Marobella's Branding SoapBox

When Will Retailers Get It?

I don't know about you, but I think people are catching on to retailer's bullshit excuses. The following is an excerpt from today's Wall Street Journal about a major retailer spewing reasons why they missed their forecast for the holiday season - I've changed the retailer's name to protect the guilty.

[] said the weak results reflect poor economic conditions that include the weak housing market and consumer-credit concerns, in addition to increased competition. The company saw lower sales across most categories, especially in the []apparel and tools categories, and in []seasonal categories. Increases in home electronics at [] partially offset that weakness.

Gross margin for the nine-week period was down about two percentage points reflecting the "highly promotional nature" of the holiday selling season, markdowns to clear seasonal inventory and the "relatively high" proportion of sales attributable to the home electronics category, which has a lower margin rate.

You could insert almost any big-box retailer's name into those brackets and have the same bullshit excuses. What? Do these guys have software program that spits out excuses based on economic conditions and any other headline from the newspaper that quarter - oil prices, bad/good weather, milk prices, year of an election, the Cowboys lost etc.

How about the fact that American retailing is in the shitter? That every major retailer has trained the consumer to wait until Black Friday to shop with their promotions & discounts. Then, the consumer blows their wad on Black Friday and has very little money to spend through December. We have to ween the consumer off the promotional nature of American mid-market retailing. The very retailers that stuck this needle in the consumer's arm are the ones that are suffering - Kohl's, Wal-Mart, Sears, JC Penney and places like Mervyn's. Hey, I have an idea - how about fixing your store experience and finding some differentiated merchandise that consumers can't find in other places. Target is going in the right direction and while they didn't have a huge holiday season, they still did better than other retailers in an admittedly soft economy.

And while I am fired up, another thought - consumers are stressed by how much stuff costs, but it isn't the smaller items. I mean, I took a look at my step-son's Xmas list and it read like this:

iPod Touch     $299

Rock Band      $179

5 PS3 Games  $250

Come on, not to mention the flatscreens people are buying and the GPS systems that cost $400 bucks. People are buying one or two big ticket items and they are tapped out. You can't just buy a few toys for kids anymore - all the stuff they want is super-expensive. They play with it for a couple weeks and it ends up on a shelf somewhere. Stop the madness, people. Kids' perspective on reality is skewed based on the stuff they want - they have lost all sense of what stuff costs. We have to fix that.

When Good Endorsements Go Bad

I am a die hard Red Sox fan and a Kevin Youkilis fan, the gritty first basemen for the Red Sox. However, I was a bit taken a back when I saw the most recent stumping he is doing for a new energy drink that will last about 2-seconds at retail. It is called Slump Buster. Now, if you remember from Bull Durham, a Slump Buster is a nice lady that offers to sleep with a player that is slumping to help break his bad streak. It seems our man Youk has decided this is a good brand name and a good product to endorse in the marketplace. Big props on the charity angle for the proceeds, but I think those coffers might run a little dry, unfortunately.

Come on Youk, you can do better.

Chuck Norris For Huckabee... uh, what?

Honestly, I am not that political. I do my best to track the candidates and make an informed decision come election day - but I am far from a political expert. However, when I see Oprah get behind Obama - I can understand his strategy. Then, Clinton asks Barbara Streisand to stump for her - that seems desperate to me and definitely doesn't appeal to anyone under 45, but I can see why she needed to have a big star behind her. But, Walker Texas Ranger standing right behind Mike Huckabee at the Iowa caucuses.. What?! I don't understand that in the hell that has to do with anything? This guy is stumping on an evangelical, populous platform (hey, not bad for a not-so-political guy) and he has the #1 ass-kicker covering his back?

Big mistake.

2-Sides To Service At Nordstrom?

Nordstrom is probably my favorite store  where I purchase clothing. Usually, I would spend most of my hard earned cash at the Rail, which is Nordstrom's attempt to appeal to the younger customer. The younger customer with big dough, that is, because jeans like True Religion cost around $300. This store-within-a-store is no relief from the prices at Nordstrom that's for sure. However, one thing has become evident to me - the service levels that Nordstrom is famous for doesn't seem to trickle down to the Rail. There are usually young, hip people working in this section and they don't seem to have the same commitment to personalized service as the men and women in the other areas. Now, as I approach 40, I find myself spending more time at Nordstrom shopping the "adult" sections where the clothes are still super-cool, but most likely don't have skulls or daggers imprinted on them. The difference is the people that work in these sections know how to treat a customer.

I think it is a smart move for Nordstrom to have a generational-divide and appeal to the children of the people shopping their other areas - but do not let up on the commitment to service. Someday, those children will start to spend their money "upstairs" (like me) and it would be a shame to lose them before they get on that escalator.

Looking Back To Leap Forward

I've been catching up on my blog reading these past few days and I've noticed that most people have some sort of resolution list - whether relating to their blog behavior or their off-line life. My intention is to take a bit of a different tact and reflect on why I even started this blog 1.5 years ago and renew my commitment to those intentions.

1. Force Myself To Be Informed - A major reason why I started my blog was a selfish one - to force myself to stay current, read incessantly and keep in touch with the marketplace. Not that I needed any motivation to stay focused on what I love, but I thought that having a perspective on what's happening in our business would somehow allow me to keep my saw sharp. This holiday break, I've re-configured my reading list into the all-powerful Google Reader to become, what Steve Rubel calls, a Knowledge Management Ninja.

2. Contribute To The Advancement Of Our Craft - I hope to offer valuable perspectives and opinions against the quickly-changing craft of marketing & advertising, that in some small way, makes a difference. Whether someone is doing research for a brand brief or a school paper, I hope to provide them with a nugget or thought that helps them along. In all honesty, my post velocity has dropped off over the past few months for a variety of reasons but I resolve to quicken the pace over the coming year. I don't know if it was writer's block or a falling off of the passion to post - but whatever it was I feel like my head is back in the game. When I'm out in the market place, I hear myself saying " I need to write about that" more than in the past few months. So for all you people from Poland and Moscow that are visiting my blog on a regular basis, thanks for coming and I promise to keep up.

3. A SoapBox For My Experiences - Throughout 2007, I found myself writing about bad customer experiences on my blog, whether Comcast, Lexus or Luna Carpet - my blog was my outlet for letting the world know I'd been wronged by a brand. And, in some small fantasy way, hope that management from those brands would see that I'd been affronted and hopefully change their customer service strategy moving forward. I'm big into great brand experiences and vow to write more about the GREAT ones and be less of a bitch-session on this blog.

4. Build Brand Marobella - Sure, let's face it - most people that start blogs and spend time away from their families, friends or work writing on their own personal space have a selfish agenda. Some more than others, of course, but I have always felt that writing about our business was something I wanted to do. Someday, I hope to pen a book about marketing and/or advertising and I thought writing a blog would be a good first step. Or maybe the topic for the book would be borne out of my writing. I also love to write editorials for trade magazines and other blogs and by writing here, it has helped raise my awareness.

5. Meet Cool People - One by-product of writing this blog has been that I have met some super-cool people that I probably wouldn't have met otherwise. I have had people from all around the world reach out to me and offer to meet when they are in Chicago or when I am in their town. Just to talk about our business. I've met people that I've written about and others just seeking out good business conversation. I hope that doesn't end because it really is the best part of spending time writing this blog.