Making a Need Worth Wanting – 2026 Digital Beacon Awards

Content calendars, audience strategy analysis and creative development can all shape a successful social campaign. But sometimes digital marketing ideas come from a conversation about giving somebody bathroom cleaner for Christmas.

Samantha Post, co-owner of T&M Hardware & Rental, says the inspiration for the “What You Need” social media campaign emerged while she was talking with a Rust-Oleum representative at a Do it Best market. The conversation turned to The Pink Stuff cleaning products, then to another cleaner the representative had once given her adult children for Christmas. Why? Because she was tired of seeing their dirty bathrooms.

The paint rep jokingly shared that her children were less than thrilled with her generosity, and her insightful response stuck with Post: “Sometimes you get what you need, not what you want.”

Post immediately recognized something bigger in that line.

“I heard that phrase and thought, ‘That’s brilliant for a Christmas gift-giving campaign,’” she says.

The social media program that followed won T&M Hardware & Rental the 2026 Digital Beacon Award for Best Social Media Campaign. It also illustrates something that has become increasingly important to the second-generation retailer: finding fresh ways to tell people what a hardware store can mean to them.

A Different Kind of Christmas List

Post understood the idea because she had been on the receiving end of those practical presents herself. After college, her mother would give her boxes containing things such as socks and toothpaste.

“I was really grateful to have someone spend their money on those things that I needed but hated spending my money on,” she says.

That became the premise behind “What You Need.” Instead of competing for holiday dollars with conventional gifts, T&M encouraged customers to think about presents that solve problems or remove everyday expenses: the supplies needed to finish a lingering project, the part that fixes an annoyance around the house or even a collection of cleaning products.

That approach also addressed a changing holiday reality inside T&M’s stores. The retailer had reduced its purchases of overtly Christmas-themed gifts and decorations as prices climbed and consumers became accustomed to waiting for post-holiday markdowns.

Post saw an opportunity to replace some of those sales without pretending a hardware store needed to become a Christmas boutique.

“We needed a new strategy to retain holiday sales without the influx of Christmas gifts and decor,” she says.

She’s quick to point out that “What You Need” remains an idea in flux. She isn’t claiming a dramatic sales increase from the first season. The objective is to change how customers think about hardware-store gift giving over time, and T&M plans to watch this year’s holiday results for signs that the message is gaining traction.

The campaign nevertheless stood out to Digital Beacon Award judges.

“This series of posts connected the community to the local store know-how,” says Hardware Connection editor Doug Donaldson. “The campaign combines personality, products and problem-solving for customers—all while driving seasonal sales and foot traffic.”

Hardware Knowledge Is the Story

T&M Hardware & Rental has spent 35 years accumulating stories. Tim and Mary Post bought their first hardware store in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, in 1991, investing their retirement savings into the distressed operation. They eventually expanded T&M to five locations in western Pennsylvania and one in eastern Ohio. Their lifetime accomplishments earned Tim and Mary a 2020 Retail Beacon Award.

Their four children grew up in the business; Samantha returned after working in Washington, D.C., bringing experience in marketing and communications with her. Today, she’s a second-generation co-owner and marketing leader for the family company.

Her earlier work included a health-promotion campaign in which she studied ways to engage audiences with messages designed to change behavior. One approach was “edu-tainment”—presenting useful information in an entertaining way.

That concept followed her into hardware.

“We fully acknowledge that hardware is boring, but our goal is to showcase all the interesting and cool things that people do with the hardware when they leave, or what the hardware from our store was capable of building,” Post says.

Rather than relying primarily on the company’s longevity for social content, she increasingly wants T&M’s accumulated hardware knowledge to carry the story.

“The same core hardware still exists today as when we started in 1991,” she says. “But we’ve certainly learned an awful lot about hardware over the course of 35 years from helping so many people in the aisles.”

That philosophy can produce some unpredictable storytelling. One T&M social-media thread began with spray paint, expanded into a neighborhood graffiti incident, led to conversations about graffiti and art and eventually inspired a pop-up spray-paint sale. T&M sold out its spray-paint inventory in three and a half hours.

None of what appeared on social media related to the spray paint was scripted.

“These were all real things that happened at the store that we just figured out how to document and share,” Post says.

“What You Need” grew from the same instinct. A chance conversation produced an idea. Post recognized its connection to her own life, then found a way to make it relevant to T&M’s customers.

For her, the idea that started with an unwanted Christmas present ultimately became a new way to look at what a hardware store has to offer. Socks and toothpaste taught her the lesson years ago: A gift doesn’t have to be something someone wants when it’s something they’ll be awfully glad to have. T&M’s campaign simply makes the need worth wanting—and worthy of a Digital Beacon Award.