This resulted in one-of-a-kind collectibles that garnered excitement and thousands of conversations in social media and the blogosphere. Behind-the-scenes video and photography on the making of the Eames rockers share the creative process and how Herman Miller provides “design for you.”

Approach: We conducted a multi-pronged marketing plan, focusing our efforts on various social-media channels. We released exclusive behind-the scenes videos and seeded them on design blogs as part of earned media outreach. With social media, we enabled users to refer others to the contest through tweets, Facebook and email. We developed an email marketing campaign, sending updates on the weekly prize to encourage more referrals. We developed content plans for Herman Miller’s blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts to continually drive traffic to the contest. The contest created buzz leading up to the opening of Herman Miller’s online store.

Effectiveness: The contest received more than 21,000 sign-ups, with 96 percent being new subscribers to Herman Miller’s mailing list. The 10,000-subscriber threshold to unlock all the prizes was reached within the first week of the contest’s eight-week run. Contest sign-ups built a quality email list for the online store, with a 40-percent open rate. The contest also received more than 5.2 million earned-media impressions and 7.05 million total media impressions.

We maintained excitement about the contest leading up to the store’s opening by releasing a new prize every week leading up to the grand prizes we created: we commissioned five artists to paint one-of-a-kind Eames rockers to give away, drawing interest from both bloggers and design enthusiasts.

The motion in the interactions is very well used—nice and surprising, with just enough restraint. Brings the people in. Gives the opportunity for regular people to collaborate with design icons. Customization of the product makes it an heirloom, less likely to be disposed of...designed to last!

Well executed. Many typefaces used effectively. Hear the story behind each product.