Kmart is a brand in search of itself. It’s needed saving for a long time. I can’t recall a reason to go there, and my significant other can clearly tell you why she never will again.
The brand is troubled. It’s hurt Sears too- they became part of the same company when a financial wizard who knew nothing about retailing, but “saw value” in the real estate that came with the company.
No matter how much money Kmart could spend on advertising this holiday season, they couldn’t have bought the positive PR they’ve received in this area with “anonymous donors” paying off layaway accounts. From the Dayton Daily News:
Kmart stores across the region report that anonymous donors are paying off the remaining balances of layaway accounts of strangers in a showing of holiday generosity.
Kmart store managers in Trotwood, Fairborn, Beavercreek and Riverside said unknown visitors are acting as secret Santas and spending hundreds of dollars to cover the layaway bills of complete strangers, especially people who are late on their payments and who are in danger of having their orders canceled.
Most of the donors also look to pay off come-due or past-due layaway accounts that contain toys or gifts, hoping to prevent some area families from having an empty space beneath their Christmas trees.
“They are looking for layaways with children’s clothing in it and toys in it to try to help out families that might be in need,” said Ron Monmaney, store manager of the Kmart in Riverside. “It must be the season.”
On Saturday, two unknown individuals spent more than $1,000 at the Riverside Kmart to pay off the layaway accounts of six strangers. Monmaney said the customers were “elated” to find out their orders were paid off, and they were touched by the gesture.
On at least five occasions in the last two weeks, unknown individuals walked up to the layaway counter at the Kmart in Beavercreek and paid for the accounts of strangers who were late on their payments or who were struggling to make them, said Jerry Campana, the store’s manager. He estimates the mysterious Good Samaritans spent at least $800.
“I think it’s truly amazing,” Campana said. “The best part of it is they are not doing it for any kind of recognition … they are just going out and doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and for people they don’t even know.”
The random acts of kindness started earlier this month at Kmarts in Michigan, but stories of the activity spread through news coverage and online, and it is now taking place all over Ohio and the country.
When you look at Kmart shoppers and realize that the people using layaway are at the absolute bottom of the income spectrum, the idea that put stuff on layaway with the hope that some “wealthy donor” will pay it off works the same way that buying a lottery ticket does: building an unrealistic dream. Is there any tool more used in advertising?
Supposed Kmart decided to invest between $3K and $5K per store in “anonymous donors” - compared to spending it on TV ads nationally. With 1,382 stores nationally, at $4k per store: that works out to $5.52M, which is a 2.5% of a 2009 budget of $224M. The payback in free mentions of this “feel good” story far exceeds what paid media would achieve.
We’re still trying to imagine a world without Steve Jobs.
If you haven’t read his sisters eulogy, you should: “A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs” New York Times link.
The “think different” spot that was created soon after Steve returned to Apple, and moved the ad account back to Chiat/Day and rekindled the relationship with Lee Clow, may be the best short tribute to Steve, even though it’s from 1997.
As a memento, tribute and gift to you- we’ve taken the spot and created a poster for you to print and hang.
Click on image for link to PDF of "Here's to the Crazy One's poster
“Everything old is new again” is the first thing that comes to mind when reading this story from Ad Age about Coca-Cola hiring an agency to do “social media monitoring.”
Coca-Cola North America has selected 360i to handle social-media monitoring for all of its brands.
The agency, owned by Dentsu Holdings USA, will be responsible for formulating a consistent way of keeping track of what consumers are saying across Twitter, Facebook and other channels. It will then report back to the company to yield insights into how to improve or tweak marketing, and determine consumer sentiment about specific products. Billion-dollar brands such as Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Minute Maid, Powerade, Vitaminwater and Dasani will be monitored.
“Coca-Cola North America is excited to scale our efforts in the social-listening space,” said Linda Cronin, Coca-Cola’s Integrated Communications Director. “While we have been conducting social listening for the past few years, we decided that now is the right time to step up our investment in the space.”
Coca-Cola North America launched the “listening review” earlier this year with the goal of identifying a consistent format for monitoring social media. “By consolidating our listening efforts through 360i we are able to ensure quality and consistency across our entire portfolio of brands,” Ms. Cronin said. “Social listening provides another important source of information so that we can best understand our consumers and their interests.”
Back before the internet and Google, large companies would pay media clipping services to literally cut out articles from publications that referenced their company or products. Stay-at-home moms would get paid to take the scissors to daily papers, trade magazines, general interest magazines and organize the articles and send them to some poor person in PR who would dutifully fill out reports of monthly mentions and summarize the months media coverage.
Those days are gone, and now, the stay-at-home mom is a content creator, mommy blogger, and is actually creating the content and monetizing it with ads and even sponsorships. Walmart even has their own cadre of Mom-bloggers with their Mom’s know how site (in beta) pimping and reviewing the products that they sell in their stores.
Which brings us to question the whole concept of “social media monitoring”- social media isn’t something you delegate if you truly understand it. Social media is supposed to be an ongoing, 2 way conversation about your products and services with the people who use/consume them. Outsourcing this service is like disconnecting your ears from your mouth- and pretending to be in a conversation.
While huge brands like Coca-Cola obviously have a opportunity to become major players in the social media arena, the real question is what do they plan to do with all this information gleaned from their “monitoring” and how fast can they react?
Granted many large brands have made large stumbles in the social media space, of late, the epic #FAILs of Netflix come to mind, but the real key to social media is how do you want to engage not monitor.
As someone who monitors the moves of marketers in the social media space, this is just another example of a brand not understanding the social media space and how to integrate it into their corporate culture.
