Shop Talk by Tim Manners

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Relevant Responses

Earlier this week, I asked members of the Relevance Group on Facebook (see link at the bottom of the page) as well as subscribers of my newsletter to pick a brand that they feel is most relevant to them and explain why. (Here's a link to my newsletter: "Cool News of the Day").

We promised a signed copy of my forthcoming book, "Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters" to 28 people, picked at random. Not surprisingly, many people chose Apple as their most relevant brand.  However, what was surprising was the diversity of the responses from those who didn't pick Apple.  Also interesting is that so many of the chosen brands were not exactly household names, or the usual suspects.  

But perhaps most revealing was simply the highly personal nature of the responses.  That strikes me as one of those things that should be obvious, but isn't until it's pointed out. Relevance is a relative concept and a highly personal matter.  It's worth thinking about.

One last thing -- we provided two ways to respond -- either via SurveyMonkey or via a "wall" post on Facebook.  There were nearly twice as many responses on Facebook versus SurveyMonkey!

I've included links to both sets of responses, but as you know you have to belong to Facebook to access Facebook.  If you don't belong, I urge you to join the fun!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27406960979

http://reveries.com/reverb/research/relevance/

10:08 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Sigrid Olsen

The news that Liz Claiborne has closed all 54 Sigrid Olsen stores is sad indeed for Sigrid and the boomer women for whom her fashions were designed.  But it was also a setback for those who see retail as less of a tactical tool of sales and distribution, and more a strategic medium for marketing a lifestyle.

Sigrid Olsen stores were something special. As Claire Wilson reported in the November 19, 2006 edition of the New York Times, to walk through the front door of Sigrid Olsen’s  fashion boutique in SoHo was to walk through the back door of her own home in Hamilton, Massachusetts.

“I want my customers to feel as comfortable in my store as they would be visiting their best friend’s home,” Sigrid explained. “I want them to feel as though they’ve entered a work in progress, as most homes are.” The space, designed by Pompei A.D., consisted of “a loose configuration of roomlike settings.” For example, fitting rooms surrounded a “luxurious bedroom suite.” The cash desk was in the kitchen (because the kitchen is where everybody congregates).

Because Sigrid began her career as an artist, the space was accented with artifacts including “an easel, a stool and some well-used paintbrushes.” Some of her artwork graced the walls and the coffee table in the “living-seating area” was “strewn with design magazines and art books.”

As Sigrid explained: “Just like my house … but without the fireplace." But the idea, said Ron Pompei, the designer, was not so much a celebration of Sigrid’s lifestyle as it was an open door to the shopper’s own sense of self, and artistry. “Rather than ask customers to take on the value of the brand … we created a retail space that encourages them to express themselves in new ways,” said Ron.

He added: “We try to create a landscape where people will meander, make a circle, discover the stairs and look for more … Sigrid is saying to the customer, ‘You are a complex woman, with many different aspects to your life’.”  Ron also color-coded the different rooms: “The different blocks of color … is a signal that you turned a page,” he explained.

Unfortunately for Sigrid -- and for anyone who admires great retail -- she is in a kind of contractual purgatory. While Liz Claiborne has shut down Sigrid's label, it still retains the rights to it and suggests it may revive it at some point. Naturally, that frustrates Sigrid, but she’s not giving up: “Being a child of the 60s, I still have that idealist in me that I think I can pull it all together and give people an uplifting, positive message … and still be an entrepreneur and a capitalist at the same time.”

10:06 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Economy Candy

Economy Candy, on New York's Lower East Side, is not a huge store, but it creates a huge impression. It is actually rather narrow, although it is long and the ceiling is high. It feels like a warehouse and a small shop all in one shot.

But what makes Economy Candy memorable is its religious focus on just one thing: Candy, candy and more candy. From the highest-end chocolate bars to the cheapest gumballs. It's hard to imagine that Economy Candy omits any kind of candy known to humankind -- including some brands that you would have thought had been extinct for decades. They just pile 'em high and watch 'em fly.

True to its name, Economy Candy prides itself on its low prices. But it is this singular focus on just one thing, and taking it to its insanely wonderful extreme, that makes Economy Candy so special. Starbucks would do well to a look at Economy Candy as it considers how to get back to where it once belonged.

Two other things are worth noting about Economy Candy. One is that it is so obviously family run. It's been that way since 1937. The young guy at the register calls out to his dad, and a customer asks him, "Where's your mom today?" It gives off a great, friendly, heartfelt vibe.

The other thing about Economy Candy is the smell, which can be described in just one word: Sugar.

Oh, and one more thing. On a Sunday afternoon, the place was jammed with customers. Retail as media, indeed.

You can visit Economy Candy online here.

09:33 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Retail Strategy

For all intents and purposes, retail strategy is an oxymoron. Most marketers view retail as a tactic, not a strategy. They see it as a function of sales, not marketing. But those who understand the potential of a "retail strategy" to make or break a brand have a real edge over those who don't.

Take for instance, Under Armour. A recent story about the brand's amazing success by David Coleman in the New York Times (8/7/08) goes into great detail about its carefully cultivated, high-testosterone image and how that image plays out on in its advertising.

