What’s The Difference At Retail? 5 Shoe Brands Make A Point

October 12, 2009

Here are the brands:  Nine West, Ferragamo, Marc Jacobs, Allen-Edmonds and GeoxOnly one has a functional point of difference.  Yet you’d hardly know it if you went into their retail stores.

All these brands are sold through other retailers but also have their own retail stores.  They all sell shoes and other fashion items that are arguably more expensive than the average price point in their category.  And they are all positioned differently in the market.

The first three brands are what I would call fashion brands.  Yes, you’re buying a quality shoe.  But you can get a quality product from DSW.  With these brands you’re buying  into the brand name as a fashion statement and a particular style.

With Allen-Edmonds, there is a fashion statement, but you’re really buying into the idea that their shoes are constructed to provide lasting (albeit expensive upfront) value.  They’ll never go out of style and they’ll last forever.  I think you could even pass them on to your kids in your will.

But Geox has a functional point of difference.  Yet, at retail, they don’t really act much different from these other brands. Oh, their stores are a little less the trappings of wealth and more Euro-modern in appearance.  But they really do little to point out the “breathe-ability” of their shoes in-store.  In fact, they look like most other regular shoe stores when you enter them.  Shoes on wall displays: women’s over here, men’s over there, kid’s in the back.  I could spend 30 minutes looking at their shoes and walk out never knowing why Geox shoes are different.  There’s little in the stores to describe that, and nothing attached to the shoes themselves.  I pick each pair up and look it over, or I handle the price tag to see the cost, and I still don’t know about how these shoes breathe.  Yes, they have funny holes on the soles.  I don’t know why.

Wait, there’s a poster over there that shows steam coming out of the bottom of one of their shoes.  Huh?

I rant.  But here’s the point: so few products have real, functional points-of-differences that when they do, retailers need to really take advantage of them. We ad people spend agonizing hours divining positions and identifying audiences with whom to create a perceptual alignment.  When a brand has a real advantage, we break out the good beer.

If you have a retail brand that has a point of difference, scream it. Put it in the store windows.  Add it to in-store displays.  Have your sales people start every conversation with the difference.  Make sure no one enters or leaves your store without knowing the difference.  They may not buy something, but make sure that’s not because they missed the reason why.


A Simple Guide For Retailers To Think About Social Media

October 6, 2009

Social media has become the topic of the day in retail marketing.  Lots of conversation about retail use of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and more.

There’s a mad dash towards doing something.  But the question is: what to do?

We thought a first step might be to define where a retail brand would fit on a matrix that could help guide its view of social media, including whether to use it all.

This matrix has two axes:

One, we’ll call “frequency.” This is how often the consumer interacts with your store.  Typically, how often they shop at your store, but in the case of banking, “shopping” may be the wrong way to describe it.  Some stores are shopped frequently (perhaps you go to Starbucks every day).  Some infrequently (think mattress retailers).

The other axis we’ll call “engagement.” Engagement is the emotional affinity with your retail brand; being a member of the “club” of people that see themselves as emotionally aligned with your retail brand.  Many of these are retailers that sell their own branded items: Nike, Coldwater Creek, Crate & Barrel, Apple.  Brands with low engagement may be those selling “commodities,” like gas stations or auto parts.

Matrix to aid with social media usage

Matrix to aid with social media usage

Those axes give us four quadrants.  These quadrants may be a guide for how to think about your store’s use of social media.  Once you’ve located your store on this map, we’ve added some views that could help in your thinking about what to do with social and other interactive media:

High frequency/high engagement retail brands:  examples are Starbucks and Whole Foods.

What to do:  this quadrant is the sweet-spot for social media.  It should be treated as a real opportunity to engage customers as friends, confidants, lovers.  And let them engage with each other as frequent fans of your brand.  To do it well, you may need someone interacting in the social space all day.  Answering questions, offering insights, dishing news; Whole Foods has 14 Tweets in the past 4 hours (and 1,459,000 followers).  But then again, Starbucks only posts on Facebook every day or so.  They let their 4,288,000 Facebook fans do most of the talking; about once every few minutes it appears.

Low frequency/high engagement retail brands:  examples are Coldwater Creek, Swatch.

