Do better retail advertising, or don’t do it at all
In this guest posting – 24 hours after the closure of The Colorado Group – Jason Rose, MD of adboss.com.au, issues a rallying cry to the industry to get serious about retail advertising.
Having worked in agencies, I know there is one type of brief creatives always avoided: anything with the word ‘retail’ in it. If it related to a sale or a clearance or involved a percentage off, the view was it would be tedious and contribute zero to your folio. And you could always tell such a brief was floating around because suddenly even the slackest creative looked flat out on other things.
Well, I would like to issue a call to our industry. Forget about putting the finishing touches on that Cannes entry. The most pressing challenge our industry currently faces – and where a whole lot more creative energy needs to be focused – is how to start doing compelling retail advertising. Because right now, it’s not happening.
The hard sell
Australian retail is one of the few instances where the advertising is perfectly aligned with the product offering. Unfortunately they are embarrisingly both piss poor.
Harvey Nicols invests in it’s brand via advertising, merchandising, store experience and also has invested in an ecommerce store that sells brands that 30-40% cheaper than our dept stores. We have our own Harvey N”s in Australia however the retail experience is slightly different.
Wise words Jason. There is a great opportunity for retail advertising to be smart and humourous in Australia.
The Colorado Group hasn’t closed… just the Colorado stores and a few stores from some of their other chains..
Good article Jason.
There is, I think, a fundamental reason why many retailers fail to produce good creative work. Its because they do advertising not marketing. There is a big difference.
Advertising is the combination of words and pictures based on what can be said about the current offering. Marketing is about positive, customer focused actions that allow the retailer to differentiate themselves and therefore provide the raw material for creative inspiration…and great advertising.
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Derek – I think you’re warm.
My view is that most Australian retail brands view their press advertising as a “brochure on a page” – almost literally. They’re selling a price over an aspiration (which is left to the brand) – they have commoditised themself and then wonder why customers become fickle.
It’s perfectly possible to do great work in retail just as it is in any other category; I’m please to say I’ve been involved in some pretty good examples where the needs of brand building, customer engagement AND retail sales results were pretty well balanced. But as with any category, great retail work takes a level of shared commitment, balls, imagination, innovation and partnership by both agency and client.
And there’s the rub. Back when I ran retail agency The Ideas Group the push from clients was almost always to the default position of yell and sell. I can’t tell you how many times, clients said to me “well it works for Gerry”.
That was back then when Gerry (Harvey) couldn’t put a foot wrong results-wise. Now of course it’s very clear that it’s NOT working for Gerry – although that hasn’t (yet?) affected his advertising one jot of course!
And it’s not working for a number of other yell and sell retailers. Because in the age or permission marketing, of user generated content, of targeted messaging how on earth COULD that intrusive form of customer abuse work?
The problem is, Gerry (and the like) created a very unimaginitive default position for all retailers to ‘aspire’ to. This position ignored # Derek’s valid point that it’s no longer about ‘advertising’ per se, it ignored the power of the internet, it ignored marketing technology entirely in fact.
The resultant lack of innovation has been terribly damaging to the retail industry which has finally woken up to what was so obvious to the rest of us for a number of years – multi-channel retailing requires a whole new set of rules, both operationally and in terms of marketing.
Now that the retailers are awake, perhaps agencies which are not so dumb as to reject anything with the word ‘retail’ in it have a window of opportunity to lead retailers to new forms of marketing which effectively integrate online, offline and in-store channels . Leave your sledgehammers at the door.
Harvey Nic’s latest sale campaign shows how to do it – http://goo.gl/DdlmJ
Now Harvey Nicols, that is retail advertising.
And fuck me, if I haven’t heard that “but Gerry does it” refrain myself enough times.
To which the response is: But you aren’t Gerry Harvey and your business isn’t Harvey Norman, so why would you want to risk being a limp me-too?
For 15 years now I’ve been writing retail TV and print campaigns in agencies around town, constantly under pressure by clients to yell and sell-out. The problem I come up against is this that cheap looking /sounding ads suggest cheap prices. And isn’t retail about price? Well actually it isn’t. Otherwise the battle is over and shopping online has our smoked and shrunken heads on a stick. Jason pointed at the solution with his comment about the magnetism of the real life market place. People want to dress up in their good gear and hangout with people. And until something new, and actual, comes along it’s going to be at the shops. Retailers now have to sell the product and the pleasure of actually going out and buying it. Why aren’t we seeing retailers pooling resources to create national campaigns selling the pleasure of shopping? It’s a great product with its mental and physical health benefits. To the many pleasures Jason mentioned let me add escapist lighting, instant gratification and fawning sales people calling you sir just because you walked into the shop. Not going to happen anywhere else. Get the government to cough up. And let’s all put some thinking into how to make shopping more pleasurable. The tree can uproot and run off chasing departed birds, or it can grow berries to attract them back.