But buried deep in the article is the insight that Under Armour's success is in no small part because of its deft retail strategy: "For years it has largely restricted sales to sporting goods stores, military-base exchanges and sports- and military-oriented outlets."

Using retail strategically to bolster its brand image is at least part of the reason why Under Armour has logged "$314 million in sales for the first half of 2008, a jump of nearly $70 million over the first half of 2007."

Tupperware is a very different example of the importance of understanding retail as part of the brand strategy. As documented in a new book called Tupperware Unsealed, Tupperware was invented by a guy named Earl Tupper, who was a brilliant inventor but knew nothing about how to market his invention.

So he did the obvious thing and tried to get his product into stores. But it didn't sell. Why? Because shoppers had no idea what Tupperware was. It was a new product that required explanation. It was a woman named Brownie Wise who came up with the idea of demonstrating Tupperware at parties (she actually got the idea from Stanley Home Products, which was already doing the same thing).

Eventually, Tupperware stopped selling at retail altogether and Ed sold the company for $16 million in 1958.

So, sometimes retail should be part of the brand strategy and sometimes it shouldn't. But as both Under Armour and Tupperware prove, a brand's success demands a retail strategy.

08:30 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

What about Me?

The most frustrating thing about Apple's newly introduced "mobileme" service is that it seems I can’t create an alias return address with my own domain name. Yes, I can forward all of my other email addresses to my me.com address, but if I reply using the me.com service I must use my me.com email identity.

At best, it's not obvious how to use my own email address if I want to.

Why is this important? For one, I generally don’t use my me.com address when I’m at the office (where I can’t seem to kick my Entourage habit). I only use it when I’m “on the road,” meaning I don’t check it as often. So anyone who receives a me.com email from me replies to my me.com address — and I don’t necessarily see (and could easily miss) those emails.

And, by the way, I have five different emails, each of which serves a distinct and important business purpose — my me.com address, by comparison, is meaningless.

I understand that Apple’s grand scheme is that they will “own” my email experience, that I will use their “cloud” exclusively, and in their world my complaint is irrelevant. But what about letting “the rest of us” keep our own identities if we want to instead of turning them over to Apple?

09:40 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Seven Words

No, not those seven words.

The seven words I’m talking about are just fine with the FCC but maybe deserve a little more scrutiny from the FDA.

We all know these words: green, organic, free-range, all-natural, low-cholesterol, biodegradable, and pure.

These are seven words we should never use to describe our brands. Although pure really shouldn’t be on the list. It’s such a noble-sounding word. King Arthur was pure. Dudley Do-Right was pure.

But our brands are not pure. They may be pure chemicals. They may be pure sugar (but probably not). More likely, they are pure nonsense.

The reason we should not use these seven words (and the list is certainly longer) isn’t just that it’s misleading, or even dishonest. It’s that nobody believes us (see Green Fatigue).

It’s as if we could just take the good old days of bolder and brighter and replace those words with greener and leaner and everything would be as it was before.

It’s as though we could just hand a few empty words to our fellow shoppers and everything will be okay again in our world.

George Carlin once said that words were just tools to conceal the truth. In fact, he used words to expose what he saw as the truth. George Carlin was a comedian and a gosh-darn funny one.

But what’s so funny about truthful words in branding?

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Mind Space

The next big thing in retail merchandising is here and it is ... nothing.

At least that's the thinking at the new Jil Sander Store in Soho, which, according to a story in Sunday's New York Times magazine section, is stone, cold empty save for "a system of louvers that rotate at regular intervals to enclose the entire space in whiteness or open it up to reflected glimpses of the outside."

It is the creation of Germaine Kruip, a Dutch artist, in collaboration with Raf Simons, creative director of Jil Sander, who thinks the time is right for a little bit of ... nothing.

"I think it's a form of luxury not to open the door and get hit over the head with a bag," he says. So, you have to venture upstairs for that.

But will shoppers stop and appreciate the merchandising of nothingness? Or rush right upstairs to get to the merchandise? Or just turn around and leave, confused?

Raf plans to give "nothing" about six weeks, at which time he'll start to play around with it, maybe adding some "mannequins ... or even actual merchandise." He says he sees the space as a "laboratorium" where he can try something new every month and a half or so.

"There's been a lot of talk about the evolution of retail environments," he says. "But to me it feels right to do something with space and light that breathes."

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Shopper Marketing

If you have no idea what Shopper Marketing is, you're not alone. But you should know that Shopper Marketing is one of the hottest trends in marketing today, at least in the eyes of major consumer packaged goods companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Kraft, as well as the agencies that serve them.

What is Shopper Marketing? It's been defined in a number of ways, often in "mission statement" fashion, meaning a single sentence of 75 words or more that attempts include every detail. I won't subject you to that form of punishment!

Instead, I'll offer my own definition: Shopper Marketing is a discipline designed to drive growth by improving the shopping experience for the shopper.