What to do:  Amplify the “brand badge” in social media.  It’s likely these brands already have a strong affinity market – you can buy a blouse or a watch at lots of places but shoppers of these stores are drawn because they see themselves as members of the club that is these brands.  They are fans.  Fans use Facebook.  Swatch rewards its 68,000 Facebook fans with musings about and access to creativity (its brand badge?).  Coldwater Creek has no fan page.

High frequency/low engagement retail brands:  examples are 7-Eleven, gas stations and other “convenience” type outlets.

What do to:  Use borrowed interest to create higher engagement.  Face it, people are largely going to your store because it’s “there.”  If another store were “there” instead they’d shop at that store.  Social media is a challenge, but things like frequency contests or “Twitter-only sales” could create some interest.  Looks like 7-Eleven is now back on Facebook after abandoning over a hundred thousand fans months ago and only has 198 Twitter followers.  Maybe this is a way for 7-Eleven to get re-engaged.

Low frequency/low engagement retail brands:  examples are mattress and furniture stores, remodeling outlets.

What to do:  Focus on awareness and search presence.  That’s right: don’t focus on social media.  It’s a giant uphill battle.  You’d be better served making sure that your brand is readily found when your category is searched.  That means strong SEO and SEM efforts.  Maybe with a skew to geo-location (see my blog on that).

The next question might be: which social media site is best for your store.  But, this is getting long already.  So that will be the subject of another episode of We Play In Traffic.


Twitter as Retail Customer Service

September 30, 2009

Wondering what to post on Twitter?  Wondering how to interact with followers?  How about thinking of Twitter as a customer service channel?

Several retail brands already use Twitter for customer service.  Among them:  Wells Fargo Bank, online footwear retailer Zappos, and Best Buy.

They each have other Twitter channels, but they have separate Twitter locations to interact with customers.  Wells Fargo and Best Buy even have posted hours of when Twitter customer service is open, and show pictures of the customer service team so you know with whom you’re dealing.

It’s a 140 character, almost instantaneous dialog with customers that helps find the right products, figure out how to solve problems, and make friends.

Think about this:  if I were a cosmetics retail store (Ulta, Sephora) or cosmetics brand that sells through boutiques in other retail stores (Clinique, Clarins, H2O Plus), instead of just writing about whatever deal we had or asking questions about customers’ favorite products, I could be answering questions on how to solve skin and beauty problems.

If I were a tire retailer like Firestone, I could be answering questions about tire wear and alignment issues.

If I were a mattress retailer like the Bedding Experts, I could be helping people get a better night’s sleep.

You can keep the Twitter channel you might have originally opened to promote products.  But if you sell products that have high consumer interaction and some potential questions, maybe having a Twitter customer service channel is worth looking into.


Is Your Twitter Just Retail Junk Mail?

September 28, 2009

I’ve been following a number of retailers.  And I have to say many of their Tweets are simply a 140 character version of junk mail.  By that, I mean a constant barrage of things liketweeter

I suppose it makes for easing Tweeting.  But it sends these Tweets to the same place that most of these messages would end up if retailers sent junk mail to followers homes: the garbage.

It’s a good idea to have the episodic Tweet be some offer of real value to the follower; it makes that offer feel even more valuable.  And even better to have Twitter-only offers occasionally.  But to have every Tweet be some message about what you sell is a turn off.

“Great,” you’re probably saying.  “So now what do I do?  I don’t have staff to play Twitter all day.”

Here are a few thoughts:

  • Use Twitter to find out what followers would like you to Tweet about. Just ask.  They’d love to tell you.  Then write.
  • Let followers inside. They’d like to know that they’re a special group.  Tweet something interesting that went on in your company today.
  • Give followers counsel. Your product has an end benefit to them.  Tweet about the end benefit: how to keep their skin good looking, how to save a few dollars, how to prepare leftovers.  Link it to your site where more descriptive information likely exists.
  • If all else fails, do some quick questions about preference: which of your products do they like best?  What’s their best experience with your brand.  Followers want to believe you are listening to them.  Let them talk.

Twitter is supposed to be a dialog.  The brands that are using it well make it a conversation.  If yours is one sided, you’ll have the same result as if followers were talking to a person that only talked about themselves.  They’ll quit listening.


