John Drake

On ROI From Emotion

This year at Advertising Week, Ryan Eckel, VP/Brand at Dick's, had some good words about emotion-forward marketing, which has led to some great work by the retailer throughout their advertising:

and in doing their own films:

We Could Be King - Trailer HD from Tribeca on Vimeo.

"Our brand is about this idea that sports makes people better: not just fitness, not just because you're healthier, but because it encourages a work ethic, and discipline, and time-management, and all these amazing qualities. So we look for stories that speak to those values.

"We're a retail marketer, so we have direct mail, we have Sunday circulars, we have all these things that hit pretty hard. But whenever we just tell emotive stories, from ... all the metrics we look at, the storytelling outperforms on ROI … So it's been a business driver as well, even though that wasn't the intention at the beginning."

On Boldness and Consistency

Adweek poses the question: How Did Bloomingdale's Plain Paper Shopping Bags Became So Incredibly Iconic?

In two words: boldness, consistency.

On How Your Brand Isn't The Center Of The Universe

Red Bull reportedly spends nearly 30% of their revenue on marketing. It's an incredibly high amount. Most of that goes to events.

Their brand is very strong, but as they do all of these events, drawing huge crowds, they keep in mind that it isn't about them at all:

At no point were people coming to these big Red Bull events because they like the drink and wondered what else we might be up to. They didn’t dislike the drink, but they came because they knew that the event was going to blow their mind — was really a critical part of it. The mistakes that the brands make in this area is assuming that they are the center of the universe and that they can do no wrong. At the end of the day, you’re a f***ing brand. You’ve got to be clear that there’s a lot of human emotion that as a brand, you’re lucky to be part of. But you’re certainly not the star of the party.

On The Future of Retail

PSFK Future of Retail 2016 Summary Report from PSFK

PSFK has put together their annual Future of Retail report, which is good. In general, the tactical examples are for retailers who have notable budgets. But not all of them need money for programming and systems. Even smaller retailers should review because there are gems in there. Ladder them up to the strategy on slide five.

The Tech We Bring In

When Genevieve Bell was studying the car industry, one of the things she reportedly discovered what that the technology in the car wasn't as important as the technology that people brought into the car.

Our music, podcasts, address books and recent destinations are with us everywhere, so why try to duplicate that in the car? Just create the ability to hook up the phone.

Which makes sense. Our cars are full of personal items we brought in.

It's a very smart piece of ethno research. And it might be the philosophy that helps retail, too.

What if instead of a retailer investing huge amounts of money into physical things, location by location, they focus their attention on reacting to a phone once it arrives? I think this goes beyond apps and beacons. Target and Starbucks and more could tie together on one platform, not separate ones that they each have to build, market and grow an audience for. Like our playlists of hundreds of bands that share a channel. 

Maybe the answer is something like MyShop Companion?

Why The John Lewis Ad Is So Good

In communication there's something called low involvement processing. It states that an audience doesn't need to be paying strict attention to something in order for it to connect.

There have been many studies on this. One of them was done in 1989 by Robert Bornstein and it confirmed that the less aware people are of the elements in advertising the better the ads are likely to work because the viewer has less opportunity to rationally evaluate, contradict and weaken their potency.

When people are engaged in a great story they allow dramatic extensions of reality to happen without questioning. It's why we love E.T., The Bourne Identity and Casablanca. These are all based in "real life" but they stretch it. And because they're all concepted, written and directed so well, we let Elliott and his friends fly over forests on bikes never thinking about how that isn't possible.

Good advertising is no different. When it's good we're in the moment enjoying it, not overly-questioning it.

And that's why #MonteThePenguin works. You go with it through the end, emotionally connecting and not being distracted with thoughts about how what you're seeing couldn't really happen in real life.

Last year the annual John Lewis holiday ad was the Bear and the Hare. Which was also good. But Monte has connected more with people. On the first day of release the Bear and the Hare racked up 30,000 views while Monte brought in 120,000. #MonteThePenguin was mentioned 436 percent more than #bearandhare and the former's twitter handle already has 20k followers.

There's big pressure for the brand and their agency, adam&eveDDB, to deliver a great ad every holiday. And this one is very close to that classic 2011 spot.

Wearing A Cheerful Countenance

I heard someone say the other day that, "Miley does an effective job at making Gaga seem a little older." She is, actually, a little older so that's fine. But it's always striking when someone, or something, starts to re-position someone else.

Over the holiday I frequently visited Dutch Bros. for morning coffee. They blasted music every day and were always amazingly friendly for early mornings. Reportedly, the company doesn't care what music is playing as long as it's upbeat and has no swearing. The high school student serving coffee one day said, "I'm lucky to work here... I get to show up for work and jam out all day."

