Partner Success 360: Mitchell Hill
What do an interior design store and a newspaper have in common? They're both local and have a great partnership.
Mitchell Hill, the full-service gallery and interior design shop that is quickly becoming an Upper King Street icon, advertises regularly in the Post and Courier and attributes some of its success to that partnership. Johns Island native Michael Mitchell began his business in 2006 in New York City and opened a pop-up store in Charleston four years later. His plan was to shut down the store after 32 days, but the response was so overwhelming that he made it permanent. He and partner Tyler Hill marked 10 years in Charleston with a move up the street to a 12,000-square-foot store that is a must-visit location for art and design lovers, be they locals or visitors.
Mitchell says the most important reason to advertise both in print and in digital products is its impact. “There is just no substitute for using the most viewed local media outlet to reach locals and tourists alike.” “We have to see feedback from our advertising,” he said. “If the advertising falls flat and it’s not grabbing anyone’s attention there’s a couple of problems there: are we providing the wrong information and the wrong photography or are we just partnered with the wrong source?
Mitchell has seen all the fancy metrics that advertisers use about reach, frequency, clicks, and so on, but he uses a far simpler but more relevant measuring stick. “A lot of this is sort of shooting in the dark because we don’t know how people are reacting to things, but what we do know is when they come in and they talk about it,” he said. “Certainly with our advertising with the Post and Courier we get a lot of feedback. We get a lot of traffic off it and people come in with the ads. They do lead to sales. They lead to new friendships and new customers, which is really what we want. I can grab tourism off the street but to get to the local people, it’s the Post and Courier.”
That said, tourists like to check the local daily newspaper to get a feel for the city they are visiting, and Mitchell enjoys the fruits of that readership. “We have clients literally walk in the door with a torn ad out of the newspaper, in their hand, and some of them have said ‘I want that rug,’ or they’ll say, ‘what else do you have like this?’ That’s super positive feedback for us. That’s what we need to get from advertising and what the Post and Courier delivers.”
Because the art and craft of interior design is different every day for each individual customer, Mitchell Hill must update its ads regularly. That freshness works well in a newspaper, whether print or digital because the ads are easy and inexpensive to change on a daily basis, if necessary. As a result, clients keep looking out for Mitchell Hill ads. “The benefit is people are constantly looking at our ads to see what we’ve changed,” Mitchell said. “The Post and Courier have a far reach well beyond Charleston, which most people don’t realize. With the presence of print and online, it's lovely for us to be able to share what we’re doing.”
Growing up, Mitchell read the paper for the latest news, and he still does today. It’s just the running blood and the soul of our town. It’s always been that way: it was that way when we had the Evening Post, the News and Courier, and when it evolved to the Post and Courier. Growing up here, there were always things going on in different pockets around town. We can still get that information from the Post and Courier.”
When you’re the leading source of news, people are reading, they’re engaged with the information. The newspaper can’t be on in the background or something you skip through on the way to someone’s post about their vacation. Every medium, and every advertiser, would like to have such engaged users. It’s what makes partnering with the Post and Courier so valuable to Mitchell Hill, and to hundreds of other Charleston-area businesses.
Partner Success 360 highlights the accomplishments of The Post and Courier’s advertising partners in creating a holistic marketing campaign. Learn more about how our partners have tapped into the power of the Post and Courier’s full scope of products and connected with our wide-reaching audience to achieve their business goals.
Real Partners. Real Success.