Google Maps Can Provide Retailers Better Media Planning

September 22, 2009

We recently started working with a popular chain of fast casual restaurants.  Media plans due.  Problem was, they have spotty distribution.  7 stores downtown, 4 more in the suburbs, 2 in the exurbs in one market.  Another with two stores across town. googlemap Another with stores within blocks from each other.  Distribution, and a budget, that did not allow effective market-wide media.

Google maps to the rescue.

We typed the address of each retail store by market into Google maps.  We looked at the maps market wide.  We looked at the maps at the store level.  We looked at plain map views that showed transit routes and buildings nearby, and satellite views that showed whether there were residential areas nearby.  We looked at Google Street View to see if each store was visible from the street (no), what else was nearby, and whether there were billboards, transit or other street signage available nearby.  We looked at major and minor thorough-fares to see traffic patterns.

We took screen shots using Snag-It (you have to get this) and put everything in Power Point.

Then we reviewed each market and each retail location and started building the media plan.

It is one of the most precise retail store media plans I have ever been involved with.  It transformed a “let’s run some occasional fractional ads as the budget allows in some local newspapers and hope someone sees them” to an “in-front of the right audience on an everyday basis” plan using transit, outdoor, and just a handful of community newspapers.

In all, it took about 3 days to get the right information for 150 stores.  We had an intern do the grunt work.  And had ESW’s media team analyze and build a plan from those results.

Maybe you think of Google maps as a cool way to see your house from the sky.  But turn it on its side and you have a way to look, literally, at how to plan retail media when you have a limited budget and distribution that doesn’t allow your retail business market-wide media coverage.


Matching Online and Offline Retail Efforts. Or Not.

September 21, 2009

I was curious.  Would the promotions I was seeing in my Sunday newspaper match the promotions those same brands were posting on Facebook or Twitter?

The quick answer is no.

In fact, some seem conflicting. Walgreens has a Twitter promotion offering 30 photographic prints for $3.  Page 8 of their Sunday newspaper circular has an offer for buying 30 photographic prints and getting 15 more free.

Office Depot Tweets about 2 HP Photo Value Packs (whatever those are) with $20 in Instant Savings.  Couldn’t find anything like that in their circular.  Office Depot Twitter announces a Toshiba Notebook Widescreen Computer for $349.  The first page of their circular features a Toshiba Notebook Widescreen Computer for $549.  The only $349 computer is a Compaq on page 4.

Part of me wants to say these should be better aligned.  Part of me wants to say make them different and stretch the message to new audiences.

People that read the newspaper nowadays are typically older.  People that use Twitter are typically younger.  So maybe it’s just fine that the messages and offers are different.

With that, the next question for these, and other retailers would be – are the right messages going to the right audiences in the right mediums?


Consumer Evangelists To The Rescue At Retail

September 16, 2009

I just read a white paper by Adobe on their Scene7 product about how video is changing online shopping.  It got me to thinking about how retailers could better take advantage of all those retail Facebook fans and Twitter followers that offer love for the brand.

Part of this stems from the success of H2O Plus, the cosmetics and skin care brand.  H2O Plus had a user recently create and post a YouTube video that has received over 20,000 views. The video is very flattering to H2O Plus, and cost them no more than some free product to the user.untitled

20,000 YouTube views for $100 in product.  And little time or effort on the part of the brand. I call that a good return from social media.

So, what if your retail brand solicited videos from your Facebook and Twitter constituents?  User-generated content (UGC).  Even brands like CareerBuilder (using UGC for their upcoming SuperBowl commercials) and JC Penney are doing this.

Here’s how I might get user evangelists in retail social media to work for me:

  • Create a contest for submission of videos.
  • The prizes could be shopping sprees at your retail store (great for consumers and less out-of-pocket cost for you).
  • The contest needs some parameters for the content of the videos:  what do you want people to make videos about?  Their fantasy shopping experience at your store?  How to use products you sell?  A song about your store?  Why they love your retail brand?  Their dream job at your store?
  • Give the contest a clever name that attracts attention.  “Taking it to the TJ Maxx.”  “Golden Rules of Midas.”  You’ll do better than me here.
  • Make it simple to enter.  A place to post the videos.  Easy-for-consumers-to-use formats.  Simple rules.
  • Then post the contest on your Facebook page regularly, on your website, and Tweet about it on Twitter with links back to your Facebook page.
  • When the contest is done, you can use the winning videos on YouTube, and link from Facebook and Twitter again so that everyone can view them.  And if the videos are good enough, those fans will pass them along others they know.

