Multichannel Surfing

Depending on your viewpoint, JC Penney announced Wednesday that it is migrating down—or up—the multibrand retail chain. In the course of announcing some poor quarterly results covering the holiday season, CEO Ron Johnson said the retailer will remake itself to look less like a standard department store and more like a big-box retailer. The change includes everything from a “boutique” shop merchandising makeover, to a simplified “everyday low pricing” strategy, and even to a logo redesign that, to my eyes, resembles that of Target: the brand initials inside a geometric shape, in this case a square rather than a bulls-eye.

Put aside the Old-Glory-meets-Tommy-Hilfiger logo change, Penney’s second in a year. And put aside the “store within a store” orientation. To me that simply makes Penney more like every other department retailer, but then I prefer my clothes and kitchen goods without ads on them, whether Ralph’s or Martha’s.

What do you feel about the pricing philosophy? more

There are various modalities and senses of urgencies that flow through the upper echelons of executives at major corporations. Most of these individuals realize there is a time to grab market share as well as a time to plan a strong counter defense to against any and all plausible business, nuclear scenarios. Sometimes they’ve got to get into the boardroom and realize that the strategical direction that they are taking their company is concretely and 100% absolutely even more vital than the sugar coated, feel-good marketing messages that they continue to beam out into the ethos for all of the letdown customers to hear. Thus, drawing an even bigger divide in customer’s thought space re: the brand and what it really is vs. what they’re getting told it is. more

So much for home-field advantage. Among the top 10 companies an American Express/National Retail Federation Foundation survey recognized for excellence in customer service, fully half are pure-play online marketers. As in, no brick-and-mortar presence whatsoever. more

As can be seen from Erik Hauser’s post below, Walgreens is dealing with a problem that could have a serious financial impact on a large portion of its customer base: a cancelled contract with prescription benefits company Express Scripts that could wind up reducing the number of prescriptions filled annually by the nation’s top pharmacy chain by as much as 1% to 3%. That could cost the company up to $4 billion in annual revenue and a sizeable portion of its customer base, who are already being courted in ads by other pharmacies that remain in the Express Scripts system.

In drug retailing, when people move their prescriptions, they also move a lot of their other healthcare and beauty buying. And having moved away once, they tend to stay away. more

Did you see the hordes out in stores and shopping malls last Saturday opening up their Amazon Price Check apps and aiming their smartphones at the barcodes on that rice cooker for cousin Nellie and the velvet smoking jacket for Uncle Phil? Well, no, neither did I. But retailers would be making a big mistake to take that as a sign that their protest against Amazon’s one-day/5-percent-discount promotion for the app was a success.

The deal was this: For one day, last Saturday, consumers could get a 5% price rollback on an item that they scanned in any store with the app and then bought it on Amazon instead. And some elements of the brick-and-mortar retail industry (and the politicians who love them ) were incensed enough to call for a boycott of Amazon for committing “an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities.” Some organizers even promoted an Occupy Amazon event on Facebook for the same day that, I guess, involved going to independent retailers, NOT opening the app, and buying something—it was a bit unclear.

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Below were my 2011 marketing predictions. Let’s journey together and see if my crystal ball needs cleaning:

I can’t really claim these are anticipated, but here they are, my 2011 predictions advertising/marketing/communication specific to the New Year. For the record, my last few years’ predictions have been accurate. Use or dismiss this prose at your discretion.

Prediction #1: Video will play a keener role in website conversions, and marketing as a whole. It’s already happening and with YouTube the second most popular search engine (that’s right, only Google is bigger), it just makes sense. Zappos and other sites already know this, so test video on your site(s) and watch conversions skyrocket. As such, SEO/SEM will play a critical role in marketing effectiveness next year.



Video is being added to every new website that we now build and is being incorporated into old sites as well. YouTube continues to grow, so I would say this was spot-on. How often do you view video content on websites compared to one year ago?

Prediction #2: Consumer and Business purchasing decision-makers are changing their buying patterns because of advances in technology and the ubiquity of information that can be had on Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Rock Melt and the like. Thus, those who understand data – specifically how that data relates to transactional occurrences by each KEY target market segment – will rule the day. This applies to both customer and prospect segments. We have trained buyers to this fact: know intuitively who I am, what I am seeking and make it as easy as possible for me to do/continue to do business with you. Those companies that don’t understand this will be watching their bottom lines evaporate.

The web is blurring the lines between B2B and B2C marketing. Relevancy is the key to making me want to buy from you. Agree?

Prediction #3: Larger companies will hire more reputation mangers to make sure they can react swiftly to the chatter – specifically the negative chatter – that is so easy to post and even easier to go viral in 2011 and beyond. It’s a trend that will continue to grow and customers/prospects gain more powerful customer relation options thanks to the the web. more