Does Spreading The Retail Gloom Help Us or Hurt Us?

November 17, 2008 by admin · 2 Comments
Filed under: retail 

I have very mixed feelings about an email I received from a friend early this evening.

On one hand, I appreciate the warning. I appreciate the sentiment about celebrating the holidays with family and friends, not bling and things.

But the business person in me can’t help but think that these email blasts only spread the gloom-and-doom that’s already keeping us out of the stores. Yes, we absolutely should slip the Visa cards into a drawer and head toward the mall bearing cash — a new study says 22.8% of us plan to, up from last year — or use our debit cards, like 41.5% plan to do. A return (even if possible) to the bloated excess of the boom-boom years doesn’t work either. But some of us believe firmly that innovation and new opportunities can emerge even in these highly unsettling times. These gloom and doom emails are a viral megaphone that threaten to to drown out our never-say-die American spirit.

Interestingly, the mood on the newer Social Media is much perkier. Tweeters tend to get het-up and pesky but try to share positives; bloggers get mad but share link love; Facebookers are tribal, joining groups, events, causes and status-donations. MySpacers are busy pitching their music while Ning’ers are simply passionate about their own thing. New Social Media is very different than the traditional old media world of email. Socialyzers are in-the-know junkies, wanting to be au courante 24/7. We feel our power (check my post on MotrinGate) and wield it deftly and swiftly. We’re passionately participating in this participatory media — not merely passing iffy information along as in the days of legendary email from Bill Gates, NPR, Disney, etc. If nothing else, Socialyzers want to believe we are in control; that crowdsourcing matters. After all, didn’t we just elect a new President? Traditional emailers are simply passing along the gloom-and-doom with scant hope of effecting change.

Hope and heart live on Social Media sites. Even in 140 characters life is bubbling up.

Here’s the email:

Wow, interesting times. I love gift cards but…maybe not this year.
Personally, it’s a good year to celebrate our family and friends.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
XXOO ~ Stores that informed the Security Exchange of closing plans between October 2008 and January 2009. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

Circuit City stores… most recent (? how many)

Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide are to be shuttered

Lane Bryant,, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 store
nationwide

Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January

Cache will close all stores

Talbots closing down all stores

J. Jill closing all stores

GAP closing 85 stores

Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January

Wickes Furniture closing down

Levitz closing down remaining stores

Bombay closing remaining stores

Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.

Whitehall closing all stores

Piercing Pagoda closing all stores

Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.

Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Guru’s Correction: I am thrilled to correct this — as Home Depot is one of my hang-outs. I’ve heard from them and this is very old news dating back to May.

Macys to close 9 stores after January

Linens and Things closing all stores

Movie Galley Closing all stores

Pacific Sunware closing stores

Pep Boys Closing 33 stores

Sprint/ Nextel closing 133 stores

JC Penney closing a number of stores after January

Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.

Wilson Leather closing down all stores

Sharper Image closing down all stores

K B Toys closing 356 stores

Loews to close down some stores

Dillard’s to close some stores.

Guru’s Note: I have not verified this information. It’s too depressing. I’d rather hang out at the Apple Store with the Nano Chromatix and drool over the juicy colors.

Here’s the update on store closings from Snopes.com.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Retail’s Best New Back To School Viral Campaign: YearbookYourself.com.

August 17, 2008 by admin · 1 Comment
Filed under: retail 


Ever wondered what you might look like in a past life? (Ewwww, did you look like your MOTHER?! Now you’ll know for sure.)

In the cleverest viral campaign since OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself, social-networking-savvy Taubman Centers, owner of upscale shopping malls nationwide, has created a buzzworthy new site to drive more teens and their parents into its malls for back-to-school shopping.

YearbookYourself.com allows you to upload a photo and see yourself with classic hairdos and vintage outfits through the decades. Era-appropriate music plays while you’re waiting to be stunned by your new ‘do. Once Yearbooked, people can save their pictures and post them to their favorite social networking site, such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as share them with friends. All I can say is: Keen! (1956 Guru) Groovy! (1966 Guru) Awesome! (1988 Guru)

Unfortunately, for all its blockbuster potential, the site architecture breaks a number of basic social marketing rules. In fact, parts of the site are somewhat kludgey and even confusing. Most significantly, the fact that the Taubman shopping center connection is never explained until you’re suddenly asked to Choose A Mall.  Huh?  Yet all they had to do is add a screen or a crawl along the bottom that explains who is behind the site.

The Malls themselves require registration — that typical My Mall stuff –which is really annoying. It stops the flow; it stops the excitement. It is a significant barrier to continued engagement. I was interested in seeing how Lucky jeans were an update on 1978 jeans — but I couldn’t see them without ponying up a pile of my personal information. Why create this terrifically trippy widget if you’re going to make it difficult to explore?  What’s likely to happen is the sponsors’ worst nightmare: a high level of engagement with the YearbookYourself pictures and then a marked percentage of abandons when the user hits the reg-required mall pages.  With all those teen fashionistas out there scouring the web for store and style content, its a shame to lose them with barriers and bumps that should have been prevented via Usability Testing.

