Kingfisher plc: Getting away with a gimmick

A jokey but appropriate gimmick helps differentiate the company from other corporates.

The Site

Kingfisher is the holding company for UK and French home improvement retailers B&Q, Brico Depot, Castorama and Screwfix. The central site leads through to subsidiaries’ e-commerce operations, but is mainly designed to serve investors and the media.

The home page features “Your home improvement toolbox”, which contains “the tools you need to make viewing Kingfisher.com suit your needs”. Font size can be increased or decreased, and the background colour of the main news panel can be switched between yellow, blue and red. The configuration holds throughout the site, though it can be changed by clicking the Show Toolbox button present on every page.

The Takeaway

The toolbox is 90 per cent gimmick. There may be an argument that visually impaired people can read the site more easily by making the adjustments, but they will almost certainly be using the more powerful tools built into their browsers.

Is it therefore a waste of time? No, because it helps differentiate Kingfisher from other corporates in a way that is slightly jokey but also appropriate to its image. The group is a do-it-yourself company, so it makes sense to allow visitors to decorate the site the way they wish. And as they are likely to be financial professionals (analysts and the like), journalists and people who use DIY products, they will probably appreciate the joke: it is the sort of thing that adds a little interest and is therefore worth chatting about in the bar. Kingfisher knows its audience and is serving it.

First published on 02 December, 2003