When Jorge Calvachi joined the La-Z-Boy organization as their first Insights Lead, they were struggling with a few different challenges.

One challenge was that their brand is and was so tightly aligned with their flagship product, the recliner, that it made it hard for other offerings to breakthrough. This is evidenced by their aided versus unaided awareness; La-Z-Boy had an aided awareness measure of 98%, but an unaided awareness measure of 15%. Essentially, their brand had become like Kleenex – so synonymous to their recliner product that it was hurting their growth potential.

Another challenge was that most of their buyers, those that had grown up with them, were getting older. With an average buyer age of 62, they needed to reach younger generations with their new branding and messaging. And this meant they needed the new branding to feel societally and culturally relevant to younger consumers.

Finally, Jorge knew that a powerful brand like La-Z-Boy’s needed to be leaned into – it’s iconic in it’s association with the recliner.  The internal team had agreed to lead with ‘laziness’, but they needed to make sure the branded campaigns were executed flawlessly. Jorge wanted to make sure that the label of ‘lazy’ moved from negative to positive, in line with a societal move towards making time to lounge and ‘veg out’ or ‘rot’. They needed the campaign to celebrate laziness and reinforce that everyone can and should take time out to be lazy on their own terms.

Jorge wanted to work with a research partner who understood the gravity of getting this wrong and would help them produce a campaign that helped them win new customers on intangible and societally relevant benefits. That’s where Dig Insights’ qualitative team came in.

The qualitative team at Dig Insights helped La-Z-Boy understand:

1. How to maintain the relevance of La-Z-Boy, a 96-year-old furniture brand that has such specific associations with their classic recliner.

2. Does brand and campaign evolution risk losing what makes La-Z-Boy distinct?

3. Are there opportunities to lean into La-Z-Boy’s unique brand associations and to align those associations with current social norms and lifestyles?

Dig Insights used a traditional structure to gather insights, conducting a series of online synchronous focus groups. These discussions allowed the team to go deep to really understand what La-Z-Boy stands for and how the brand fits and sometimes doesn’t fit with current social norms and lifestyles. there was also an opportunity to explore ideas for how to position La-Z-Boy in a way that is both brand relevant and culturally relevant. These executional ideas included messaging, visuals, look and feel and even fonts.

Once the online interviews had completed, Dig Insights utilized its proprietary AI-powered Open Text Analytics Platform to identify themes from transcripts of the group discussions. This AI-powered thematic analysis helps to eliminate researcher bias, a critical factor when seeking to understand social norms and lifestyles.

Since the launch of this new brand platform, La-Z-Boy has seen huge improvements across several channels.

1. $1BN in earned media impressions for their campaign
2. 200% increase in website traffic year-over-year
3. 17 of their brand associations improved significantly post-campaign
4. 35% increase in unaided awareness post-campaign

In Jorge’s view, this demonstrates that they’ve been able to reach new consumers and drive up that relevancy with the right buyers.

The La-Z-Boy leadership are over-the-moon with the new launch.