Marobella's Branding SoapBox

Can Sears Do It This Time?

I think so. I really do. With the hiring of Richard Gerstein , they've stepped out of the retail box and hired a CPG veteran that will help Sears get closer to their core customers and develop products and retail experience that accommodates their different segments. He even looks a little like Eddie Lampert, they could be brothers.

I must stay, lately I've been going back to Sears. After a youth of buying everything we owned there from our lawnmower to my Toughskins, I've re-sparked my interest in the store. Sometimes they surprise me with cool merchandise and sometimes I'm let down by the in-store experience. I recently bought a very cool bistro set for my new home and it is high-quality and was a good bargain. But, while buying it, I was stalked by a Sears Home Services salesman that wanted me to commit to a free in-home estimate for new windows, doors or whatever I needed.

I do like their new advertising that integrates their pre-print on Sundays into their TV. They spend a great deal of their budget driving impressions and awareness of the brand through the newspaper, it only made sense to make the Sears Book more useful and a consumer tool, rather than a paper rag full of the same shit week over week. And, sears.com is a great site. There are great features on the site and I truly think it is a best-in-class retail site.

For the sake of my memories of Sears, I really hope the brand can make it this time. Develop a powerful in-store experience, bring their product brands to life and hire people in-store that can speak english and I think they will be good.

Who's Your President?

My beloved Red Sox have a devout following, that much we all know. The self-given name for this group of lovable people is Red Sox Nation. Not totally original, but nonetheless effective. These people (including myself) are a group of brand loyalists that are starting to organize and what was once a amorphous group of people, is now starting to take shape.

This was primarily facilitated by the Red Sox themselves recognizing this movement and fostering its growth through their website and a CRM program where insiders enjoy special perks.

Now, Red Sox Nation has decided they are going to elect a President . A person that will not only represent the feelings and emotions of the faithful, but will communicate with team ownership about fan morale and expectations.

The best part - the ownership is taking this seriously and embracing this two-way form of dialogue. They are setting an example for all other brands to take your loyalists seriously. See them more than 5-city focus group tours, but establish a line of communication and if possible, elect a leader.

I'm proud to be a Red Sox fan, but there are some incriminating pictures floating around of me from my college years that would probably preclude me from running for office, even this office.

Now, I've Seen It All.

Reading my monthly issue of Stuff magazine (yes, I read it for the advertising), I came across and interview with a guy that made his millions from a website called Seeking Arrangement which is a dating service for Sugar Daddies and "Sugar Babies" It pairs old men with hot young women. Pure genius. It's one of those, why didn't I think of that moments.

I wonder if he advertises in the Viagra Triangle in Chicago(Rush Street).

Lexus and RoadKill. They Both Suck.

Received an email today from my friend Nathan Pitzel. He has a horror story to tell about Lexus. His intentions are to just get his life (and car) back on track since having a horrible experience reminiscent of (pick your scary movie) Hitcher, Vacancy, Psycho etc. where your car breaks down in the middle of tumbleweed Texas and the only thing you can see at 2am is a half-flashing sign that says Hotel. Holy Shit! Can you imagine the horror? Well, the horror was just beginning for our star in this movie, Nathan.

He just bought his new Lexus and hit a raccoon (we say armadillo, he still maintains it was a raccoon) in the middle of the night in east-bum, Texas. After this rock-solid raccoon got whacked, his engine went all crazy and is basically fried. See, must have been one pumped up rocky the raccoon. Anyway, after pulling into a small town where they probably have only seen Lexus' on TV, he had to concede to leave his car in Texas and fly home. Essentially leaving it in Lexus's good hands to fix.

Before I go any further, I want to excerpt something from Lexus's web site: Established in the early 1980s and launched in 1989, the Lexus marque soon became associated with quality, luxury and superior customer satisfaction. The last adjectives is what I want you, the reader, to keep in your mind here.

Back to the story - Nathan has chronicled his entire story on his Do Not Buy A Lexus Blog, but the where we are is that Lexus hasn't done a damn thing to help Nathan get his car fixed and have told him that it won't be fixed for 5-8 months!!!! In the meantime, he still has to make payments - can you imagine that? Making payments on a car that is being used as a flower container somewhere in po-dunk Texas and that is the only resolution that Lexus will offer?

See, Nathan is an upwardly mobile professional here in the big market of Chicago with lots of friends that can afford Lexus. The moral of the story here is that I bet you that Lexus will lose dozens of potential customers now and in the future because of how they've handled this. This is a perfect example of how a brand has the opportunity to go from zero to hero overnight.

Lexus - do the right thing, make him whole - fix his car now, give him a new car, suspend his payments, shit - upgrade his car to a new badge for all this hassle. I promise I will write something nice about your brand if you hook him up. Or, maybe you're too busy engineering features like 'the car that parks itself' that nobody wants. How about a brand that services itself? Now, that would be cool.

Are We More Curious?

One of the reasons that I decided to start writing this blog almost a year ago, was to help me stay  connected to what is happening in our world. It seems no matter how hard I try, I always come across other blogs or people that are three of four steps ahead of what I know  at the time.  And, as I read all the blogs that cover the iPhone, it seems to me that we are a more curious and inquisitive  people than we were 5-years ago. The power of  democratic media has  pushed us to want to seem smart and connected - it seems that 'in the know' is the new currency, especially for the younger generations.

This is a good thing as it reminds us to question everything and accept nothing at face value.

Apple just lost an iphone sale

I received a call from my friend and colleague, Tony Schlangen, out in the Boise, ID office the other day. He asked if I could stop by the Apple store on Michigan Avenue to pick him up an 8gb iphone since they were hard to come by out in Boise. Of course, I obliged and stopped by there today and easily bought one for him. I have been vacillating between wanting an iphone and not. I am perfectly happy with my BlackBerry Pearl and after a year or so, have just learned my way around all the features. There is absolutely no reason for me to buy a new phone. Especially since I am on T-Mobile and I would have to switch to AT&T, a major hassle and cost.

But, amidst all the madness and hoopla in the store today, I not only bought Tony one, I bought one for myself (that is a picture of it taken, ironically, from my BlackBerry). There I was standing on Michigan Avenue with two iphone bags being gazed at by admiring teenagers. I must say, I felt pretty cool. Well, I called Tony and told him he was all set and to expect his little piece of heaven tomorrow, just in time to show off to his friends at July 4th. But me, well I am a different story. I still haven't opened the wrapping and barely taken it out of the bag. See, my company has a corporate AT&T plan that I would like to latch onto after being here for over a year. Wirestone is a great company to work for and one of the perks is being given a company phone and never seeing the bill, pretty cool. Well, I thought it was time for me to drink the kool-aid. So, I bought an iphone, paying full bore cost at $599. Who pays full cost for a phone AND has to commit to 2-years? That's crap. Anyway, I can't add the phone to the company plan. I can only use it as a consumer. That means the phone is going back to the store this week. I will not cancel T-Mobile, pay the termination fee, have my credit run, sign a new 2-year contract and NOT be able to take advantage of my company perks. The phone is cool, but not that cool.

What is Apple thinking? How many corporate sales will they lose because of this? Think of the people that can actually pass through the super-high cost of $599 to be on their company plan. Actually, I think its a worse play on AT&T's part, they could have had me as a customer and stole me away from T-Mobile - I would have paid the term fee to have that privilege.

This is a great experiential product with a poorly thought through post-sales experience. So, tomorrow the iphone goes back to the back shelf of the Apple store on Michigan Avenue and my BlackBerry Pearl lives to see another day.