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Ashley Furniture came to the Super Bowl this weekend to takeover the Dawg House Saloon & Sports Book inside the Resorts World casino. This is the largest activation in the brand’s history around the game, according to its director of brand activation field marketing, Alexa Richardson.
It decked the restaurant in its signature orange color scheme, and moved sofas and recliners into the restaurant’s Sports Book section.
The activation gave Super Bowl viewers and country music enthusiasts a chance to try out Ashley’s products. It set up QR codes on coffee tables so that Sports Book section visitors could view inventory and specs online for future consideration.
“We’re trying to pop up at a lot more of those big cultural moments—really trying to go where the consumers are,” said Richardson.
The Sports Book with the recliners
The brand wanted to leverage country music, a genre usually underrepresented at the Super Bowl. It also offered merch giveaways and staffed the activation with brand ambassadors.
Over 21-year-old customers could access the experience for free, and the brand hosted performances by three of country music’s rising stars, Cooper Alan, Ernest and Hardy.
For Ashley’s marketers, it was an opportunity to connect directly with consumers—and without ever having to draw them into one of its stores.
Bringing its products to consumers
Experiential takeovers like Ashley House are one way it can achieve salience with potential consumers—even if they’re not immediately seeking a new sofa.
“I don’t think we’ve really done anything where we’re having people get to sit and experience [the] product for a long period of time,” Richardson said.
“To have them sitting with their friends, watching sports, really getting to visualize how Ashley could look in their house,” is a key component of the experience, she continued.
