Beginning in the mid-90s, retail analysts began talking about a shift in focus in in-store merchandising from simple product presentation to a more holistic store experience. New store concepts from Nike, Cabela’s and REI began to position retail stores as entertainment destinations where shoppers could interact with multimedia content centered around brand assets like new products, athletes and how-to information.
More than a decade later, many retailers have incorporated entertainment concepts into their stores. As you would expect, the strategy is also applicable online. Most brands with online direct sales platforms have merged the brand and product information approach of their pre-ecommerce websites with the nuts and bolts of presenting products and processing transactions online.
This non-product-content takes many forms, from travelogue look books at J. Crew to expedition videos at The North Face. Some brands, like Patagonia have created separate channels for their brand-related entertainment. In most cases, the content is keyed to specific products or serves a more general brand-building function.
Few retailers, however, take the pure entertainment approach, creating marketing content, like Super Bowl commercials, primarily to entertain. That’s why Backcountry.com’s Steep and Cheap email newsletter caught my eye.
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A great example of content as marketing. This news and sundries stall in the San Francisco Ferry Building marketplace doesn’t have a lot to offer: magazines, maps and some kitchy souveneirs. What they do have is a great location: the main intersection in a major food, tourist and transit destination. And they know how to work with what they’ve got.
Look at where they sank their visual merchandising dollars. Not on fixtures, displays or signage but on an oversize clock and three large flat screen displays. The displays show transit schedules. Never mind that this is a small retailer in no way connected with any Bay Area transit agency. They have access, as we all do, to published transit schedules. And they’re repurposing that information as marketing content.
Thousands of people walk by their stall. Many, especially the tourists who no doubt make up the core of their customer base, will pause, interpreting the clock and schedule data as signifiers of transit information. Many will stop. Some will ask questions. A few will make use of the information on the monitors. But everyone who pauses, momentarily tricked into thinking the stall a source of travel information, will end up casting an eye across the display. And some of those passers by, now converted to traffic, will be converted to sales. All because the retailer understood what kind of content was relavant to its target customers and how to deliver it.
Bicycling magazine does a pretty good job of catching my attention. Daily (or nearly daily) email newsletters tease content on the website and in newsstand editions. For the most part, they are well targeted and well presented, leaning heavily on reviews and training tips to generate click-throughs to their site—exactly what one would hope for from a magazine publisher. (Brand marketers take note: real content generates real interest. Promotional messages, P.R. drivel and the umpteenth athlete profile generate yawns.)
But what really caught my attention this week was the header that ran above a review of 2010 bikes. In the banner above the reviews, a navigational area lists the bike categories under which the various reviews are classified. There are twenty-six of them. Twenty-six categories of bicycle, eleven flavors of mountain bikes alone. Read the rest of this entry »
As any soon-to-be parent knows, naming is hard work. What some brand managers don’t know is that it’s often plain unnecessary. Take Tully’s coffee, a Seattle chain of Starbucks-like coffee shops. Like Starbucks, they have decided to make up names for things we already have names for. In Tully’s case, the new terms apply to coffee taste rather than cup sizes. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been involved on and off in an online discussion about how to broaden the outdoor market’s consumer base. How, participants ask, do we reach age, ethnic and socio-economic groups outside the core user base?
MEC seems to be taking a stab at reaching younger consumers by encouraging their existing customers to recruit new customers in the 16–24 age range. Read the rest of this entry »
During political campaigns, media handicappers talk about “positive” and “negative” opinion numbers. Successful candidates need the right mix of both. High positives and high negatives indicate great name recognition—voters know who you are, they’re just very divided in their opinion of you, often an indication that a candidate will do well with a core constituency but poorly with moderate voters.
Brands are subject to the same opinion polarization and big brands are often the most polarizing of all. So how do you deal with the negatives if you’re a Walmart or a Starbucks looking to appeal to the big fat middle? Starbucks is about to try an innovative approach: wearing a disguise. Read the rest of this entry »
At some point in every discussion of sales collateral, someone says “Let’s just put it online.” With the current pressure to reduce marketing spending making it even more attractive to move away from printed catalogs, it makes sense to look at the pros and cons of this electronic-only approach to sell-in materials.
The desire to abolish paper catalogs isn’t new. Back in the 90’s, brands were playing with the idea of publishing dealer catalogs on CD. Since then, new technologies have enabled everything from a catalog on a thumb drive to dealer websites. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. New technologies may add new tools to your marketing tool kit but it’s just as important as ever to make sure that you’re using the right tool for the job. Read the rest of this entry »
Backpacker Magazine posted this to Twitter yesterday afternoon:
Newbie campers are coming—get ready for a crowded summer: http://tinyurl.com/d2o6gp
The link is to a blog post that in turn references this CNN piece on a potential boom in car camping this summer. Never mind the issue of newbies crowding out state-park regulars. A growth in car camping participation is welcome news for outdoor specialty retailers and suppliers. And Walmart. Uh, especially Walmart.
Chances are that the bulk of the newbies will be inclined to buy the sort of down-market camping goods available in the big box sporting goods and general merchandise stores. But there’s also a good chance the camping spike will manifest among more affluent consumers. It may even surface some ex-campers looking to get their game back. Both of these latter groups are likely to frequent a specialty retailer. The bottom line is that anybody who sells camping gear is likely to encounter more newbie campers than they would in a “normal” spring. So how do you make the most of this new traffic. Tips for retailers follow. Read the rest of this entry »
Conventional wisdom and lots of news pieces like this one hold that second hand store sales pick up in a recession. One used-gear retailer’s numbers, though, seem to push the other way.
Sports One Source reported last week that Play it Again Sports, the 364-door used sporting goods retailer saw 2008 sales slide 6%. It’s hard to tell whether this is a reflection on Play it Again Sports or on consumer shopping habits. Research data on used sporting goods sales is hard to come by.
It may be that Play It Again’s ship is yet to come in. After all, retail sporting goods sales didn’t turn lousy until late last year. The U.S. Census Bureau Monthly Retail Trade Survey showed sporting goods retail sales up every month in 2008 until sales slid sharply in October. And, despite a lousy November, sales ticked back up over 2007 levels in December.
The National Retail Federation has data out showing a dip in sporting goods sales in January of this year and then a modest rise in February. It may be, that despite reduced consumer spending overall, sporting goods consumers have yet to reign in spending enough to really benefit the used-gear dealers.
AdAge has a piece this morning on the growing DIY trend, something one of article’s sources calls a “cross-category … trend that could linger well into the next decade.” As evidence, AdAge cites comp store sales from AutoZone, sales of home hair coloring kits and enrollment in cooking courses.
Like most things mainstream, the DIY trend is a combination of idea-seeding by a small core culture and an opportunity provided by larger economic conditions. Over the past 10 years, a small, hip core of DIY-promoters has launched successful websites (instructables.com, makezine.com), magazines (ReadyMade, Make), and even online marketplaces for DIY goods (esty.com, threadless.com). As consumers look to stretch their dollars in the crumbsville economy, there’s a convergence between necessity and lifestyle.
There’s an opportunity here for specialty retailers and outdoor brands and not just for repair and parts stores like Berkeley’s Narain’s or the stuck-in-the-70s DIY retailers like Quest Outfitters. Read the rest of this entry »
