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AER-DEC
The launch that took Sloan into architecture.
Sloan’s AER-DEC integrated sink system combines the faucet, soap dispenser, and hand dryer into a single streamlined deck. It is not just a new product. It is Sloan’s entry into high-end architectural design, built to win over a customer base that a century of commercial fixtures leadership had earned but never fully reached. Sloan has led the commercial restroom industry for over a century, with products in airports, stadiums, hospitals, and schools worldwide. That legacy gave the brand mass-market dominance, but it also framed Sloan as a commercial fixtures company rather than an architectural design brand.
The A&D community, the architects, interior designers, and specifiers who shape high-end built environments, was the audience AER-DEC was built to reach. The brief was not just to launch a new sink system. It was to launch Sloan into a category where design credibility matters as much as engineering performance. Every element of the launch had to signal that AER-DEC belonged in the same conversation as the premium architectural products this audience already specified. WHQ partnered with Sloan to craft it, and it became the most successful product introduction in the company’s 100-year history.
Celebrate the integration, don’t explain it
Most fixture launches describe. They list the features, compare to competitors, and reach for the kind of technical language that makes engineering proud and customers bored. AER-DEC had genuine engineering underneath, but the launch had to lead somewhere else. The product solved a design problem that architects and designers were already trying to solve, the visual clutter of three separate fixtures competing for attention on the same deck. The launch’s job was to make that integration visible and undeniable, not to explain what it was.
We treated AER-DEC less like a commercial fixtures launch and more like an architectural product launch. Editorial photography. Slow, considered video. Writing that trusted the audience to understand what it was seeing. The campaign moved across platforms with the same disciplined voice and visual language the A&D community recognizes from the premium brands they specify.
One product, every surface
A launch into a new category cannot afford a single weak touchpoint, so WHQ built the full launch system end to end. Naming and identity established the product as its own considered brand within the Sloan portfolio. The website presented AER-DEC at the fidelity of an architectural product site, with the image treatment, typography, and pacing that A&D buyers expect. Campaign creative extended across social, billboards, and trade media, each frame built around the same visual discipline.
The work ran in partnership with Sloan’s internal teams across brand, product, and marketing, keeping the launch in sync with retail availability, specification readiness, and the broader Sloan brand system.
A launch in sync with the business behind it
Naming, identity, photography, video, website, and campaign all shipped against the same calendar as retail availability and specification readiness. A launch that looks right but arrives before a specifier can actually order the product does the brand more harm than good.
Running the work through Sloan’s internal brand, product, and marketing teams kept AER-DEC recognizable as a Sloan product while giving it the distinct design register the A&D audience expects.
This is the single best marketing campaign our company has launched in my time at Sloan.Graham Allen CEO, Sloan Valve Company
Result
AER-DEC became the most successful product introduction in Sloan’s 100-year history. For a brand that has led its category for a century, that is a specific kind of achievement, one that depends on a launch as considered as the product it introduces. The A&D community met AER-DEC on the terms it deserved, and Sloan made a credible entry into architectural design that extends what the brand can build next. The launch reached a customer base that a century of commercial fixtures leadership had earned but never fully addressed.