Worse, once you’re in Mall World, you can’t easily return to the YearbookYourself you’ve already created.

I do applaud the erstwhile attempts to connect yesterday’s styles and trends with today. 

The site also features “homeroom” pages that allow visitors to save their favorite yearbook photo to a page and then invite friends to post their photos as well. Once invited, friends post their photos, a virtual yearbook page is created. Shared links allow friends to view each others’ homeroom pages. They can also save, print, email or post their yearbook photo creation to a webpage or social network site.

I’m conducting some mini-research this week to see if teens think YearbookYourself.com is fun, corny, cool or lame — and will track if and where they actually post. My focus-group-guru self thinks they won’t admit a thing . . . but that MySpace will see some Yearbook action soon.

Wouldn’t it have been a kick if Taubman, and always innovative ad agency Colle + McVoy,  had added:

  • A celeb component, with a Gossip Girl, hot band, or Jonas Brother getting Yearbooked? MySpace would have been an awesome partner here.
  • A Buy-and-Sell-Your Friends game.  Does your bff cost more in 1978 or 1954?
  • Stimulated Homeroom usage by mixing in REAL celeb yearbook pix as part of a prize-winning scavenger hunt or name that celeb.  Again, partner with MySpace.  Wouldn’t The Ubiquitous Tom be perfect in Yearbook ‘disguise’? 

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Tags: , , ,

Inside IKEA’s Marketing.

June 26, 2008 by guruofnew · Leave a comment.
Filed under: Uncategorized, homes & housing, lifestyle & leisure, marketing & advertising, retail, style & design 

If you want to test out that hot new relationship of yours, taking him or her home to meet Mom may not be the answer. Instead, the true test of compatibility is buying something at IKEA, taking it home and (maybe) assembling it. Later, you can see how well you two do at Anger Management classes, the ER or while sharing a handful of Xanax.

This is why IKEA’s Flash masterpiece ‘Come Into The Closet’ makes me so crazy. The 5 minute spot brilliantly lures you into five different closets, from Pax Stordal’s 5th floor cool glass look to an urban party room with shimmering disco ball to a craft room so pretty-in-pink that it made me want to buy a glue gun. Almost immediately you begin to believe that all this detail and design is possible to achieve in your own home. You believe that you can twist and wind and pound those shelves into submission. You believe that because ‘prices are dropping’ you’re saving some money, too.

This then is the marketing genius of IKEA. They make you believe. They tease and tempt and convince you to give it one more try. You forget that the cost of the handyman you call for rescue plus the price of your stitches will pretty much wipe out the savings from IKEA’s sale prices.

But call me old-fashioned. Marketing has always been about dreams, possibility and what could be if only you use my product.

Do You Speak IKEA?

From a great site named Pigtown Design comes this additional peep inside IKEA marketing and naming:

  • Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs are named after places in Sweden (Klippan, Malmö)
  • Beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway; carpets after places in Denmark and dining tables and chairs after places in Finland.
  • Bookcases are mainly occupations (Bonde, peasant farmer; Styrman, helmsman).
  • Bathroom stuff is named after lakes and rivers.
  • Kitchens are generally grammatical terms
  • Kitchen utensils are spices, herbs, fish, fruits, berries, or functional words such as Skarpt (it means sharp, and it’s a knife).
  • Chairs and desks are Swedish men’s names (Roger, Joel)
  • Materials and curtains are women’s names.
  • Children’s items are mammals, birds and adjectives (Ekorre is a set of children’s toy balls; it means squirrel)

Who wants to find out where Fartful and Jerker come from?

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Tags: , , ,

Oops! WOM Beats The Pundits Again. Sex and The City Glams Its Way To A $55 Million Opening.

June 1, 2008 by admin · 1 Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized, entertainment, fashion & beauty, lifestyle & leisure, marketing & advertising, retail 


Hollywood pundits underestimated the massive femme power of the SATC franchise, with many predicting opening box office in the typical chick-flick realm of $20-30 million. Some wisely hedged it on higher, but always with the disclaimer that their usual methodologies were not jibing with word-of-mouth.

Therein lies the issue with traditional research tools — Word of Mouth, particularly in the realm of female fashionistas and passionistas, wields power like nothing else.

In Santa Monica, the SATC showings at Mann’s theater were sold-out from 6 until midnight Friday night.  Thanks to a savvy friend, we were lucky enough to sneak in at six, beating the line of giggling girlfriends — some in their Carrie-best — that snaked around the block.

Inside, it was a blend of focus group, pep rally and the annual Nordstrom spring sale. The target-specific satisfaction was palpable.

Reviews. Schmooz. It’s all about the shoes.

 

 

 

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,