Piece of Cake Moving & Storage
What happens when you take a tech marketing whiz and task her with creating a residential moving experience that is, dare I say, enjoyable?
Spend some time with Najah Ayoub and you’ll quickly learn. The chief marketing officer of Piece of Cake Moving & Storage has done for moving what Lemonade has done for insurance; what Expedia has done for travel and what TurboTax has done for tax prep – created a brand that transforms a once dreaded task into something that is actually kind of cool.
A Legacy Industry Ripe for Disruption
40 million Americans move homes each year. Yet the process of vetting movers, negotiating price and executing a successful move remains one of the most feared parts of “adulting.”
While so many other industries have benefited from disruption, the process of packing, storing and moving has seen little innovation. And with estimates projecting US moving revenue will exceed $22 billion next year, the industry is ripe for a shakeup.
Upending an Industry
Najah Ayoub, Chief Marketing Officer of Piece of Cake Moving & Storage
Najah Ayoub
“If you really want to cut through a traditional industry like ours, you’re going to have to be really bold,” says Ayoub. For Ayoub and company founder Voyo Popovic, this meant bringing in technology and workflows to create efficiencies and doubling down on the company’s bold brand identity to create a seamless customer experience that removed the fear and uncertainty typically associated with moving.
“Everything has to be curated similar to when you fly first class or go to a five-star hotel,” says Ayoub. “It’s like you walk in and everything is just taken care of – you don’t have to think.”
Hi-Tech Service
Ayoub deployed her toolbox of skills from the tech sector and military to make finding and working with Piece of Cake easy and transparent for customers (the company uses a sophisticated pricing algorithm to guarantee flat fee pricing, for example) and more efficient for the company (workflows facilitate seamless communication with customers from initial search through move day.) The company even created workflows around Certificates of Insurance to remove a major pain point for customers.
Bold Brand Identity
In an industry of dirty gray trucks, Popovic chose a pink and purple color palette to “cut through all the noise.” The colors evoke friendliness and safety, and appeal to women. “Women are typically booking the moves and dealing with the sales reps and the movers,” says Ayoub.
This colorful branding in an otherwise bland industry appears to be working. “Piece of Cake stood out because of their branding,” says Victoria Whetzel. The Piece of Cake customer who worked with the company for her NYC move says, “You see the trucks every day and everyone knows what Piece of Cake is, so it was automatically top of mind.”
High-Touch Experience
Customers are assigned a moving consultant who provides hand holding throughout the move cycle. “As soon as you put your information in for a quote, their team contacts you and you immediately feel like you’re building a personal relationship with them, that it’s more than a sales transaction,” says Whetzel.
Sales and moving teams go through extensive training to personalize each move and provide a consistent user experience. “It was clear they’ve mastered a model that instills confidence and trust from the first touch point, which made me feel their moving services would match in excellence,” says Sam Kantrow, another NYC-based customer.
Customers are also taught “how” to move – having access to an extensive library of videos and guides (how to pack stemware, for example) to simplify and demystify the moving process.
“We walk them through the experience at every touch point. We text the customer the night before the move letting them know their move will be a ‘piece of cake’. Sounds simple but it didn’t exist in our industry.”
Innovative Marketing
Moving and storage may not be an industry you associate with social media influencers. But that has proven to be an effective marketing tool for the company and a great source of user generated content. The company offers free or discounted moves to creators and has a robust affiliate program. The company is also the official moving and storage sponsor of the New York Knicks, a strategic play to get in front of the 70% of New York City residents who rent and move apartments frequently.
Employee Retention
Piece of Cake has an above average retention rate in an industry notorious for turnover. “In our industry employees usually work for a few months and then they move on to another job,” says Ayoub. “We have very high retention rates of all of our employees, including our movers.” She attributes this, in part, to the company culture that prioritizes customer and employee satisfaction. It also doesn’t hurt that the company fosters career development by encouraging employees to move across departments and pays its employees above the industry average.
“What surprised me about moving day is that the hard-working movers actually match the charm and character of the brand and how they present themselves throughout the process,” says Kantrow.
“The reason we’re able to deliver an amazing 5-star experience to our customers is because our employees themselves are treated to a five-star experience,” says Ayoub. “If someone is taken care of, they’re going to take care of you.”
Piece of Cake movers with their signature pink and purple branding
Piece of Cake Moving & Storage
Top Tips from a Disruptive CMO
Ayoub shares a few key marketing strategies that have fueled her success at Piece of Cake, cementing her company’s brand dominance in an industry that, until now, has been stagnant:
- Make your brand name your brand promise
- See every employee as a marketer
- Infuse your brand into every touchpoint.
Piece of Cake completed 100,000 moves last year and now has hubs in five US cities. The company’s disruptive strategy has eliminated the major pain points associated with moving, fundamentally changing the game. “I didn’t have to worry about anything at all,” says Juliette DiGiuseppe, an LA-based customer. “They were so fast and efficient at making an otherwise stressful experience surprisingly pleasant and simple.”
