The Grommet
Make it stand out.
At The Grommet, I had my hand in all creative output. From content distribution & brand strategy to campaign development & copyediting. I wrote company profiles, case studies, thought pieces for our CEO & short-form Instagram videos, including one that called for me to carve a turkey with a fake chainsaw.
With an audience of 3 million people, we operated like an agency. Every day the creative team & I launched micro-campaigns for new products added to the site. One day it could be a children’s game that is kind of like Jenga, but instead you stack mythical beasts. The next day it could be a toilet brush. You had to learn to be flexible. Just like the toilet brushes.
My job was to create a content strategy, grow our social channels & make it stand out. Here is some of that work.
About The Grommet
The Grommet needed a brand anthem video that defined who they were as a company. Highlighting their scrappy, DIY nature, we casted their employees in a theatrical production of the company’s mission.
Credits:
Written & directed by me
DP & editing by Dan Callahan
Produced by Carina Chavda
Amazing Products
The Grommet has thousands of unique products. We wanted to create video ads that identified their key problem/solution while also framing the site as a destination for products just as helpful. We created a series of :15 ads for social media. The 3-part series yielded 30k+ views, 2k engagements & $15k in revenue.
Credits:
Written by me
Directed & edited by Dan Callahan
Weekend Plans
As part of our content strategy, we wanted to create a video series that would highlight some of The Grommet’s shopping collections in an engaging way.
We came up with “Weekend Plans,” a web series that highlighted product categories through the lens of hobbies Grommet employees enjoyed out of the office. I oversaw the creation from its initial SEO research to its production to its distribution across all marketing channels.
Credits:
Written & directed by me
Produced by Dan Callahan & Carina Chavda
Shot & edited by Kyle Calise
Amazing Gifts
The holiday season is go time for The Grommet especially during Cyber Weekend. They needed a way to pierce the promotion & discount noise to frame the site as a place for unique gifts. We created a series of social videos that tied Grommet products to moments the consumer might be experiencing throughout Thanksgiving weekend.
In total, the 5-part campaign yielded 150k+ views, 10k engagements, & 1k unique visitors across social. This one was my favorite.
Credits
Written & directed by me
Produced & edited by Dan Callahan
More Work
The Grommet put a heavy focus on finding products made sustainably & often stressed the importance of supporting businesses with sustainability built into their business model. With that in mind, I worked with CEO Jules Pieri to write an Earth Day message to The Grommet community about the impact those actions have.
When Ace Hardware acquired The Grommet, two powerful advocates for small business joined forces. Working again with CEO Jules Pieri, I wrote a post for her Medium page announcing the move & detailing the power consumers now had to reshape the economies & communities around them.
Meet the Maker: Rogue Industries
At the core of The Grommet’s mission is connecting its community to the stories of makers, inventors & entrepreneurs. The highest production way we did this was through our Meet the Maker series. Director Dan Callahan & I visited makers on their turf to tell their story. On top of producing the video & interviewing the makers, I was responsible for the distribution strategy for the series. This piece focused on Rogue Industries, a father-son business handcrafting wallets in Maine.
Meet the Maker: Storytime Toys
For the second installment of our series, Dan Callahan & I ventured to Concord, MA & Portsmouth, NH to talk to the founders of Storytime Toys. A women-led business, Storytime Toys creates children playsets modeled after the settings in famous fairy tales. Their mission is to help parents instill the importance of reading & imagination in their child’s life without the use of a screen.
Technology For Us, Not in Place of Us
Another Pieri-Lovett collaboration. This time we focused on the opportunities & threats automation posed to the small business world. Grounded in Jules’s experience in Tokyo where technology is used largely to create jobs, we looked at how America lags behind in a human-centered approach to tech.
Catching up with Doniece Sandoval, Founder of Lava Mae
One of The Grommet’s values is spotlighting philanthropy organizations that approach global issues in innovative ways. I interviewed founders of these organizations to help The Grommet community learn how to support their work. This piece featured Doniece Sandoval of Lava Mae which turns trailers & out-of-service public transit vehicles into hospitality stations for those experiencing homelessness.
Meet the Maker Podcast - Timbuktu Labs
As host of the Meet the Maker podcast, I interviewed inventors & entrepreneurs about their experience bringing consumer products to market. In this episode, I spoke with Elena Favilli, CEO of Timbuktu Labs & co-author of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, about the power storytelling has in building confidence for young girls.