Harry & David, America’s premier choice for gourmet food gifting, has a rich heritage that brand officials sought to showcase in their comprehensive brand refresh across the website, mobile site, catalogs, emails, and social media channels.
As part of the brand refresh, new features and functionality have been introduced at harryanddavid.com to elevate the gift-giving experience just in time for the holiday shopping season.
To highlight the brand redesign and help tell the story of the rich history of Harry & David, a new #BehindThePears social media campaign showcases the journey of the iconic Royal Riviera® Pear featuring the employees who nurture, grow, pack, market and deliver the product to consumers. The campaign, which may be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is currently underway and will run through the end of the holiday season.
Loyalty360 talked to Steve Lightman, President of Harry & David, to learn more about the massive brand refresh.
What factors prompted this comprehensive brand refresh and what are your goals for it from a customer engagement perspective?
Lightman: Harry & David continually looks for ways to enhance the customer experience, providing gift-givers with fast, easy and convenient ways to shop. That’s why the site redesign incorporates not only our new brand look, but new functionality, improved navigation, and enhancements based on customer suggestions we’ve received. We also think the new brand-immersive content on the site will help us build deeper connections with customers. For example, we have some terrific multi-media content that shows a behind-the-scenes look at the recent pear harvest, as well as ongoing features such as our “Harvest Report,” which lets customers know which fruit is ripe and ready to ship.
How have your customers changed in recent years and how has H&D adapted to those changes?
Lightman: Harry & David has long been a part of America’s gift-giving tradition. Some of our products are perennial favorites of customers, such as our iconic Royal Riviera Pears, our gift baskets and towers, and our Fruit of the Month Club offerings. However, our merchant team regularly updates our product assortment to reflect changing consumer tastes and trends. For example, we’ve added products for special diets, whether gluten-free or Kosher, created individual self-consumption size products for snacking, and launched fun flavor combinations, such as those we recently introduced for Moose Munch with Nestle Butterfinger Bites and Buncha Crunch. As such, our e-commerce site has continued to evolve and now offers enhanced navigation so customers can easily shop the brand’s entire product assortment by popular categories.
Also, some of our most loyal customers enjoy receiving our catalogs in the mail, while others prefer to view our products online. So one of the most important changes we made as part of our brand refresh was to our online Gift List. New features allow customers to view their online and print catalog order history together in one place, add gift recipients and shop for new items to include on their list.
What does customer loyalty mean to H&D and how has that definition evolved in recent years?
Lightman: The Harry & David brand was built on customer loyalty and earning the loyalty of those who shop with us continues to be our No. 1 priority as a company. The customer experience is, in fact, our No. 1 product. We are proud to be one of the nation’s earliest catalog mail order companies, earning our reputation for unmatched quality and customer service for over 80 years.
What were you going for as far as the new look and appearance of the brand?
Lightman: We wanted to better reflect the rich heritage of the Harry & David brand and place a spotlight on the care that goes into creating our beloved gourmet food gifts. This included the ability to demonstrate our breadth of assortment, showcase everyday gifting occasions and tell compelling brand stories. The popularity of Harry & David spans generations of gift-givers, so we also had to be sure that the updated design appealed to our very loyal customers, as well as to new shoppers of the brand.