Okay, okay, okay.  I know I’ve over simplified this by some magnitude.  But I also know you get the idea.

The white paper (admittedly biased because it comes from Adobe) describes some specific successes.  But even if this doesn’t lift retail sales 36% (claim of camera retailer Ritz), for not a lot of money and a bit of effort your retail brand may get something exciting and valuable out of a social media effort using UGC.



Two Models of Retailing Product Through Social Media

September 10, 2009

Pier 1 and TJ Maxx both use Facebook promotions and Twitter promotions for individual products.  One does e-commerce, the other only sells through stores.  But each shows retailers how these two social media sites might be used to promote individual items.

Pier 1 is featuring seasonal items from their current fall promotion. In this case, a winged armchair on both Facebook and Twitter.  Both social media sites have a posting with the exact same copy (minus a few characters on Twitter): Our Ikat Wing Chair is wondering why everyone else’s Ikat chairs cost so much. Come in and see what all the fuss (is about). When I click on the Twitter tiny url, it takes me to the Facebook page where that chair is posted.  And then, when I click on the links on Facebook, I’m taken to Pier1.com and the ecommerce listing for that chair (too bad that Pier 1 never seems to provide enough information about a product to make it worth learning more).

TJ Maxx is using these social media web sites to promote short-term, deeply discounted items that would drive store traffic. TJ Maxx does not have an ecommerce site; you have to go into their stores to get the transient deals (finds) they offer.  That’s what their brand is about.  But there on both Facebook and Twitter is the same listing (with a few abbreviations on Twitter to get to 140 characters): Create the ultimate chic look this Labor Day wknd w/ Kendra Scott gold & turquoise earrings $19.99 elsewhere $40.

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Now, here’s where TJ Maxx diverges from what Pier 1 is doing: when I click on the Facebook posting for this product, I’m taken to another page on Facebook of photos where the product is larger and easier to see.  When I click on the Twitter tiny url, I’m taken to a

TwitPic of the same picture, with a repeat of the sale copy.

The pictures on TJ Maxx’s Twitter and Facebook pages are not beautiful.  In fact, they look like they were shot with an iPhone using merchandise in store.  But somehow it works.  It’s product with limited inventory that they need/want to get in front of their audience quickly – a find that won’t be there forever.

I think I like what TJ Maxx is doing better.  It feels like it has more immediacy – if I like that item it may not be there long so I better go to the store.  Sort of like Southwest Airlines “twares.”  It feels like something that can be executed without a lot pre-planning (I’m sure Pier 1’s offerings have been months in the making).  TJ Maxx could potentially have a different deal each day.  It fits well with the TJ Maxx brand idea of “look at the deal I found.”  And it allows the brand to get quick feedback on the types of items that get response.

I can think of other stores, like Big Lots and Dollar General, that could use the same idea.

But your store doesn’t need the transient nature of TJ Maxx merchandise to do something similar.  Just an eye to a bargain that the consumer would want, some Twitter followers and Facebook fans, and a quick post on these two sites.  Come to think of it, this may be a good reason why you would have followers and fans.  Think about it.


Consumer Credit Falls. Retailers Should Sing.

September 8, 2009

I just read an article about how consumer credit – the amount that consumers owe – fell more than expect and for six consecutive months.  And that this means consumer spending will not fuel the recovery.

I beg to differ.

I used to like to tell a story (for which my facts are certainly not exactly right) that the average family of four had a household income of $50,000 a year and credit card debt of $10,000.  An amount of debt they were never getting out of.  That debt fueled by the need to buy things they didn’t really need, except that constant media messaging told them they had to have because… well, because everyone else had one.

The news that consumer credit has shrunk may mean that the economy will not come roaring back this year.  But, with any hope, as it comes back it won’t be in the form of a bubble that was never going to last in the first place.

Retailers: adjust, live long and prosper.