Talk about targetted advertising. I just saw that this American Eagle post, over at ecommr, is picking up an American Eagle banner via Google Adsense. The post is about the American Eagle e-mail that advertises the BOGO Tops event and the banner is for the same promotion. The banner looks like part of the page now!
Over at ecommr, we’ve been adding e-commerce elements related to Black Friday. Head to ecommr to see a roundup of the different banners, homepage landing, and e-mails that retailers are using to promote their Black Friday specials. More will be added as we come across them.
As a related note, it appears (to me) that retailers are being more aggressive in their marketing for Black Friday, with earlier campaigns and with more detail. Normally, promoting specific price points for comes right before Thanksgiving. But this week has been filled with “online previews”, television commercials, and e-mail marketing that seems to be more aggressive and detailed than years past. Retailers are trying to step up their game in order to capture a larger piece of the shrinking sales pie.
Walmart and Target both have their Black Friday ads online and featured prominently on their homepages. Kohl’s even has an entire section on their site that allows customers to browse the Black Friday ad and make a printable shopping list.
A racy advert for JC Penney has been making it’s way around the internet over the past few days. The ad, which won a prize at this weekend’s Cannes Lions Awards, features two teens practicing putting their clothes back on quickly before heading down to the basement for a romp. Problem is, it may not be a legitimate JC Penney ad.
Because the spot is so well made, and because someone had to enter it it at Cannes, JC Penney is blaming its ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi. The ad agency, in turn, is pointing the finger at production company, Epoch Films of New York, which is indeed the listed entrant. There is speculation “the video may have been filmed after hours by a producer at Epoch who was working on the Penney ads for Saatchi.”
A commercial like this won’t land with the core demographic of JCP’s shoppers. But on the flip side, teens are too smart for a commercial like this. It fails on both fronts. It pisses off their core and doesn’t the brand’s desirability with teens.
This video is spreading quickly through blogs, social networks, and Twitter. The retailer will need to work quickly to counter it’s message. This is a great opportunity for them to use social media effectively and distance themselves from the video. I’d like to see the retailer working with bloggers to get their message out there. Otherwise, the video is going to continue to spread and fewer eyeballs are going to see their retraction.
Of course, this is a moot point if the retailer, in any way, authorized this advertisement. Then it’s even more of a tangled mess and the only way to resolve it is with honesty and transparency.
It will be interesting to watch how this develops over the next few days and how the retailer responds.
The advert in question is below. As a warning, it does show people dressing and undressing, so it might be slightly NSFW:
I don’t often use my own site to solicit anything of a commercial nature. But looking at my server logs, it is obvious that I get a lot of traffic from some pretty major retailers. So I’d like to put this out there:
I’m working with a client on a relaunch of a sports-focused community-based website. It’s pretty specific to one geographic area, but it currently has some pretty solid traffic behind it and a very loyal community behind it. With this relaunch, I am actively looking for retailers who may want to create a co-branded marketing strategy and reach out to this highly targeted demographic. I think it’s a great opportunity for a retailer, especially a sports or outdoor orientated retailer.
I’d really like to create a dialogue with retailers or businesses who may be interested in this type of opportunity. In addition to this client, I’ve got other clients that I consult and work with on an ongoing basis and I am interested in helping retailers connect with their market.
For more information, contact me via e-mail at [ts AT robotictom.com] or use my contact form.
Hadn’t seen this video yet, but it’s from a BART train in San Fransico showing Target’s pretty wild new advertising there:
Pretty awesome effect they’re using there.
Not very suprising, considering the turmoil that the brand has seen lately, but it has been announced that Old Navy president Jenny Ming will be leaving the retailer as of this Fall. She has been with Gap for 19 years, with the last 12 at the helm of Old Navy. She will stick around as the company launches a search for her replacement. More coverage from the New York Times and the Motley Fool.
Gap will return to television on Monday, with a series of ads featuring actor Jeremy Piven and singer Natasha Bedingfield, tied to the rollout of Gap’s autumn line. It has been a year since Gap pulled their advertising off of television. With the Fall line comes a change in Gap’s merchandising strategy – from collections to categories, as they say. More coverage from MSNBC.com.
Changes like these should be a good thing for the struggling retailer.
