"Brand" New Retail Campaigns

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The past several months have been pretty much a wasteland for new creative on the retail advertising front. Not that there haven’t been new spots and new ads on the scene, but nothing has stood out as break-through creative or really spot-on branding.

Recently, however a few campaigns have broken that have caught my attention and, I think, the attention of the consumer as well. Additionally, I think these are examples of campaigns that reinforce the stated brand strategies for these stores. Let’s take a look at three of them.

1. Stein Mart. Always a great off-price alternative to the traditional department stores, Stein-Mart has never really differentiated itself with a strong brand message. As a matter of fact, their advertising, in my opinion, has been a non-entity. Great brand strategy but they kept it a secret. The new campaign, however, from Devito-Verdi, really breaks through with a tongue-n-cheek slam on the main floor piano players that so many department stores think are important.

With the pianist (kind of a Will Farrell look-alike) slamming the competition and their policies that ignore what the customer wants, the spots drive home a positioning that makes a lot of sense to today’s smart shoppers. Stein Mart’s business has not kept up with its former pace in recent months. Maybe now that they are taking their brand proposition to the consumer, more will visit the stores. Check out all the spots at their site at:
http://steinmart.com/

2. Kohl’s. The store has been a real success story and their latest campaign featuring their Vera Wang collections is not just another “we’ve hooked up with a designer” series. The spots are creative, contemporary and drive home the personality of Vera and Kohl’s at the same time. Another example of how these specialty stores have taken a position that has made them favorites with customers in all demographic and psychographic groups with the money and the smarts to know they don’t have to spend too much for good style and quality. The spots from McCann are not just fashion and they certainly are a lot more effective than the new Macy’s spots.

3. Wal-Mart. After more than a year of fumbling around with more problems than just some new creative, the world’s largest store broke its first spots since naming the Martin Agency its new AOR a few months ago. It’s interesting that most of the news around the agency change and the new campaigns focused on the fact that it was time to replace the long-standing smiling happy face “Price roll back” spots. From what is written, one would think this is has been Wal-Mart’s only advertising message for years. In fact, the smiley-face campaign was never the majority of the spots that have run for the store. Spots featuring employees, customers, suppliers, charities, and events were extremely well-done and which built the trust of the customer were one of the big reasons that the company has grown to be the most successful retailer in the world.

The new campaign gets back to building that trust while still driving home the fact that Wal-Mart saves you money for the things in your life that you like to do. They are well-produced and targeted and I think it’s time for the company to focus its messages on building the trust and quality of the company while saving its customers money. (”Save Money. Live Better”) I’m not sure what they changed with the media plan, but I used to be hit by at least 4-5 messages a week (and I’m not a high television watcher) and now I have only seen these spots in advertising trade publications and video links. Maybe that’s why the performance has been so poor the past several months. You can check it out in Bob Garfield’s column at www.adage.com.

I’ve said many times that retailers tend to think that branding is nothing more than coming up with a new ad campaign and then wonder why nothing happens with the consumer. In these cases, the positioning is right, the stores get it, and the message is creatively succinct.