Dutch Bros. does an effective job at making Starbucks seem a little stuffy. Here's the brand creed that every customer can read as they drive thru.

 

The Bear and the Hare

For the last three seasons John Lewis has treated holiday shoppers to one, very well done, holiday ad. This year is The Bear and the Hare.

It follows some trends seen throughout 2013, from a song available on iTunes, to a downloadable ebook. The whole thing is quite nice.

As to what to expect during this Holiday retail season for shoppers, things are forecast to be fairly similar to last year, yet slightly up and starting a little earlier. The full report is over on the DC blog.

Why Shopping Will (Almost) Never Be The Same

 

Look at the situation and the problem in the context of life, not the category.

-Jon Steel

The Human Truth About Retailing in a Digital World

 

The Browser always pulls the best articles. How does it work? Who's in charge? They just always find the good stuff. So it wasn't surprising the other day when they featured Why Shopping Will Never Be The Same.

Retail in the next ten years, it's predicted in the article, will rocket forward at a pace never seen before. Magic Mirrors, Smartphone Payment and 3-D printing will be significant factors. But the last one is incredibly grand... The ability for us to print towels, clothing and iPad cases right at home seems to go beyond Minority Report. 3-D printing is a confusing term for this though. Additive manufacturing is easier to visualize but probably too serious. Maybe there's another word.

When thinking about retail with these developments, Why Shopping Will Never Be The Same is probably true. For the likes of J. Crew, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond and Sports Authority the next decade will bring significant change, largely at the hands of switching from warehouse places to buy stuff to smaller places to play with stuff and then order online for home delivery. Competing with the likes of Amazon is difficult.

Gartner says that "in ten years, retail as we know it will be unrecognizable." Unrecognizable? All of retail? 10 years? The industry is often quick to say things like that or, more dramatic yet, to proclaim that something is dead. (Especially those selling solutions.) In reality, things don't die quickly. Ten percent of us still listen to cassette tapes.

Things also don't grow as quickly as early adopters might have us believe. Just look at back-to-school shopping this year. Smartphone usage for parents during back-to-school retail is up only one percent over last year. Yes, gadgets change quickly but behavior doesn't change universally, quickly.

In 2020 we'll find some retail hasn't changed much. Weekend yardwork will still prompt a morning visit to Ace for a hand shovel and Green Acres for some plants. Handbag shopping will still require hanging purses on the arm in front of a clothing store mirror Saturday afternoon for a date that evening. Dinner ideas still won't be worked out by 5pm and people will go to the market to shop what's fresh. We get in moods to immediately explore and own things. We should be careful about statements like "in ten years retail as we know it will be unrecognizable."

Retail will indeed change. And some of it will be unrecognizable. But some of it will be similar to today. And isn't that kind of cool for us as shoppers? To have a mix of different experiences each time we walk into a store? 

Gift Certificates on Facebook

It happens every year. It's your birthday and you find yourself receiving a ton of "happy birthday" wishes on Facebook. Some from people you know really well, others from those you don't. It's nice. And you reply with a stream of thank yous. Birthdays have been going down like this on Facebook for years.

But starting this spring, perhaps it can be more. A new service out of Sweden, called Wrapp, lets friends post gift certificates to other friend's walls. The redemption process is supposedly easy: Wrapp's online app will show a barcode that makes that gift certificate redeemable at the store.

The service will reportedly be available in the US and UK in April. Brands who choose to be part of Wrapp can offer a variety of both free and paid gift cards for all of us to give away.

It's hard to predict what will take off. But, assuming it's easy to do, Wrapp sounds promising. It allows for giving something of value. It's genuine. It's personal. It comes from a friend. And it allows individual creative expression which is something that Campaign Planning talks about often in the development of the social web.

But it's also a good tool for businesses--large and small. Online incentives can drive offline behavior in many random ways... Brazil's Peixe Urbano rallied 1,000 people via Facebook the other weekend to create a human fish by offering a 75% discount on tickets to the Festival de Verao de Salvador Music Festival.

But beyond stunts, online advertising can increase offline sales.

Consider a recent study by comScore: when offline buying habits of households were compared between two different groups--those exposed to online ads and those who weren't--offline sales increased 21% among those who were exposed to the online ads. What's even more telling is that when predictive targeting was applied to online ads the study showed an in-store sales lift of 42%.

Now add a coupon sent by a friend to those numbers.

Wrapp is something to keep an eye on.