That may sound basic and obvious, but the twist is that implementing Shopper Marketing is anything but basic and obvious. It is incredibly complicated because it involves every aspect of the shopping experience, from the the usual stuff like promotions, displays and packaging up to and including store formats themselves (think in terms of the checkout area, for starters -- plenty of room for improvement there, no?)

Underneath it all is one area that is largely alien to traditional marketers, whose focus has been almost exclusively on understanding consumers -- that is, the consumption of goods and services. What's been ignored is understanding shoppers -- that is, consumers when they are in the shopping mode.

In other words, understanding consumers is not the same thing as understanding shoppers. There is some overlap between the two, of course, but if the ultimate goal is to drive growth (and it is), then doesn't it make sense to gain insights into why a shopper decides to buy your brand versus someone else's? There's only one place that happens and that's in the store -- be it via bricks or clicks.

With that in mind, The Hub Magazine joined forces with Hoyt & Company, a consulting firm, and the Promotion Marketing Association, to codify what constitutes excellence in Shopper Marketing and benchmark against some standards in hopes of improving industry performance overall.

To ensure maximum objectivity, Hoyt & Company simply asked agencies to rate brand marketers, and vice versa, against ten key areas critical to success in Shopper Marketing. We published an executive summary of our findings in the May/June issue of The Hub.

In addition, we prepared a comprehensive report "The Hub Top 10: Shopper Marketing Excellence." The report includes rankings of the top ten brand marketers and agencies in ten key performance areas critical to success in Shopper Marketing and a mini-primer on Shopper Marketing.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the weakest area for both the brand marketers and their agencies is, yes, shopper insights. Shopper Marketing may be the last great frontier of marketing ... and the wagon train is leaving the depot.

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Star-Spangled Retail

As merchants go, it's hard not to admire ... Lord & Taylor.

Lord & Taylor? The old-fashioned department store? The place for frumpy ladies who lunch and tea? The retailer that was basically sold for parts to financier Richard A. Baker back in 2006?

Yes, that Lord & Taylor. The Lord & Taylor that is today "bustling with shoppers, giving the chain its best sales figures in 15 years" (link here). The Lord & Taylor that got its magic back by selling off underperforming stores, ditching its mid-priced apparel and recruiting "more than 200 new upscale brands."

Part of this success is down to good timing. Lord & Taylor's revival was helped by its competitors, most of all Macy's, whose "decision to eliminate century-old local brands, like Marshall Feild's in Chicago, pushed shoppers into Lord & Taylor," where they were surprised and delighted by Lord & Taylor's makeover.

Lord & Taylor's comeback also came at a price, of course, and would not have happened were it not for a decision by its new owners to invest in the iconic brand and fully support its CEO, Jane Elfers. The retailer is planning to plow another $500 million into its comeback, calculating that the "over consolidation" of retail has "left many Americans rejecting the coast-to-coast sameness of Macy's in favor of something different."

But the coolest part of this story is about the one thing Lord & Taylor did not change: It still plays the Star Spangled Banner every morning before opening its aisles to its waiting customers (link here). This is a tradition dating back to 1979, and the Iran hostage crisis, when then-ceo Joseph E. Brooks started playing the anthem because , as he said at the time, "with all its problems, this is still the greatest country in the world."

Some shoppers think it's a little weird. Some people stand, while others sit; some sing along while others do not. However, for at least one shopper on a recent morning, the message was clear. As the final note was played she stage-whispered, "Play ball" and headed for the aisles.

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A Little Help, Please

Earlier this week I was on the phone with a reporter from a local newspaper who was interviewing me about a piece of research I had conducted on "shopper marketing." The survey was done as a joint venture between my magazine, The Hub, and a consulting firm called Hoyt & Company, and in association with the Promotion Marketing Association.

The methodology was simple -- we asked agencies and brand marketers to rate each other in ten areas critical to success in "shopper marketing."

The reporter knew absolutely nothing about the subject matter, so naturally his first question was: "What is shopper marketing?"

I offered him my simplest definition: "Shopper marketing is an emerging discipline where brand marketers and agencies collaborate with retailers to drive growth by improving the shopping experience."

And he said: "Oh, so you mean things like customer service?"

And I said: "Yes, that would include things like customer service."

And he said: "So what do these agencies and these brand marketers have to do with customer service?"

And I said: "Um … good question!"

Brand marketers and agencies have everything to do with packaging, displays, pricing, special offers, promotions and otherwise communicating their sales messages in-store at the moment the shoppers are making their shopping decisions.

But if their goal is to drive growth through a better shopping experience, they are missing their biggest opportunity by failing to provide shoppers with the thing they need the most at retail -- great service.

The concept is not unheard of -- I remember there used to be an Apple employee at the CompUSA store back in the day and it's a fairly standard to see employees of cosmetics companies helping shoppers at department stores.

But has any brand marketer or agency taken responsibility for any level of customer service at a supermarket or drug store? The closet thing might be a sampling event or a cooking demonstration of some kind, but that's not really customer service.

The focus is so heavily trained on communicating their own self-interested sales messages that these brands and their agencies don't even consider what the shopper really wants.

A little help over here, please.