Project
Identity, website and content strategy for one of the most active and well-regarded pet stores in northern Tuscany: Homery.
Homery: identity, development and strategy for the leading pet store in northern Tuscany
- Client
- Homery
- Area
- Identity, Development, Relations
- Year
- 2023 – present
- Main link
- Go to the website
Homery is a pet store in the small chain segment, present in northern Tuscany with four shops in Viareggio, Lido di Camaiore, Pietrasanta and Querceta.
Homery addresses pet owners looking for more than product quality: a flexible, attentive service, knowledgeable about their animal's needs and their own. In its area Homery is a widely appreciated brand, both because it is a multi-store well stocked with high-quality products that would not be found in supermarkets, and because it is a credible interlocutor to talk to directly about your animal, including specialist matters such as training, diet and veterinary care.
Through the availability, empathy and preparation of its staff, Homery overcomes the impersonality of the large chains, recreating in its shops the familiar dimension of the small neighbourhood store.
A local brand with a loyal base, to be given a voice made of services and values.
A thorough analysis of the company and its market showed that customer loyalty and strong local penetration were Homery's main brand assets.
Consumer insights also made clear that Homery's customers had already developed a degree of familiarity with the brand image; what was weak in their perception were the brand's associations, easily explained by the absence of any structured communication message, the brand having over the years preferred to invest energy and resources in promotional messages rather than in a content strategy built around the company's services and values.
To raise brand awareness beyond the area it already held and improve brand image and perceived quality without overturning the logo, Homery therefore needed a fully articulated brand identity, and needed to start communicating effectively not only in its shops and by direct mail, but also through a website and social channels renewed in both content and form.
The communication levers we identified as distinctive to Homery, and which can be found on the brand's website and social profiles, are: geographical and human closeness, expertise, customer loyalty, multichannel service and personalisation.
In the same way, the brand values we sought to communicate properly are:
• passion, understood as love of animals and the main driver of what Homery does;
• care for the customer, going beyond customer satisfaction and taking a proactive approach through impeccable service and constant support from Homery's staff;
• reliability, the distinguishing trait of someone with experience;
• empathy, the brand's social responsibility as a real commitment to organisations such as dog and cat shelters.
Beyond this, we chose to bring out one of the things the Homery brand and its customers share: the view of the pet as a full member of the family, moving beyond the idea of owner and master towards a relationship close to equals.
In communication terms we therefore played with petsonas, animal characters given human names and precise physical and behavioural traits, and then developed a line of storytelling for each of them.
Homery's new claim, "The supermarket for people who love animals", expresses its double nature: supermarket for its value and range, for people who love animals to bring out the value of passion and the profile of the ideal customer, invited to recognise themselves in that description.
At the centre of the brand's new visual identity are the people of Homery, who take on its values and become its ambassadors. For this reason the whole staff was involved in producing the communication materials, from the individual portraits for the new website to the videos promoting the shops and the illustrations of the pet characters.